Twenty Hours in Turkey

I left CARE, ready to start my next adventure in Indonesia, one I had been waiting to do for almost two years now. But it was a long process first to get there. My first leg took me from Phalaborwa to Jo’burg, then Jo’burg to Istanbul, Turkey. My dad and I had found this flight and thought it would just be nice and random and fun to have a long layover in Istanbul, about 20 hours. Why not, right? A couple months before this, my brother Adam and is girlfriend Lindsay were deciding where to go for a European vacation and thought “why not meet Amanda in Istanbul?” So quite randomly, everything worked out perfectly and we met up in Istanbul for the day. I landed about an hour before them at around 6am. We made our way to the quaint little hotel they were staying in. It was about mid-50s-60s there, which meant I was freezing, having just come from 100 degree weather, and they were warm, having just come from snowy New York. We spent the rest of the morning just walking around, taking in the neighborhood. It had been a while since we had all been proper tourists and we sure looked the part, with cameras around our necks and guide books in hand. We toured the Topkapi Palace and the Hagia Sophia. We ran a couple errands for things I needed and figured out how to send a package of stuff home for me. We spent most of the afternoon wandering around the Grand Bizarre, a crazy maze of shops and stalls that sold everything from Turkish trinkets to scarves to carpets. We spent some down time at the hotel, went out to a nice Turkish dinner, had a couple beers, and before we knew it, it was time for me to head back to the airport. I cannot express how great that day was. It was great to see Adam and Lindsay after almost 8 months and it was great to spend my layover doing all that fun stuff with them.  

Adam and Lindsay in front of the Blue Mosque

inside the Hagia Sophia