June 17, 2010
Day 4 Istanbul-Greece/Turkey border
We got up pretty late this day. We were obviously tired from the lack of sleep the night before and the long day of walking in the heat. I woke up noticing a few mosquito bites on me (that would turn into a lot of bites by the end of the day). I wasn't very happy about that, but nothing I could do about it at that point. We headed out of the hostel sometime around 11:00 and walked back across the bridge, buying some fruit and a street vendor bun along the way for breakfast. Almost at the point where we were going to start our touring for the day, I realized I had left my SD card back at the hostel. Trevor, being the wonderful husband that he is, rode back to the hostel while I waited for him at the gardens near the palace. When he finally came back we walked over to the palace, but decided not to go in. We took some pictures and walked around. We noticed a crow-like bird attacking some cats. The cats were eating and as we watched, the bird nipped one of the cats in the tail! He attempted to do it again a couple more times and even stole some of the food. It was pretty funny. We walked out of the palace grounds and headed in the direction of the Hagia Sofia. As we walked we saw a watermelon vendor and the watermelon looked so tasty so I figured why not buy some. He was being outrageous, charging 4 euro for a little tray of watermelon and I noticed that for one of the women he let her buy it for 2 euro. I figured I would pay 2 euro, but he wasn't budging for me. So I sent Trevor in to see if he would drop the price for him. He wouldn't and then noticed me standing off to the side, he gave me a thumbs up. I don't know if that was his way of telling me, "nice try working the system". I didn't like that. We went in search of another watermelon guy. While Trevor went off to get some watermelon, I went to mail some postcards. Trevor came back with the watermelon, that was very tasty and refreshing, and as we were sitting there, we got approached by two guys who were practicing their English. They asked us a few questions, took notes and then went off. We decided to check out the mausoleums that were free of charge. They were really interesting and in one there was a shroud that had covered prophet Mohamed's sarcophagus! After that we made our way toward the sea. We just started heading in that direction hoping that we wouldn't get too lost along the way. At one point we knew we were close, but there were train tracks blocking us. Thankfully, not much further, we found an underpass. We then crossed a highway and ended up right near the sea. There were a bunch of men swimming or hanging out on the rocks, because there wasn't a beach. We sat down on one of the benches and hung out for a while. We watched as a cop van came close to us (driving on the side walk) and asked a guy selling tea and cold drinks out of a bucket, for something to drink. Then one of the cops decided to get a henna tattoo and got a nearby henna guy to go in the back of the police van to do the tattoo. After that entertainment, Trevor figured we should get some seafood food and we walked along a strip where there were restaurants. We ended up picking one and ordered some calamari. As we waited for our snack, Trevor noticed something in the water (we were sitting right along the water's edge). It took us a while, but figured out that it was dolphins! There were two and they would surface every once in a while. They did that for about five minutes until some local boys decided to swim out to them. After that they were nowhere to be seen. The calamari was really good and I'm glad that we decided to try some. It was then time to head back to the hostel because we would have to catch the bus in a few hours and we were quite a ways away. We started making our way up a hill and passed an area of empty touristy restaurants. Here I found a cat interested in coming up to me. He was super cute. Continuing our way up we found a place where we grabbed a bite to eat. It looked a little like a kebab place. We got this sandwich filled with meat. It was all right, but not the best thing I've ever eaten. We also grabbed some Turkish delight and a piece of baklava across the street. All of it was pretty cheap, which was nice. You could tell this part was a little less touristy. As we continued up, we realized that we were getting pretty close to the Grand bazaar, and ended up going through it one more time, checking out all the crazy stores. We went down an area that sold snaps for clothes. The whole store was different sizes of snaps! Crazy! We then grabbed a seat for a little while in the shade just to take a break, but because Trevor and I sat in slightly different areas because of how the shade was, I ended up getting approached by a restaurant owner who called over a son/nephew/friend who was about my age. I had to explain that my husband was sitting just over there and the guy asked "are you sure?" to which I replied "yes I'm sure" (no, not that clever, but clear at least). The restaurant guy then gave us free tea. Trevor refused, so the tea was given to a guy sitting next to us. I drank mine and then we headed over to the pet area again and looked at the adorable (though not necessarily very healthy looking) animals. It was then back to our hostel to grab our bags. We took a few more pictures along the way, grabbed some food and went into the hostel to grab a shower. After getting cleaned up and using a little internet, we headed back towards the bridge to catch the tram which would get us to the bus station (with a transfer). At the transfer Trevor grabbed a kebab. We got to the massive bus station just after 21:00. After checking in and giving the bus people our bags, we walked around a bit then settled into our seats. The kebab was disgusting! It was tasteless! Definitely not good. At just after 22:00 we started our journey back to Thessaloniki. Once again we had TVs on the backs of the seats, though I didn't bother with mine. We were also offered tea and coffee, a snack and water and pop. After taking in a little food, it was time to take in a little sleep before the dreaded wake up at the border crossing.
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