It began snowing the first morning we were in Istanbul and until the day we left it never really stopped. Today especially, snow just dumped on Istanbul! However, we weren't going to let that get in the way of exploring the city.
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| Entrance of our hotel |
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| Snowball fight! |
Today's plan was to visit the Topkapi Palace. This place was so big we could have spent days in it, but we picked a couple parts of it that we were interested in and went from there.
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| Model of the Palace |
The first stop was the harem.
To warm up we stopped for soup and tea.
After we were warmed up we went through a few of the galleries of weapons and jewels owned by those who lived in the palace. (We weren't allowed to take pictures there.)
Next we were off to a different part of town to tour the Chora Museum and see the city walls.
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| We got off the train and found a palm tree in the snow! |
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| Chora Museum |
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| We were walking along and here someone had build a cat house into the city wall! |
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| Will and Nate up on the wall. |
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| Snowy city walls. |
On our way back into town we made a stop for a snack. Margaretta introduced us to a type of street food called "Chi Kofte" which is a vegetarian pate kind of thing made of bulgar, tomato, and many, many spices and is served in a wrap. It was really yummy!
We went our separate ways shortly after our snack so that we could all get ready for our New Year's celebration! We met back up along the way to Ortakoy, an old fishing village along the Bosphorus River. Here we had a nice dinner and watched fireworks.
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| The awning in the middle is the restaurant where we had dinner. |
To end the night we went to a dessert restaurant. Yum!
At this point it was well past midnight and we needed to get home! Margaretta and Mahmoud took the bus back home (which ended up getting stuck in the snow and they had to walk three miles uphill in the snow!). Traffic wasn't hardly budging on the roads and then we came to find out there was a big accident on the highway we would have probably gone on in a cab. So after looking to see if we could take an uber, we realized that in some countries uber has introduced uberBoat! So a boat came to get us at the dock and took us down the river and dropped us just a short walk from the neighborhood where we were staying. We got to avoid all the traffic and get in the ferry ride that we had wanted to take but ran out of time for. It was beautiful seeing the city from the water.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
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