Istanbul was Constantinople

The adventure of the night bus began as we headed to the Turkish border and stopped at duty free on the way. I found out that I need to be more derisive when I need to go to the lady’s room because I decided a bit too late and the bus decided it wouldn’t wait for us and I had a slight inner mental breakdown/panic attack. But we managed to meet up with the bus by running to the border. And what better time to get our daily exercise then at 2 in the morning running for your bus to Istanbul. The exercise continued as we had to run around like crazy people trying to get visa’s before the bitchy bus left us again. Sadly no photos were taken of this because we were to frightened that we were going to be left at the Turkish border.
We arrived in Istanbul and went to our hostel and got our free breakfast on the roof top terrace which was beautiful

We started the morning going to Topkapi Palace and we ran into 2 Swedish guys which we had met in Transylvania. One was feeling sick so Martin came with us around the palace.

It was really interesting we saw Mohammad’s footprints, Moses stick, David’s sword and other artefacts. Alittle skeptical on the authenticity but whatever..

We walked around and were too lazy and cheap to go into the Harem but we took a photo in front of it

We then got overly excited because we were about to meet up with Caitie!! It was a heartfelt blurry reunion.

Maddie and Jesse met up with us and we all went to lunch together and we went on the exciting journey to the post office.

But Nell and I left them and headed to the Spice Bazaar where we had our first taste of Turkish delight and some weird walnut stick that was meant to be an aphrodisiac .

We then went to the Grand Bazaar which I (Nell) had missed last time I was in Turkey. Parts of it were more organised than expected but other parts were more chaotic and noisy.

We were invited in for apple tea by the owner of a bag shop and after drinking apple tea, discussing Ramadan, being invited to go out that night, and lots of haggling, Lee left with a bag haggled down from 160 Lira to 60 (and the business card of the guy in the shop). We bought a few scarves as well then started home for our long awaited afternoon nap.
After only about an hour or two’s sleep we met up with Caitie again and chilled at her hostel with a whole bunch of people from their hostel. Too lazy to go out, we just spent the night on the rooftop bar.

The next day we woke up late and missed free breakfast. Devastating. We walked towards the spice market with Caitie and Maddy stopping at a Mosque on the way.

We passed through some weird animal market where there were barrels of leeches and fish tanks full of mini turtles and all kinds of birds and other animals in cages.

On our way back to the hostel we stopped in a music store and had a jam sesh.

That night after we left Caitie and Maddy we went to get a snack of grilled corn. The people at the corn stand for some odd reason really wanted to take photos with us so we took photos with them and got free corn..

That night we decided to go out to Taksim so we meat up with a couple of people from the night before and took a Taxi there. The taxi ride had possibly some of the best music of the night but a highlight was singing 'oops i did it again' with the taxi driver who really started getting into it.
We then did some bar hopping which is actually a lot of effort because all the bars are on really high floors and there was always a lot of stairs. We landed up at a club called Asef where we danced and watched the amazing view of the city from the top floor.
We then stuffed ourselves back into the cab for the craziest cab ride ever.. The only way I think I can describe it is a teenage boy playing grand theft auto... but we got home safely.
We had late start the next morning because we needed to book a bunch of things but when it was over and we had figured out a way to Athens we headed to lunch.

We then wondered around looked at cameras, evaluated Turkish wedding dresses and went to more local parts of Istanbul which was quite nice and we weren’t referred to as the Spice Girls, Lady Gaga or Shakira the whole afternoon which was refreshing.

We bought some Turkish delight and sat in a park

We then cemented our relationship by buying friendship bracelets from the side of the road