I Guess We Can Add That To The List

What did we do for New Years, you ask?

Went to Asia.

Our fırst steps ın Asıa

Istanbul is so cool - it's located on three corners of land. It was really easy for us to take a twenty-minute, two dollar boat ride over to the Asia side. This part of Istanbul was remarkably different - it was less developed and had a totally different vibe. We were ecstatic on the boat ride - our dimples wouldn't go away.

Lunch was a highlight in Asia (I'm going to keep calling it that). We were wandering the shopping/restaurant streets, as we do, and stopped at a bakery for bread and a deli for cheese. This was not a tourist shopping destination; these places were clearly where locals do their shopping. I managed to ask the woman in front of me which was the best bread, signal to the baker how much I wanted, and pay with correct change - without using any English. Alysa commented on how far a smile and a greeting/thank you in the native language can go.

I have to tell you about the amazing Mediterranean food that we've been eating. Breakfast this morning at the hostel cafe included bread, olives, cheese, tomatoes, and Turkish coffee. The olives were awesome. The cheese was to die for - we figured out that it was feta after eating it on two separate occasions. It's so different and flavorful here that I couldn't even recognize it. The Turkish coffee is now a staple of our diet. We bought pistachios at a nut shop - phenomenal. Everything that seems like it should come from Greece or the Mediterranean is so good here that I hope I forget how awesome they are before I eat them in the US again.

It's about time that I'm talking about food again. I don't know how it slipped by in my first blog. It was probably because we haven't had dessert since arriving - gasp. That is a sin of Melissa's Ten Commandments of Traveling (or maybe the Islamic version of that, since that's more appropriate here. I actually read a pamphlet today titled "What Is Islam."). It was a big food day, since we had an awesome lunch and also a pre-lunch dessert. It took us a solid hour of searching for this restaurant, which was actually located under a bridge. Some nice Turks offered to drive us there but we refused (you're welcome, Dads) and found it ourselves. We had fantastic baklava and a Turkish dessert that tasted like warm, creamy, nutty pudding. We allocated 20 dollars for dessert and 4 for lunch, and both were amazing. This is the way life should be.

We delved into more religious history today by exploring an enormous mosque called the Blue Mosque, which is a major landmark of Istanbul and central to religious culture here. People pray five times a day in this beautiful mosque, which is covered in 20,000 ornate blue tiles. There's some fact about how many Statues of Liberty would fit inside; all I know is that it's huge. We took off our shoes and covered our hair before entering.

Now we're off to dinner and hanging out at the hostel for New Years! There is a HUGE outdoor event at Taksim Square, with 3 million people attending. It's also supposed to be not the best in terms of safety with all of those people, so Alysa and I elected to stay closer to our hostel (again, note to Dads) but we're looking forward to hanging out with the Italian and German travelers that we've met at the hostel. Not to mention, we have a rooftop bar that's only a flight of stairs away.


The night ended up being awesome. Alysa and I both had feelings of disbelief, like "Am I actually spending New Years Eve on a rooftop in Istanbul?" We spent the entire night with young people from Italy, Australia, France, Austria, Germany and combinations of all of the above. Making friends from different countries has always been my favorite part of hosteling, but this night will always stand out in my memory. It's amazing how such a diverse group of people can come together so quickly but it lasts longer than just in that moment. It's a feeling that is hard to describe, but I can say with certainty that the group had a fabulous time together.

Actually, thanks to Facebook and the Interweb, I think we'll get to keep in touch with a lot of these folks. In fact, I bet some of them might read this blog :)

Although it was a rough morning for some of the hostelers, Alysa and I got up in time for that amazing breakfast. And then more dessert. I think we mentioned the hairy desserts before - well, I couldn't leave without trying one. It was gooey and had the texture of shredded wheat. Not the best, but worth the venture. Alysa tried the fresh squeezed pomegranate juice that they sell everywhere - restaurants literally press pomegranates in front of your eyes. Well...it was okay at first but extremely sour. Soon after, let's just say that our stomachs felt puckered up the way that our faces looked when we drank it.

To top it off, we had to get in a shuttle that would've made me queasy just watching. The streets of Old City are twisty turny and really steep, making for a cautious trek. We thought that we may have hit a cat at one of our lurches. But, we were lucky to travel to the airport with three of our hostel friends, and we ran into two more there. It's quite the little network.

Get this - three of us all flew to Vienna on the same flight, and one of the guys was nice enough to safely escort us all the way back to our hostel. Plane to bus to subway. And we didn't find out that we're all engineers until the end. Maybe that's why we get along.

After a thoroughly Austrian dinner of meat chunks for the omnivores and fried egg dumplings for me, it's time for bed in Vienna :) We can't wait to explore tomorrow.

Happy New Years, wherever you are celebrating!!

Love,
Lady Gaga and her sidekick (ask the yelling street vendor who's who, because we don't know either)