Last full day in Istanbul

Last full day in Istanbul

Istanbul, Turkey, Europe

I really enjoyed my last day in Istanbul. It was pretty relaxing, but nice. I got up and had breakfast with George again at the hostel and then packed up my things. The guy from yesterday was sleeping late again, but today I was having none of it and just turned the light on when I started to get packed up. It was 10am after all, so I don’t think I was being too douche by turning the light on.

I left Yakamoz Guest House (happily) and checked in across the street at Antique Hostel again. I was happy to be back. The room wasn’t quite ready yet, but they let me put my stuff in the room and go out for the day. I had a nice wander around Sultanahmet and crossed the Galata Bridge over to Karakoy. I didn’t do much besides just walked around and check out the neighbourhood.

At about 1pm, I made my way up Galata Tower. It was pretty expensive for what it was, 19 lira (about £6). There was a pretty long queue to get in and then to get the elevator up to the seventh floor. From here you had to walk up two further flights of stairs, and that queue was even crazier. They were forcing us to wait on a small spiral staircase because they couldn’t regulate how quickly people moved around the viewing platform when they got outside.

Just before I got outside they decided to send people out in both directions, rather than just send everyone to the right to go clockwise. What a mistake that was. It got more people outside quickly, but then caused a traffic jam outside of people trying to get by each other on this narrow little platform. The view of Sultanahmet was pretty good, but besides that, there wasn’t much to see. It was not really worth the time or money to get up there, but I wasn’t doing anything else, so what the heck.

I left there and grabbed some lunch at a little cafe in Karakoy and started reading the newest Harlan Coben book, Missing You. I finished Six Years last night and it was excellent. I’ve downloaded a few more Coben books to take with me to Greece tomorrow. I think I’ll be spending a lot more time on busses and trains pretty soon, so having some books to read will keep me busy.

I didn’t get up to much else today. Just wandered around and ended up back at my hostel at around 7:30pm. I’ve been told that there are three other people coming into my four bed dorm, but it’s 9:45pm and there is no sign of them yet. Hopefully they don’t come in all noisy at 3am, but that’s the risk I’m taking staying in dorms. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

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