Istanbul!

After waaay too late of a night Saturday (but amazingly fun, happy birthday again Neva and Elin!) I caught an 8am flight for Chicago. Lufthansa was handing out pamphlets warning of a strike, but things seemed to work out ok. The only drawback was I seem to have caught Colin's cold as a going away present. But I was able to spend Sunday night en route to Frankfurt. All in all a much better experience than my last trip through O'Hare. After a couple of hours of duty free browsing and another quick flight I was in Istanbul!

I dodged the touts offering 20-40 YTL shuttles to various hotels and hopped on the subway for 1.4 YTL and transfered to a tram for a grand total of 2.8 YTL and ended up by the Blue Mosque. Thanks for the tip Lonely Planet! I dumped my stuff off at the hostel and reminded myself again why I like to travel light. The extra bag with camping gear and car stuff is generally heavy, but a bit of an annoyance on public transit. Alex should be here in a day or two and I can dump it all in the spacious Mini. I took the afternoon to wander around the Topkapi Palace, admiring all the gems and jewelry the sultans managed to accumulate, and wondering how they know if that withered arm really was Paul's and if those beard hairs came from the Prophet? I had dinner on a roof top restaurant as the sun set, lighting up the Blue Mosque and turning the Bosporus amazing colors. The jet lag is catching up to me, but tomorrow I'm off to find a Turkish Bath!