Today was an early morning.. I woke up at 7am to get ready and have enough time to eat breakfast before having to meet for my trip at 8:15. I went on a trip to the Prince's Isles today to the island of Buyukada, the biggest of the 5 Prince's Islands. The ride there took about an hour and a half, but it didn't seem like that long b/c the scenery was so pretty!
Once we got to the island we went on a horse-drawn carriage ride around the island which took about another hour and a half.. and it was great! Our horses liked to go really fast, so we kept passing other carriages.. it was kind of funny! The ride around the island was great.. we got to see a lot of the residential areas which were amazing... the houses were all soo pretty and huge! It was really cool seeing real Turkish life in the residential areas! I felt like the island was pretty touristy, but when you got away from that and into where the houses were it was really traditional and neat to see that part of Istanbul.
After the ride, we had some free time to eat lunch and walk around the island to do shopping or whatever else we wanted to do, which was nice.. and after about 2 hours of that we boarded the ferry and took it back to the part of Istanbul we are in now... this trip reminded me of why Istanbul is the largest city in Europe.. it is sooo big.... riding almost 2 hours away from the port of Istanbul, we were still in the same city.. that is huuge!!!
After my SAS trip was done, I met up with some people for dinner and we discussed what we wanted to do later. We ended up going out for dessert, where 2 of the girls got bachlavah and me and the other 3 got some chocolate mousse cake thing which was sooo good! After eating dessert we went to a hookah bar on the water that is under one of the bridges. Hookah is really popular in Turkey and at basically any restaruant you see they have hookah as well, so we figured we should do it. The hookah bar we went to was really neat, all the chairs were big bean bag chairs outside and they had a lot of couches and pillows inside.. I really liked it. We sat outside and got to see the sun set over the skyline of mosques and skyscrapers, so that was really cool!! Hookah was really chill and we got orange and apple flavors and ended up being there for over 3 hours because you could just sit there and talk while over looking the water! I am really going to go through water withdrawl when I get back to Ohio, I can already tell! i am being spoiled with water all around me all the time! At the hookah bar, we met 2 boys from Ireland who are hear because they are doing a tour from Ireland to Cairo, Egypt I think is their last stop... riding bikes!!! They are doing it for a charity and once they get to their last stop, they are giving all their money to the charity and donating the van that is following them for the people to use as an ambulance. I forge tthe exact charity they are raising money for, but it's something for neonatal care and a burn facility in a hospital which I thought was really neat! I could not believe how much they are biking though... they were only going to be in Istanbul for a day and then tomorrow at 5am they were setting back out to ride for 14 hours!! They have already been through many coutnries and i remember them saying they liked Syria the best! They had been through Bulgaria already and said they had a lot of beaches, so I am excited for that... they were really nice and I'm glad we met them!
Now, I am off to bed since tomorrow will be another early morning.. which shouldn't suprise anyone by now.. I am soo accustomed to getting up before 8 it's rediculous! I plan on meeting a friend for breakfast and then we're setting off to the Bazaar to do some more shopping before we leave! She hasn't been there yet, so this will be an experience for her!! I cannot believe our last day in Turkey is tomorrow... I remember just writing an entry where I was like I can't believe we are going to be in turkey tomorrow... it's crazy!! One more day of Turkey, one class day, and then Bulgaria for the beaches!!!!
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