Due to a lack of skin on my fingertips from climbing, on the 13th of March I decided to book a flight to Istanbul on the 14th for all of US$44. Uncertain of my plans and whether I would return to Josito, I took everything along with me. I arrived and checked into Bada Bing Hostel and called it a lazy, relaxing day. Early on Friday I headed out for some tourist destinations. I visited the Cistern Basilica, Topkepa Palace, the Blue Mosque, had fish from a boat on the river, and then walked towards Taksim on the popular pedestrian street. Next to the Blue Mosque was the Hagia Sophia which would have been convenient except I was on tourist overload and couldn't bring myself to go. All the babbling in different languages, people bumping into you, and big cameras flying everywhere can start to drive you a little nuts. The next day was a rainy one, so Can (Jarrod's friend) and I went to the Turkish Baths and then headed to an Irish pub to meet up with his friends for St. Patrick's Day.
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| View of Istanbul from the Bosphorus |
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Me inside the Blue Mosque
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| Hagia Sophia |
Istanbul actually sits on two continents, Asia and Europe, so of course I took a ferry across the Bosphorus to Asia for lunch and then had a beer from a rooftop restaurant with a great view. The Hagia Sophia was next on my list of things to see and another American from the hostel who was studying architecture in Paris joined me. It was a breathtaking and phenomenal building, originally built as a mosque but also was under Christian control for some time, meaning it had an interesting twist of Muslim architecture with Christian paintings. Afterwards I headed on what ended up being a really long walk to find the original Walls of Constantinople which originally surrounded the city limits. Today half of the wall has been reconstructed and locals can be found gardening along the outside of the walls.
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| Asia side of Istanbul |
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| Sunset in Istanbul. |
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| Walls of Constantinople |
On Tuesday night I took an overnight bus to Cappadocia which is a popular tourist destination firstly due to it's very interesting rock formations but also because of the massive underground cities in the area. My friend Johs from Josito met me in Cappadocia. We decided to jump on a tour bus to see some of the outlying attractions from Göreme where we were staying. We visited one of the underground cities (Derinkuyu), Ihlara Valley, Beliserma Village, and Selime Monastery. Ihlara Vally was a a canyon with nice cliffs (that appeared to have great potential for crack climbing if only it wasn't a protected area) that had churches built into the rock walls. Star Wars IV apparently has a scene that is based off of the Selime Monastery although after torturing myself through Star Wars IV (yes, I said torturing myself) I couldn't find it.
Since I climb better than Johs, he apparently decided renting bikes would be a great way to show me how out of shape I am. In my defense, he is from Denmark and they ride their bikes practically everywhere. We rode to Love Valley (I will let you determine which pictures are from here) and then I attempted to follow him up this massive hill for a good ten miles to get to the rock castle. It was a pretty epic failure on my part and he was kind enough to walk with me part of the way up because there was no way my thighs were going to make it.
That night we caught the overnight bus back to Antalya. We arrived at about 7am and decided to go to the beach for a nap since the bus wasn't the best night's sleep. Afterwards we headed to the grocery store and caught the bus back into Josito for some continued rock climbing. A good portion of my stuff is at Can's and he had to fly to Istanbul for a few weeks for work so Josito sounded like the best option until he returned to Antalya from his work trip. So now it is back to climbing time...but now with healed fingers!
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