Kid blogs

  Istanbul, Turkey
Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Alex: I am having a great time in Turkey. As you know, I am in Istanbul. We had a tour guide today. He showed us to a 5-star hotel named the Four Seasons. If you want to know what a 5-star is, some people rate the hotels with stars 1-5. It was really beautiful, but it used to be a prison. I couldn't believe it but I knew the tour guide was right.

The world's most upscale prison

Then we had lunch. I had a cheddar cheese pide. It was great. After that we walked around some more. Before that we went to the Grand Bazaar. A fact that I learned from mom was, they try to keep the dust down by spraying water on the ground. After all of that, we were exhausted. We went back to the hotel. The day before that we bought some Turkish Delight and Baklava--they were wonderful. Tonight we sent dad out to get something to eat for us. He's back now!

Josh:Today when we woke up, we got dressed, ate breakfast and met our tour guide, Yusef. We started walking around and went to the Blue Mosque, home of the blue people. Then we went to the Hagia Sofia. I got trapped outside. The tour guide miscounted and we did not have enough tickets. We checked it out and left for the Grand Bazaar. Before we got there, the guide showed us his friend's store. Everything was at a very low price. We bought about 130 Lira worth.

Crazy eyed Josh

Wild eyed Alex

We went into the GB. The guide showed us another store with all kinds of cool costumes. We didn't get to buy anything because of the accursed mom, but the savior named dad would have let us buy things. I tried on this hat that looked like and Arabic king hat. I also tried on the tailor monkey hat.

The Sultan and the Pasha

In dismay, we left.

When we got out, we saw the Four Seasons Hotel that used to be a prison.

Flowers at the 4 seasons

Then we went and had lunch. I had a chicken shis kebap. After that we went on a metro. We rode to Taksim Square. Then the tour guide left and we played mini golf.

Taksim mini golf

When we were finished we took the metro back and dad got us a light snack and now I am trying to defeat him in a fit of giggles.

Kate: I just want to write about the belly dancer outfits I looked at because the boys wrote about most of the rest of the stuff we did. Today when we went to the Grand Bazaar, I was went to look at some belly dancer outfits for Halloween. I thought it would be a cool idea that would remind myself that I had been to Turkey and done a lot of really cool things in the summer. When we got to the store, a dwarf showed me a bunch of different "handmade" belly dancer outfits. I liked the look of one that was pink, kind of magenta, but he said it was a 125 lira and we decided that that was too much and looked at some cheaper ones, but they looked cheap. So we left with the guy yelling, "Wait! Come back!"