Istanbul was Constantinople

Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night

gotta love They Might Be Giants

Anyways, Istanbul was beautiful. I wish I'd had more time to spend their and in Turkey. All the leaves were turning colors and falling. It was gorgeous. I miss fall b/c it doesn't look like fall at all in Athens. We stayed in the old part of the city. The streets were all cobblestone (sp?). We visited the Blue Mosque which was beautiful (I'm going to use that word a lot in this entry...sorry). We also went to Haghia Sophia, another gorgeous religious building which was both Muslim and Christian. That was really interesting to see the integration of the 2 religions...and kinda weird seeing Christian symbols in a mosque.
I'm not going to lie...we did a lot of shopping instead of visiting more historical sights. I got a lot of presents for people so that was exciting. And of course, a few things for me =) I got 2 beautiful scarves and a leather jacket. Yes, I got a leather jacket (sorry all you vegetarians/animal rights people). Selena talked me into it. She got one and a fur coat and I was like I really don't do leather or fur. And she was all happy and excited and told me she's buy me one. And I was told her I wasn't letting her buy me a leather jacket so she told me to just try one on. And I was finally like fine, but something simple. So I did and I loved it. And she talked to guy down to $90 which was how much she owed me for our hotel room so I told her she could buy me the jacket and I'd cover the hotel. I'm really glad I got it b/c I don't really have many warm clothes. Now I'll at least have a coat. Let's see...what else...the people were all very friends. I was a little scared it would be like Cairo and I definately couldn't handle that 2 weekends in a row, but it wasn't.
This one guy told us this joke they have about Americans. He goes "What's the difference between Americans and yogurt?" And we're pretty confused and he's like "yogurt has more culture" so we were a little indignant and stuff, then as we're laying in bed watching MTV Europe every night for about 4 hours we just look at each other and go "yogurt" it was kinda funny. It got dark early so we went back to the room and watched MTV to try to catch up a little on what's going on. Of course it was MTV Europe so they had some really weird commercials and stuff. But we got to see the MTV Europe music awards and if we have no culture, why are American bands winning most of the awards? lol.
I definately want to go back to Turkey again. I never realized how much is there. Troy is in Turkey (definately thought it was in Greece) A bunch of the churches Paul visited (Ephasus, Smyrna, Philadelphia, etc) are all in Turkey. They had a 3 day tour of the 7 churches that I would've liked to do, but we didn't have time since we had to get back for class.
It was just a great weekend and pretty relaxing.

flying back we flew over lesbos which was really awesome for me...quick history lesson...lesbos is the home of sappho, the first recorded female poet. it is also where the word lesbian came from b/c sappho was supposedly a lesbian