Golden Age 1 Hotel Istanbul

First of all I have to warn that I've finished Technical University so I don't pretend to the high style of presentation. Although I might want)) Istanbul is the city that makes anybody a poet, especially if you row upon the Bosporus in a leisure boat or sit in the evening with hookah somewhere in a cafe near the Hagia Sophia ... Although I'm running ahead. I will speak about my vacation in Istanbul step by step. I'll try to be helpful to those who have not been ...

so holy **** we are now in the middle east!! i love istanbul. it is beautiful. it is HUGE. there are awesome bazaars and mosques everywhere and such a cool mishmash of people, tourists, women in headscarves and other various religious coverings, crazy busy everything.<br><br>we spent the first couple days just walking around, did a boat cruise up the Bosphorous river up to where it meets the black sea. very cool. you get out of the boat at this little village with a whole bunch ...

... delivered right to my doorstep...just like the other rug I bought...which still hasn't arrived.<br><br>Of course he also told me I could walk out of the store with the rug right then and there... It would have been too much of a hassle to carry though anyway....<br><br>I mean the rug was great, and if it was silk on silk then man, what a deal if he didn't come back and buy the rug. What a deal for something I didn't need and something that is over priced to begin with. It's a rug ...

yesterday i went with my boss to the mall so he could buy new headphones and then we ended up smelling perfume and cologne for 20 minutes... it was me and two guys that i work with and it was hilarious because there i was standing in this shop with two men who i barely know and they were testing the smells out and asking for my opinion... one was specifically looking for a burberry perfume so ofcourse that got my approval haha ...

... Bosporus, Golden Horn and Sea of Marmara. At this point we were starving. Lucky for us there was a delicious meatball (think more like kafta) place close by called Sultanahmet Koftesi that has been serving these delicious little balls for nearly 100 years. It was fantastic. From here we walked through the sprawling Grand Bazaar and Spice Bazaar...both were amazing and we will be visiting them again in more detail later so check back on these two. Saba was nice enough ...

... after lane of grandiosity, reeking of history and eloquence. A living ode to 'spare not, want not'. A name-dropper's fantasy land, from the Greats Peter and Catherine onwards. Culture vultures follow in the footsteps of Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Gogol, Nureyev, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovic, Balzac, Chekhov ... Yet it doesn't seem blinding in its splendour, much more embracing, throwing a large warm arm around the shoulder, in complete contrast to the colder, more mechanical Moscow. Proclaimed ...

... asking us to wait a minute. He walked down the street asking someone else about our address. Eventually everyone on the street was trying to help us when a short little man walked up to us with and told us the hotel was booked, no rooms, no rooms. We were sure he was mistaken since we had booked our room ahead of time via the internet. He told us to follow him but we assumed he was scamming us to get us to go to his hotel instead. Turns out he ...

... expecting?  We asked a man walking by where the Grand Bazaar was, assuming we had just made a wrong turn, at which point he pointed back to where we had come.  "That's it?" we asked.  "Yes," he said, "but today, closed."  Ooooh.  Although bummed that we didn't get to experience it, we were perhaps a bit relieved, since we knew that there was only so much bazaar-style shopping we could have handled anyway.   So off ...

... children have done very well. They have taken completely to the etiquette and "respect" issues that are so important in the culture. In all honesty, patty had prepared them well for this aspect, and they have taken it quite to heart. We were both proud when Asher and Gracey stood up on a train to give their seats to an older man who had come aboard the tram. This is one of the reasons why we travel and work so hard to show them the world.

... they were waiting. The long anticipated bellow sounded from the mosque to make it official that the sun had set and it was time to eat. I would have devoured my food, tasting nothing. Amazingly, the Turkish families appeared to slowly savour every bite of this long awaited break in their fasting. This time around Istanbul was a surprise. I enjoyed it more than last time but I am a bit sad that it has lost some of the charm and guile that it once had.