Monday 26th of May

Today we visited Topkapi Palace. We met outside the gates with Leslie Pierce who has studied Ottoman history. She kindly lead is around and answered out questions about all that we were seeing. We went through the kitchen, council areas, the sultan's throne room, and of course the Harem. The entire compound was decorated ornately and I never got tired of taking pictures of the beautiful tile work and the painted and gilded domes! And then we came to the room with relics. OMG! Turkey does not play around with relics. The palace is host to some of the belongings of important biblical figures. It had the sword of David, a rod of Moses, part of the skull of John the Baptist, the turban of Joseph, and the sauce dish of Abraham. Wow is all I can say. Then they had one of Mohammad's swords, pieces of his beard, and a plaster of Paris print of his foot. Wow again. The Harem was also very exciting. enjoyed the pebble walk way and mother of pearl inlaid shutters. The entire experience was utterly overwhelming with how gorgeous and how absolutely grand everything was, especially when we have nothing to compare it to in the US.

Afterwards, we were all starving (our Nutella and ekmek sandwiches had worn off in the course of 5 hours) so we headed out to grab a bite. Yekta, Kristina and I went to this place that served this one dish that started with a G, was like a very thin quesadilla and was very tasty. When I got my change, a lira fell up under our seats and a search ensued to find it. I think the waitstaff and the fellow diners found this very comical, but in the process we found my lira and 10 cents. The boys wanted to head off on an adventure, but Kristina and I had big plans for dessert so we let them run off ahead. We stopped and bought some Turkish delight at this bakery. The guy working there kept giving us free samples which was very nice. I never cease to be amazed at how friendly Turks are to us, and at how surprised they are that we are from the states.

Kristina and I decided that we wanted to go over to Istanbul University and people watch, too bad the guard stopped us because the university evidently closes at 3 and we were there at 4. What a weird concept? Universities can close. Hmm... interesting. So then we proceeded to walk aimlessly around the city to see what we could see. We saw alot of jokes and crazy things. Mainly how cars just park anywhere and how people can haul sooooo much stuff on their dollies. Turks are such hard workers, I don't know how they do it especially up all the hills! The two of us had joked the night before about how we needed to find a cheap bathmat for the bathroom to replace the towel we're currently using. Kristina said we should just find bathmat street and peep a cheap one. Well lo and behold, we ran across bathmat street today!!!! We were cracking up! : ) To make it even better we found on with two Carolina blue feet on it. Perfection. I mean it is obvi for a baby's room or something but still it means UNC for us. So for a mere 3 YTL we got the mat and were in disbelief that an entire store exists that sells just bath mats.

Later we went to dinner. And where else would hungry Americans go to eat dinner, the corner doner stand. All we wanted to be was full, something we don't experience every day. haha. So we all loaded up with doner, lamacun, and pilaf. Edward got something to eat and he wasn't sure whether it was meat or not. ha, oh Edward.... Over the course of dinner we learned that Zoe had been ordering the cheese bread at the same corner store by using the Turkish words that were just in front of it, Afiyet olsun. She thought this meant cheese bread, but it actually means Bon appetit! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We were of course dying of laughter at finding this out. Then one of the guys that carves our doner for us brought us all out some Turkish tea on the house. We were all very thankful and happy that we are all officially regulars : )