On the move part 4 - Istanbul..

Ok, so pretend that it's like the 1/1.

I think in my last post we were sitting at Arlanda early in the morning. First flight was not too bad, just like 3 or 4 hours in the air. Enough to get some sleep. The plane was fairly old looking but the seats were still more comfortable than RyanAirs, so I was insanely happy. I slept really rather well.

And then we arrived in Istanbul and couldn't quite make up our minds - the trip into the city was longer than we thought, we thought it was like 10 min and it turned out to be about 50 min. But we did have like 13 hours to wait until our next flight so fuck it, basically.

My very first stamp in a passport (wiiiie) and then away via the underground. Fair amount of "where were we supposed to go? How do we buy tickets?" until we were on the train but it felt good - making our own way instead of jumping on a tourist bus.

Best of all - my Ica Banken card (Thank you ICA!).

The ride into town was nice, got to see a lot of the city without getting cold. Because, it was bloody freezing once we had to leave the train. Dressed as we were for Hong Kong we were ill adapted to deal with a winter Istanbul. Hard to say if the rain or the wind was the worst. Soon as we left the train we started looking for a restaurant, partly because we were hungry but mainly because we were cold

Found what we thought looked like a good place, had some traditional "pied" (pizza basically..) and both coffee and tea. We were seated quite near the door and the resturant itself didn't have a kitchen - they used a kitchen further down the street (as you do) so there was a constant running in and out though the door. I looked miserable and pathetic enough to get us moved.

After eating we did what I must admit was a highly hurried and kind of "because we are here so would be stupid not to" walk around some beautiful buildings. We were only in the old part of the city and we did see some wonderful buildings, including a museum and at least one mosque. But cold as we were we didn't stop and read on any signs and we missed a lot - a bit sad, but at the same time it really wasn't the day to discover all of Istanbul. Now I know that I want to go back there at some point, only next time in the summer.

And then back to the airport to get some sleep and wait.