Istanbul,Turkey

Well we survived the overnight bus. All things considered, it was fairly comfortable if you don' t count the every 1-1/2 hour stops. We boarded the bus at 1:12 am and immediately fell asleep. We were awakened at 3:15 am and had to get off the bus with our passports and go through the Bulgarian border control. After the entire bus went though that process we drove for about 2 minutes and then we stopped for a bathroom/coffee/ food break. Back on the bus and we rode for about 5 minutes before we had to get off the bus again to go through the Turkish border control. The Turkish border required that we have Visas so while everyone else except us and a Canadian couple handed over their passports, we were directed to a booth about 300 yards away to hand over our $20.00 for a visa sticker on our passports. After we had our visas we returned to passport control and handed over our passports. We reboarded the bus and waited for all of our passports to be checked, stamped and returned. Back to sleep for about 1.5 hours and another bathroom break, back to sleep until we arrived in Istanbul. Tom had a great plan for our arrival, which worked out great after such a broken sleep night. We arrived at the crazy, confusing, rainy station and immediately found a little cafe. We sat and had coffee/tea and reviewed the information for our hostel and how to get there. The drinks perked us up and helped to fortify us for the journey and the time helped us to begin to adjust to being in a new country with a new language and new currency.

We found the metro which took us to the tram, which took us to the neighborhood our hostel is in. We received lots of assistance along the way from some very kind people who mostly offered assistance before we ever asked for it. We found our hostel and left our bags before we went in search of breakfast. We each enjoyed a Turkish breakfast which consisted of a cheese omelette, cucumber and tomato slices, black olives, two types of cheese, bread and jelly and nutella. Delicious. Tom tried his first Turkish coffee and I fell in love with their apple tea which is a favorite here. We ate breakfast as it intermittently poured rain. The guy at our hostel told us that the day before it had poured and then stopped and the sun came out. It didn't look likely as we returned to our hotel and checked in. We went directly to our room and promptly fell asleep. When we woke up I went up to the rooftop terrace and was delighted to see the sun shining in a partly cloudy sky! After showers we hit the town.

We strolled through town taking pictures of the blue mosque while we ate roasted chestnuts from a street vendor. Hunger finally drove us in search of dinner and then we were home for a good nights sleep.