We made it! I am exhausted and totally ready to go to bed. The Representative from Friendly Planet met us at the airport and loaded us onto a bus and took us to the Point Hotel near Taksim Square giving us a little history as we went along.
There was an orientation session at the hotel that turned into a coercion into booking the optional tours. It was an all or nothing thing so that if anyone backed out none of the people would have the option for the tours. My brother has a friend that asked for us to get in contact with his family while in Istanbul and we were not going to do any optional tours. The guilt was piled on but we had already decided that we were not going to do any optional tours.
So we are finding out pretty quickly that some of our friends are not as adventurous as we are. We went to the streets around Taksim square. We found a place to eat that was full of locals We decided to eat there and the other 4 in the group backed out. Cory and I went ahead and ate there. It was delicious. There was no English menu and all we could do was point at what we thought looked good. Fantastic. So glad that we went ahead and stopped there. The others went on to find a place that had an English menu. Of course Turkish food is delicious so you can't go wrong. Their meal was delicious also.
Istanbul Hotels
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