Back from Turkey (but I didn´t see any)

So exciting! So exciting! Loved it! Loved it! It was fantastic. I loved Turkey. At first I was very disillusioned because I was tired and hot and everyone kept trying to rip us off and asking us if we were Japanese or Korean. But then we went to Ephesus and I fell in love with Turkey. (This is a photo of me exhaling an apple flavoured water pipe. I didn´t realise it had tobacco- I thought it was just tea leaves so I got really dizzy.)

On the first day my dad insisted we watch the soccer match between Ghana and Brazil and afterwards we just walked around our area in Istanbul. On the second day we went on a tour and went to Asia for about half an hour before driving back. We went to the Spice Market, got ferried along the Bosphorus... all the usual touristy places. We also saw Dolmabache Palace which was really cool because practically everything including the walls and floors were made of wood. On the third day we went around by ourselves and saw the stuff in Sultanahmet, like the Blue Mosque (which smelt like feet because you had to take your shoes off), Topkapi Palace and its harem, Hagia Sofya, the Grand Bazaar... And then we caught a plane the next day to Izmir where we were going on a two day tour to see Pamukkale and Ephesus.

Pamukkale was pretty cool to look at because it has natural hot springs that have left calcium deposits that look like snow but there were so many tourists it felt a bit artificial. Ephesus on the other hand... there were tourists there too but for some reason it didn´t matter so much. It just felt so weird and exhilarating to be walking on marble placed there more than 2000 years ago, where Paul went, where one of the first churches was set up, where you could imagine the ancient Romans walking around in togas and using the public latrine (which was very nicely built, although probably cold in Winter). There was an ad carved in the marble on the roads too, for the ancient brothel that was across the road from the library which got burnt down. (Photos of Dad at Pamukkale and sitting on the latrines in Ephesus.)

We caught a night bus back to Istanbul and it took 10 hours. I think Turkish women generally travel with their kids because there were heaps of screaming, crying, awful smelling little brats on the bus. Ugh. It was a torturous journey. And then at Istanbul airport our plane was delayed by almost 4 hours. I think there´s a conspiracy going on with airports. I suspect they tell plane companies to delay at least 10% of all flights so people will feel more inclined to shop at the duty free stores. It´s so evil.

I had so much fun; it felt so dull to be going back to Spain. I mean, Turkey´s exotic and colourful and full of history and decadence and delectable sweets while Spain´s... just Spain. I guess if I lived in Turkey I´d feel differently. One week isn´t enough- I didn´t realise what a big country it is. And it´s very long horizontally too, so to travel from west to east and visit all of Turkey would take at least a month.