We got up at 7, packed our gear and checked out of the hotel. We walked out to the main road and started walking out of town. We had a sign we had made saying “ISTANBUL” and we took photos of each other with it by the side of the road. It was already very hot but luckily we quickly were picked up by a truckie driving a semi truck full of asphalt.
It took about 3 hours to drive to Izmit in the truck and with the amount of heavy trucks and crazy drivers on the road it was pretty obvious that one took one’s life into one’s own hands to drive amongst them! In Izmit we were dropped off outside the otogar and the driver refused to take any money for the ride. We caught a bus to Istanbul which cost us 5,000TL each and an hour later we were dumped amid the chaos of the Topkapi Bus Station. We stood amongst the seething mass of blaring car and bus horns wondering what to do until a local guy showed us how to buy a bus ticket and flagged down a bus going to Sultanahmet District for us.
When we got off that bus we walked aimlessly in the heat for over an hour trying to find the elusive “backpacker ghetto” mentioned in the Let’s Go guide. On one street a guy gave us a card for the TRUE BLUE PENSION so we found it and checked in. After a much needed shower we went out to get a beer and something to eat. Most of the Locantas were pretty expensive-looking so for starters we bought a can of beer each and drank it in a park then had a meal at the cheapest locanta we could find which still cost us 24,000TL.
Afterwards, we wandered around the Blue Mosque and Linda bought a bracelet from a stall. A boy got talking to us and we went to his shop and drank çay while listening to the usual carpet spiel. As evening fell, we sat and watched the tacky sound and light show playing on the Blue Mosque and after we had suffered through most of that we walked back to the hostel.
CurseOfTheTraveller 