Блог 7
 |
| St. Basils!!!!!! |
Hey
guys! Sorry for the very very very late post, but I will tell you, it was not
for nothing! While I've been away, I have been to multiple interesting places
and cannot wait for you to laugh at my awkwardness. Quickly, I'll catch you up
on the week before I went on vacation. I swear everything gets better after
this first story. Two Wednesdays ago was, simply put, a terrible day. I was
groped on the metro, tripped over the sole of my shoe which had decided to secede
from the rest of the boot, ended up getting a packed lunch of onion and fish
salad, had the door to the mashrootka (unofficial
bus- more like a van) shut literally on my face, and about ten other small
things that added up in to one big mess of a day. That was super lame. Then,
that Saturday, we went on another excursion that I couldn't wait for. I have
been able to see it of my balcony for two months, and have been dying to go. Petropavlovsky Krepast or Peter and Paul
Fortress.
Amazing, stunning, and very interesting are words I would use to
describe the inside of the sobor
(church) that houses the remains of the majority of the Russian rulers and
their families since Peter the Great. Unfortunately the outside was completely
covered in scaffolding, but it was very impressive.
 |
| The Cathedral in Moscow in which Pussy Riot protested. |
Last
Friday, the last of March, all of the little CIEE students got down to the
train station, Moscovsky Vokzal and
got on the midnight train to Moscow. There we took a tour of the Kremlin, spent
time on the Red Square, walked along amazingly different and more Russian
streets, saw some
very beautiful metro stops and overall had a very good time.
I'm not going to spend time talking about Moscow though (sorry) because it has
been overshadowed by last week. From Moscow,
a group of us made our merry way to Istanbul (which shall, from here on,
be known as Paradise, or my new home). In Moscow and St. Petersburg it was
snowy, cold, wet and dreary. In Istanbul, everyone smiles at you, even if they
are trying to sell you something it's such a welcome change, the sky is
gorgeous, the weather is warm, there are beaches and bodies of water that
aren't frozen… Palm trees. We saw palm trees!
 |
| Inside the Kremlin. |
We
saw all the big sights, went inside the Hagia Sofya, Blue Mosque, the
Archaeological museum, textile museum, Galata tower (you can see the whole of
the city from the top of the tower), the Süleymaniye Mosque, the aqueduct, Grand Bazaar, Spice Bazaar, Topkapi
Palace, Constantine's Column, Hippodrome, Book Bazaar, Taksim (a popular night
area that we visited during the day- oops), and so, so much more. More mosques
than I can possibly name. I am obviously not going to cover all of this because
it would take forever- but here are the highlights.
We
got in on Sunday night, the five of us, four girls and one guy. We figured this
could lead to a lot of jokes, and we were not disappointed. The first night was
an
 |
| Loosin' my cool meeting Eddie FREAKIN' Izzard! |
adventure just getting to our hostel when our shuttle wasn't there and we
ended up needing a taxi, which then couldn't find our hostel. Finally, after
some walking, we found it and went on a tour of the neighborhood. We were in
the rather important part of Sultanhamet where the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophya
face each other, the Hippodrome and Basilica Cistern off to one side, and an
overall loveliness everywhere. So the first night we saw the Hagia Sophya and
Blue Mosque all light up and went back to the hostel for the night. The next
day, we all went hard. It was a lot of walking and getting lost but we found a
lot of cool landmarks, a gorgeous park, and the Spice Market. Best part of my
day, meeting Eddie Izzard in the Spice Market in Istanbul… WHAT?!?
 |
| Blue Mosque |
The
vendors in the Spice Market do their very best to be persuasive enough to get
you into their store and to purchase something. They go from flattery to
pretending to be offended that we were ignoring them to jokes. As I said, jokes
about our group were pretty easy to make, apparently. Our personal favorites
were, "Are you the Spice Girls?", "What a large harem for one
man!", and the winner, "Charlie- you are only supposed to have three
angels!" Those were the most common. Some of the more clever salesmen
tried to add on to older material, like, "Charlie- why do you have four
angels? What is this, global warming?!" Even on the street where our very
lovely hostel was, the
 |
| Inside the Blue Mosque |
restaurants had men on the street doing anything in the
power except throw us into their joint. Our hostel had a café out front and
very friendly staff who quite liked Rhiannon, one of the girls I was with, but
trying to get to our café was always a challenge. The first night we ran into a
rug dealer down the street who invited us to his shop and offered us wine and
champagne, then told me I could have anything in his store for free. He then
told Alec, as we were leaving, that if he touched me it would be like touching
him. Super creepy, now that I think about that, but it sounded a lot less bad
at the time- but we avoided him every day after that.
 |
| Inside the Hagia Sofya. Sorry about the bad light... |
We
went to the Grand Bazaar, and before we even made it into the bazaar, we were
met by a terribly friendly rug dealer who took us to his shop, gave us apple
tea, kept repeating the same, rather rude and obscene phrases in English. We
finally got out of there, but not before he unloaded three small rugs on us in
an embarrassing display of American ignorance. Some venders would sell at us in
English, occasional Russian, once German and Emma got Spanish at one point. I
think they are very good at telling what European countries people are from,
but Americans are difficult because we are such a mish-mash of different
ancestry.
 |
| Princes' Islands on a random street with a carriage. |
Our
best day, in my opinion, was spent on the largest of the Princes' Islands, Büyükada after a ferry ride, and went on a calm walk through a farmers
market, brought bread and cheese, bought fruit and found an amazing pier that
was definitely not somewhere we were supposed to be, and had a picnic. We were
enjoying soaking in the sun, when we suddenly noticed that we were being
circled by gulls. Two landed rather
 |
| On the Asia Side enjoying the sun. |
near to us but a rather intrepid little cat
defended us against them, and joined our picnic in return for a bit of our feta
and affection. So kind of him. We named him Kabatash and he was a sweetheart,
and then took a cat nap in the sun. A few days later, we went to the Asia side
and found an area called Moda (suggested to us by Emma's very handsome Turkish
friend, Sayid) and had a really unique breakfast with some good sauces, a real
honeycomb, and cheeses. Then found some world famous (or just Istanbul famous?)
ice-cream and enjoyed being in Asia.
 |
| Whirling Dervish! |
Obviously I
can't tell you as many stories as I would like to because this is already
becoming too long and you all have lives, jobs, or T.V. shows to get back to.
Overall the entire trip was awesome, amazing, beautiful, gorgeous, and I am not
happy about being back in dreary Siberia.
I'll save you having to listen to the arduous tale of my plane rides home, but
when I did get home I spent two and a half days in bed dying of some Turkish
virus, or food poison, or something…. I'm still not great but I think after
some rest this weekend, I'll be ok. Realistically, I'm glad to be back in
Russia, but it was cruel for them to let me go to somewhere so shiny and friendly,
where people smile at you on the street and you don't fall on your face all the
time because of the ice everywhere. It's staying light out for a lot longer
now, though. The sun isn't down until after 9:00 and it's up much earlier, so
we're well on our way to the "white nights" over here. That's it for
today- I hope it made up for two weeks of being gone. Sorry about that! I'll be
back next Sunday, April 20th and should be back on blog schedule after that.
Thanks for reading, ya'll!!!
 |
| The great group of folk I traveled with! (Right to left: Alec, yours truly, Hannah, Rhiannon, Emma) |
No comments:
Post a Comment