Turkish Delight!

Today we finally worked up enough courage to leave the land mass with our hostel. We took a ferry up the Bosphorus, had lunch in Asia, and hiked up a hill to check out a castle near the Black sea. We had to sprint down to catch the ferry back, but we made it with minutes to spare. Andy made friends with some nice French tourists, and we got some good photos (they are hard to share, we promise to show them all to you when we get back). On the way back we were feeling confident and jumped off the ferry at one of the northern stops on the European side. We quickly figured out how to use the buses and Andy found us a bus heading towards a different part of town: Taksim square. Across the Golden Horn from our hostel.

We wandered around, and I tried some turkish delight, found it less than delightful, and got an apricot/nut ball instead. It was good. At one point we came across an alley one block from the main street with clotheslines, people playing cards, and small markets, it was really interesting, and I really wish I spoke Turkish so I could have asked chatted with the people living there and not felt so out of place. Eventually we got back to the tourist area, but even this was lower-energy than our area of town. Andy likes this area of town because the people are not as forceful trying to get you to buy stuff.

Tomorrow is our open day, and we tentatively want to go to the Prince Islands and play on the beach, I think we have earned it after our adventure into the english-lacking part of town, and our newfound mastery of the bus system. Gule-Gule! (this Turkish-word-of-the-day brought to you by the Turkish Delight salespeople at Taksim square).