Palaces and Köfte

I slept in again since the place was so comfy, and while I got ready I was invited out exploring by one of the guys we hung out with the night before. He picked me up and we went to Topkapi Palace! It's HUGE!

This was outside it:




The entrance:



Concubine's courtyard:











Now we had started exploring a bit late, so we didn't get to every single thing. My camera memory was also full so I had to systematically delete pictures or edit videos so that I had room for these few I took. I would have many more photos if it weren't for the space issue that day, but I'm not about to forget the place so it's ok.

On that note, I should mention why my photos have been kinda different lately. I got rid of photoshop to salvage my little netbook, so I have not been fixing them up at all. I am just resizing since it would take forever to load this blog page if I didn't. This is why they are not as... clean.

Getting back to things... The palace closed so we left. There was this famous Köfte place close by, so we walked to it and I tried the Turkish meatball staple. It was yummy :) You can see Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque from the outside of this place, so even though it was unlikely we checked to see if the Blue Mosque was still open.

Surprisingly it was! Even more surprisingly it was free since it was still used as a mosque instead of a museum. It was going to close in about 5-10 minutes though, so we removed our shoe and hopped in for a little while. There was still people in the mosque sitting around, so I took my one remaining photo and gazed in awe for my 5-10 minutes.



I left super stoked I had made it into there too! I would go back once I got more photo space, but I was happy I got to see it right away. We walked around the Old Town and decided why not go into the famous Grand Bazaar. It was an experience: we were being yelled at in all sorts of languages trying to sell mostly the same stuff. After wandering Sultanahmet, the Old Town, we wanted coffee so we drove towards a place he knew about in Taksim.

On the way there we stopped at Galata Tower. There is a skinny 360 balcony you can walk around and see a large amount of Istanbul from! I deleted another old picture and took one more for the night:



It was stunning up there. I could see the Palace, Blue Mosque, Hagia Sofia, Taksim, etc all from this big Tower. It was a little chilly though. Eventually my hands were getting very cold and it was time to go down for some hot drinks.

This place was on the top floor of a building right off the main street in Taksim. It also had a very nice view of the city to enjoy over hot chocolate. I was able to check the internet at this place, so we went online for a little while and checked out weather etc for the next couple days. I was getting tired by this point so he drove me back to Gulsah's where she was home (studying for exams) and I chilled on the couch for a while and ate some amazing soup!