A Nomadic Year: One day in Istanbul

After waking up early and eating my last plov (not pictured) of Central Asia, I hopped on a morning flight to Istanbul, where I had a long layover before my connecting flight to Casablanca. For only $20 and about 30 seconds of waiting, I was able to get a 90-day tourist visa with which to enjoy my 23hrs in the city.

First step: find my hostel. I made the mistake of not writing down an address, so this was harder than it sounds. Luckily it was in Sultanahmet, the main tourist district in the city, so after stumbling around in the airport looking for some direction (turns out "tourist information" stands aren't always that helpful...), I eventually found my way downtown on the super clean and efficient (by Soviet standards) public transport.

Second step: see some sights. It's my first time in Istanbul, so might as well go see the big postcard-worthy places, right? Along the way, I found that Turkey isn't actually all that different from Central Asia. Many of the Turkish words were the same as Kazakh/Uzbek/Kyrgyz/Uighur, some of the food was the same, old mosques were everywhere, and a surprising number of people thought that I was Turkish, too. Notably absent were statues of Lenin, Soviet apartment blocks, wide streets and sidewalks, and borsch.

Blue mosque from behind

Hagia Sophia

Basilica Cistern

It's a beautiful city, and there were tons of cool sights to see. But, being me, I started to get bored with the touristy things and opted for my favorite pasttime in a new city: Eating everything I see that I haven't had before. First was a kebab/sandwich thing (not pictured), then a pita/pizza thing (also not pictured), then...

Bagel thing

Turkish Delight

Roasted Chestnuts

Fish sandwich...

...From those boats on the left

Baklava!

Turkish coffee

Then I went to see some more sights and digest...

Looked at the Asian side of the city (didn't go visit, though)

Ran into this Japanese dude AGAIN. First was in Khiva over a month ago, then in Aktau two weeks later, and here I almost literally ran into him on a random side street. He had just driven in. Small world.

Then I was jet-lagged, so I had another turkish coffee

And PLOV!! (they call it pilav... way less grease)

And some local beer and music (not pictured)

and street mussels with rice - seems like the equivalent of 50c wings in America

then a donor

And more beer

Then more baklava!

Then I went back to my hostel, ran into another traveler I hadn't seen since Khiva and wasn't expecting to ever see again (also just showed up that night), talked to him way too late, got 4hrs of sleep and woke up the next morning to rush to the airport, but not before eating more...