Istanbul, Turkey, Europe

Today was pretty much a complete travel day. I left the hostel in Amman at 7:15am in my taxi. I was happy to see the driver was at the hostel and ready to go at 7am, so I didn’t have to wait around for him. It was about 35 minutes to get to the airport, which was a lot quicker than I had expected, so I was really early. It’s probably a good thing though because there was some sort of problem with my ticket.

I had originally booked a flight to Istanbul through Beirut at 3pm. I later received an email from the airline saying that the time of the flight had been changed to 10:15am, so that’s when I was at the airport for. I got to the ticketing desk and they told me that I was still booked on the flight at 3pm. There was a lot of kafuffle amongst the ticketing agents, but eventually they sorted it out and got me on the earlier flight.

The flight to Beirut was ok, except there was a really annoying Syrian guy sitting next to me. He kept bragging about how he has four wives and 14 (yeah, 14!) children. He didn’t realize that telling ME that he has 14 kids isn’t exactly bragging. Anyway, he was only able to bother me for about an hour, as luckily it was a short flight.

Beirut airport was alright, luckily because I was there for five hours waiting for my connecting flight to Istanbul. It ended up leaving about 30 minutes late, but that was no problem. On this next flight I was sat next to another Syrian guy but this one was really nice. He was telling me all about how his wife had to move as a refugee to Sweden only one month after they got married. She’s been gone for six months and he’s trying to get permanent residency there as well so he can be with her. It’s a sad state of affairs in Syria just now.

I got to Istanbul airport and breezed through everything. I had my e-visa already, so flew through immigration. My bag was already on the carousel when I came out. And then I flew through customs without a question. Easy. I made my way to the metro and found my way to Sultanhamet easy enough. I ended up right outside Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque. It would have been a stunning sight if it hadn’t been pissing down with rain. Ah well.

I avoided the protest/demonstration that was going on in the streets. I think it was something about Egypt because I saw a lot of Egyptian flags, but I wasn’t going to take my chances by going through the middle of that. My hostel is in a perfect location right next to the Blue Mosque and it looks like I’m sharing with a Korean couple. Their English isn’t great, but it’s a heck of a lot better than my Korean. They seem really nice. I’m going to crash early-ish tonight and try to see as much of the sights as I can tomorrow. Unfortunately it will be raining again, but I’m not going to let that stop me!