Turkey, Amazing Destination

Turkey, Amazing Destination

It is exciting to search possible interesting destinations for a next vacation, but when you have many reasons it is a difficult to choose from many choices. Back in 2000, when I still was living in Peru, some friends and I were looking for an exciting destination; we had two choices Egypt or Turkey. After a week of searching itineraries on both destinations, we decided to travel to Turkey. We went there for 6 days; we arrived at Istanbul airport and took a taxi to our hotel, the Intercontinental Hotel, a five start hotel, located in an ideal place in the heart of the capital city with short distance to restaurants, clubs, and other touristic places. When we got to our room, we couldn’t believe that we got stunning views of the Bosphorus, Istanbul Skyline and the Blue Mosque.

On our first day, very early after breakfast, around ten, we took a short walk to the flea market around the square and then to the Dolmabahce Palace, which is the largest palace in Turkey and has 285 rooms, 46 halls, 6 baths and 68 toilets, and the only way to see the Palace is by hiring a tour guide. This tour guide mentioned that “the Palace is a mixed of different styles, such as eclectic, Baroque, Rococo, and the Ottoman architecture”. The tour inside the Palace lasted around 4 hours, after that, we went to the exterior of it to take more pictures and see the view from the Bosphorus.

The next day, we took a half day boat excursion on the Bosphorus on a share tour, and then walked around the Grand Bazaar, which is the oldest covered bazaar in the world, and it has more than 3500 shops. We did not buy much, but we enjoyed it a lot.

Following our itinerary, we took a tour to Ephesus, the eastern Mediterranean’s best preserved ancient city, and Kusadasi for 3 days, so we needed to take a forty five minutes flight to Izmir. We were waiting for this excursion because it included a visit to the House of the Virgin Mary, which it is in the mountains near Kusadasi. Our tour guide told us that it is believed that she spent her last days in that house.

Finally, one day before we went back to Peru, we had some time to go to the Blue Mosque; we were waiting for this day because we read a lot of this place. We took a Taxi to go there, but the driver did not know where the Blue Mosque was, he said “There is not any Blue Mosque in Istanbul”. After talking more, he realized he knew the place as Santa Sophia Mosque. We arrived there and had to take off our shoes before we entered inside, put them in a plastic bag and cover our heads with a scarf; When we got into the Blue Mosque, we noticed, there were blue tiles surroundings the Mosque; that is why it is called The Blue Mosque. Inside, we had to remain quiet and didn’t take any flash photography to disturb people who were praying.

On our last day in Istanbul, we tried to go Troy on a full day trip but we didn’t have enough time

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