Belgrade —> Istanbul, Turkey

We started the day with an early bus to then catch our flight to Istanbul, Turkey.

We met our English friend from our South American tour, Tommy, at the airport and then all made our way to our hotel in Istanbul. The airport is around 50km from the centre and the traffic was bad so it took about 2 hours to get to the hotel in our transfer.

We checked in and then went for a walk around the historical part of town for a few hours with Tommy. Istanbul is so busy and bustling and it's amazing seeing the diverse architecture and amazing smells from markets and stores.

We went inside both the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia and admired the amazing domes and structures. Some people were praying in a certain closed off area (though the mosques close to tourists for the 5 prayer times during each day). Truly incredible and special places!

We then took a stroll through the Grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar is enormous - with around 4000 stores and different streets and sections for different products (for example, there is a leather clothing section, carpet section, gold jewellery section etc). So amazing to walk around and see it all (and get lost!)

We then made our way to the Galata Bridge over the Golden Horn area which separates Europe and Asia, crossing momentarily over into Asia before heading back to our hotel. We saw a lot of people fishing here from the bridge and also saw a lot of boat tours down in the harbour. You have a great view over part of the city and can see many of the mosques and minarets.

We returned to the hotel, freshened up and had our G Adventures welcome meeting at 6pm and were introduced to our tour guide, Hazal, and our travel companions for the next couple of weeks. There are 15 people on our tour which starts and ends in Istanbul and there a mix of ages and nationalities (some Canadian, one other Aussie, one American, one British and a few Kiwis). We met on the rooftop of the hotel which has a very nice view (which also attracts a very large and loud seagull) and we all introduced ourselves. We then went to a restaurant near our hotel and we had Turkish kebabs.

A few of the group (the younger 6 of us in the group in 20s/early 30s) decided to go for a walk down to the water to see Istanbul at night which was truly beautiful with all the lights. We had a wonderful view from the Galata Bridge and the restaurants, bars and shops were so busy even at 10pm on a Thursday night.

We then came back to the hotel for a much needed sleep after a busy day! It is amazing being in a hotel again but unfortunately our electricity in our room kept going off (including the AC) so we spent some time going back and forth to reception and finally moved rooms at 1am when they couldn't fix it and went to sleep straight away!Read more