Arrived in Istanbul

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  Istanbul, Turkey
Tuesday, August 2, 2005

We arrived finally in Istanbul after a reallylong tiering trip, the flight from London was great, tons of legroom and our own little TV screens!! We transferred in Athens without any trouble, just waited around for absolutely ages and we were both tired. Our flight to Istanbul was delayed by about an hour and a half, which wasntlong but when you haven't slept its a long time!

We arrived at Istanbul airport and queued for our visas in the wrong place, eventually we realised we were in the wrong queue and queued in the other queue!
We took a metro to a suburban station on the outskirts of the city and were amazed by the sightS...buildings and people that we saw along the way. We transferred to a tram and took that, which was jammed with people, to a stop called Sultanhamet...Which is the area of Istanbul which we are staying, its a UNESCO area and is beautiful.
We got completely lost after doing so well after getting off of the tram, and walked with our heavy backpacks on for an hour or so when we eventually found our hostel...This was fine, until we get into the hostel and the reception guy tells us that he sold our room!! As you can imagine after no sleep, scorching heat, and finding the place after all this time we were not impressed! But what could we do, ether fight our way back onto the streets of Istanbul and try and find somewhere else, or agree to moving rooms today and tommorow, and hope that he has a room free for our last 2 nights...we chose the latter.

The hostel is fine, friendly, well located, very basic but cheap!
Yesterday we slept for most of the day and ate our dinner of sis lamb kebab at MIDNIGHT! everything was still gong on and we walked down to see the blue mosque all lit up...a few beers as well!!

Today we woke at about 8am and showered, moved our stuff into another room and enjoyed the free breakfast from the hostel on the roadside...we had rolls and jam, cheese and eggs, coffee and apple tea...set us up for the day!

We have chilled out today, visited the blue mosque and the Aya Sofia mosque museum...Its been really hot, but really interesting as well and we are having an amazingly fantastic time!

MISS you all tons.........

AlI and Matt
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Alý outsýde the hostel	Aya Sofya from the Blue Mosque	Bosphorus River	Hareem in Topkapi Palace - Istanbul
Istanbul	Matt ýn Aya Sofya	Muslým lady outsýde Topkapý Palace	The Blue Mosque

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