At 6, we were on the road and guess what we saw???? A WHOLE TON OF hot air balloons!! It was totally amazing! We tried to take pics of it, but there was weird shadows due to the lighting, so our pics turned out pretty terrible. Oh well.
We made it to the airport w/out incident and we were on our way to Istanbul! YAY!! BUT when we arrived, it was pouring rain!! BOOO!! We didn't think it was going to be raining and we didn't pack an umbrella! :( I took a picture from inside out taxi:
Luckily, our hotel was AWESOME!!!!! We were greeted with a Welcome Drink:
They even gave us a free upgrade to the Senior Suite! =) Check it out:
After cleaning up from the airplane ride, we decided to brave the rain and head out to the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque and the Sultanahmet District. We got soooo wet from the rain!!! But it was soooo much fun running around in the rain! =) Here's Hagia Sophia:
Here's inside the Blue Mosque:
This is the Column of Constantine, just outside the Blue Mosque:
And then we went to the Underground Cistern! It's basically the old underground water system of the Byzantine Empire.... We couldn't take that many pictures of the inside b/c the flash distorted everything! But check out this Medusa head that were used as the base of columns in the Underground Cistern:
That night, we went to eat some fish place that would have had a beautiful view of the Bosporous Strait, but due to the rain, we saw clouds! Boo! But check out what we found on Istiklal Street (it's like 3rd Street Promenade in SM):
The next day, we went to Topkapi Palace, but I didn't take that many pictures. That's the Palace where all the Sultans stayed! The day after, we were walking around to the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Market when I saw El Torito and I made Russ stand in front so that I could take a pic:
Then Russ started laughing at me and made me take a picture of the bldg directly across the street from El Torito:
It's a really old historic bldg, but I stopped paying attn after I saw El Torito! hahaha. Clearly, I was more focused on looking for chain restaurants and not at the historical-ness of Istanbul. =)
Here's the entrance to the Grand Bazaar, which is like a HUGE swap meet:
While we were touring the Grand Bazaar, we came across a guy who could melt this pot of gold jewelry into...
this giant bar of gold!!!
So we took a pic w/ him:
In the Grand Bazaar, we found a cute little cafe that sold Coke in a Bottle (Russ' Fave)!
Russ said, "this reminds me of the Coke in the Bottle I had in Africa. It was the best drink ever!" ;) This Coke in the Bottle was equally refreshing, since we were both really hot from walking around!
After walking around all day, we came back to our hotel terrace, got a drink and watched Istanbul go by. Check out the incredible view we had!
On our last night in Istanbul, we came across this beautiful sunset in b/t two bldgs on Istiklal Street:
The hardest part about Istanbul was the hills we had to walk. It sounds lame to say we couldn't handle the hills, but seriously, we couldn't. They were unbelievably steep! Here's a pic of the hill we had to climb up to get to the cool Istiklal Street:
The picture doesn't show how steep it is, but it really was!! And here's a pic from the same spot, but looking down the hill, toward our hotel:
Now you can see how steep that hill is! Russ and I were DYING!! ;)
Stay tuned for Part 4 of our Turkish honeymoon. It's dedicated to all the food we had there! =)
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