Arrival in Turkey

by Sarah Ann

We’re in Turkey! Let me back up to the beginning first though. We left our house on Friday at 3:30 to go the bus stop in Madison. From there, we rode the bus three hours to the Chicago airport. After going through security and waiting a while, we finally boarded the plan.

The plane was awesome! Each person got a mini-TV thing that you could play games on. The stewardesses handed out little bags to each kid that had earphones, toothbrushes, slippers, socks, and a blow up airplane that Christian is throwing around the hotel room right now. Taylor didn’t think the plane was so awesome. There was a little turbulence and he threw up. We also ate a lot of yummy food on the plane and tried to sleep. When our plane landed, it was 4 p.m. in Turkey but only 8 a.m. to us.

Once we got to Istanbul, we found our driver and he took us to our really cute hotel called Esans Hotel. The streets by our hotel were way different than I was used to. They were made out of cobblestones and were very narrow. There were no streetlights and people would sometimes walk in the middle of the street. And there were stray cats everywhere.  

 

the view from our hotel window

 

After we checked into our room, we went to find dinner. While we were walking down the street, a couple of guys came up to us to try to talk us into eating at their restaurants. We ate pide, which is kind of like a Turkish pizza. It was pretty good.

 

eating dinner

Then we decided to walk around a little. Our hotel is right downtown where lots of the historic sights are. We saw lots of mosques from the outside. Tomorrow we’ll go in some of them. Mosques are Muslim churches. The ones we saw were beautiful and huge. Because it is Ramadan, tons of people were gathered around a square near Blue Mosque – one of the biggest mosques in Istanbul. During Ramadan, Muslim people can’t eat while the sun is up. The sun was setting so they were waiting for it to go down so they could eat. We also heard the call to prayer over some speakers.

 

the people waiting for the sun to go down to eat

 

 

The Aya Sophie (we'll go inside tomorrow and Christian can write about it)

 

We’re really tired now. I’ve learned lots about Turkey already and I’ll learn more tomorrow. I decided if I had to live in a country besides the U.S., I would live in Turkey. It’s really pretty and I like the culture – and all the stray cats.