Day 9 - Leaving Africa for Europe

Considering we got in late last night, we got a few hours of sleep before we had to head down for the breakfast buffet. I'm so going to miss having basbousa, lebnah and sushi for breakfast. I'll pine for the omelet and French toast bar made right before your eyes by the chefs and the endless assortment of fresh fruit. I will long for the days when I had various selections of cold cuts and varieties of cheese. But the thing I shall miss most of all? The dessert bar. Because when you are on vacation, calories eaten from the dessert bar never count, right?

We met Mohamad, our tour rep, and Aswad, our driver, in the lobby and since it was so early, we had fairly little traffic to the airport. It was very amusing to see several Prayer Areas had been set up for wary travelers, yet we had to ask at several stores for a stamp to mail our Egyptian postcard to our daughters and were unsuccessful. I’ve done my fair share of traveling in my life and visited countless airports, but I’ve never been in one that did not sell postcards or stamps. So be warned, if you are in the Cairo airport, be as impressed as you’d like about how new and stunning it looks, but be sure to pack your own stamps and postcards.

We landed in Istanbul at the Atatürk International Airport in a short amount of time, got in a very long line for passports and then were told we had no visas and must go purchase them from the next window. You’d think everything can be easily done at one stop, but nope, had to get into the visa line and then back into the passport line.

We left the airport and figured out a way to find the light rail transit system that would take us from there to the old section of town, Sultanahmet. Our hotel, the Megara Hotel is located here and is about 15 miles and two transfers away. An elderly man was generous enough to help us with the transfer and actually paid for our tickets as we were trying to figure out how to buy more tokens. We weren’t in town for a few hours and already the Turkish hospitality is showing through.

We found our hotel, the Megara Butique, on northern end of Akbiyik Caddesi ("Avenue of the White Moustache") and checked in to our room. The hotel was so gorgeous. We have a third floor room with a view of the Blue Mosque out of our side window. The front window faced the cobber stone road and the other boutique hotels on the street, along with a broken down home of some sort that we never quite figured out how it was destroyed. We decided to take a little walk to get acquainted with our surrounds. We walked towards the water, passed centuries old homes, more tiny hotels and a Best Western. We walked through the old city walls to see the Marmara Sea and the Asian side of Istanbul. I was looking for a spot to dip my toes for my water but was unsuccessful since it was all sea walls. We headed back towards the square and walked around for a bit longer, found the grocery store to stock up on food and drinks for our mini fridge and took some photos of the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia (more details about these on a later date). Since we wanted to get an early start on seeing the city tomorrow and had only a few horus of sleep the night before, we called it a night.