Turkey Day 1

Transportation
We started out our journey to Turkey by arriving at the Tbilisi airport sometime around 3am. The not so great thing about the airports here is that they actually have to bus you to your plane, so you get on a bus, it's always freezing cold and windy and you wait for the entire bus to fill up. Then you wait to walk up the stairs in the freezing cold as a hundred people get on the plane. By 6am we got to Istanbul and proceeded to take some random buses that got us somewhat closer to Sultanahmet before we gave up and took a taxi. The taxi drive was pretty tame, surprisingly. The public transportation system is excellent. The buses and street car were much more modern than muni and Istanbul also uses a card system. We ended up taking the metrobuses, regular buses, the ferry, the funicular, and the street car during our three day stay.

Housing
We found an excellent hotel the first day which was completely renovated and cost us about $30 each. It was located a few minutes from the main sites. It's called Hotel Peninsula and I'd recommend it to anyone staying in Turkey.

Food
My favorite thing about Istanbul is that all of the hotels/hostels have a rooftop terrace (usually with a view of some body of water) for eating breakfast, and the breakfasts are excellent. The hotel we stayed at provided the following:

Homemade yogurt
Homemade jams
Homemade pastries
Apples
Oranges
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Olives
Bread (with honey, butter, chocolate, or jam)
Salami
Two types of cheese (a soft and hard cheese)
Pomegranate juice
Orange juice
Tea
Coffee



Sites
The Sultanahmet area houses most of Istanbul's well known sites (thanks to Cem for all the recommendations - we made it to most of them!). It was covered in tulips for the the annual tulip festival (there are 3 million tulips planted each year). It was swarming with tourists and carpet sellers. We started out by going to the Hagia Sofia mosoleums mostly because we were confused and didn't know where the main entrance was.


We then proceeded on to the Blue Mosque (1616) due to the huge line at the Hagia Sofia. They asked everyone to take their shoes off, but women were not required to cover their heads. The mosque was interesting, but not as impressive as I was expecting.



We toured the Basilica Cistern which is an underground aqueduct. It consists of several columns in about a foot of water. The water is stocked with several random fish. There are two giant medusa heads that hold up two of the columns.




While trying to find a restaurant we accidentally went the wrong way and found ourselves in Gulhane park. I was very excited to see giant cranes nesting in the trees and lots of beautiful rose-ringed parakeets flying around.




In Istanbul, they love to turn things into different colors. For example, the fountain between the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque is lit up into different colors. The Bosphorous bridge (similar to the Golden Gate or Bay Bridge) is covered in lights and changes from blue to red, to green, to orange, to yellow.