We grabbed our suitcases and found our ride (the hotel sent a driver so we got to be those people looking for the guy holding our name on a sign). On our way to the car Calvin was falling behind so I reached out to help him with the suitcase as we crossed the street and some old guy whizzed between us and ran ahead, pushing our suitcase. I tried to take it back from him, but he insisted and I sighed, knowing we were back in the land of “anything for a tip.”
While I was sleeping on the flight, he played video games and watched movies. It was only about 20 minutes to our hotel, but he couldn’t make it.
The humor here is the woman wearing the abaya and the hijab is with the guy wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Yeah, I don’t get it either.
We made it to our hotel and went right to the roof to check out the view. It’s beautiful up here. You can see the Bosphorous, which looks like an ocean, but is a big old channel/straight that divides Europe and Asia. One day I plan to have breakfast here and then go across to the Asian side so I can say that I had breakfast on one continent and lunch on another.
Breakfast is included every morning so we sit out here to eat and right now Josh and I are up here having late night coffee while the boys and baby are in bed in our room. If you set up a cot, I could pretty much live right here — free wifi, musical entertainment from the call to prayer every few hours, some food . . . what else could I need?
We also have a view of two of the most famous sites: Hagia (pronounced “eye-ya”) Sophia (on the left) and the Blue Mosque (on the right.) The Hagia Sophia is famous because it once was a Christian church that was turned into a mosque. I don’t know anything else about it except that we’re going to go visit it tomorrow.
