Days 1-2: Arrival

Our flight left late Friday night and we arrived Saturday evening in Istanbul, Turkey. Our hotel had arranged a transfer for us from the airport, so we found the people holding the sign with our name on it, and soon we were arriving at Tash Konak hotel in Sultanahmet (Old Town) district of the city.After checking in and showering, we went out to get dinner and explore the city a bit. We also had our first (but certainly not last) feral cat sighting:

We ate at Can Restaurant, which was a cafeteria-style restaurant.After dinner, we walked across the street to the Hippodrome and rested on a bench for some time, enjoying the sights of the city.Here I am though I can't remember why we took this picture!
We made it back to the hotel and tried to go to bed. It was Saturday night, and our window overlooked a street that appeared to be out of the way and not busy. But looks can be deceiving!

There was so much noise! Brian joked that an Angry Men's Arguing Club was convening outside, as what sounded like heated conversations (in Turkish, so we couldn't be sure) took place until the early morning hours. There were also many car horns, cat fights, and other assorted noises.

We decided that drivers in Istanbul were the most extreme that we'd ever seen. Both of the guidebooks we used (Lonely Planet and Rick Steves) made sure to mention that pedestrians never have an assumed right of way. Honking car horns were so prevalent we wondered if somehow the gas pedals are rigged so as to emit a horn beep at regular intervals.

Though the street our hotel was on was not very busy, it was quite curvy and narrow. Back home, if such a street existed, it would probably be no parking, one way only, and with a speed limit of 15. Here, there were cars parked on both sides, traffic coming from both directions, and, though I'm not sure of the official speed limit, cars were traveling much faster than 15!

Instead of driving slowly and making sure a car was not approaching around the corner from another direction, drivers beep to let other cars know to stay out of their way. And that's why we were woken up several times every hour by car horns -- every single car that drove by honked!

This just added to the charm of the city, though, and provided us with jokes and laughter during our stay. We did ask to be moved to an inside room, but were told they were all full. We just took Benadryl to help us sleep the nights when it was too warm to have the windows shut, and wound up having a delightful stay.