Go West, Young Man!

Well, perhaps as some of you have heard, my trip to Turkey will be coming to a close in the next two weeks. So with that in mind I'm headed out to do some traveling. Tomorrow I head West, Prague being the furthest west I'll go, stopping in on Sofia and Budapest along (with a brief stopover in Romania perhaps as well). I'm hoping to do it all in around 10 days, and be back with some time handy to say good-bye to Istanbul. So, hopefully I'll have at least a few pictures to show you when I get back.

Alright, and now I need to pack! Cheers until the next time.

Grand Bazaar

Over the weekend our little group went down to the Grand Bazaar, in the old section of town. The Grand Bazaar is one of the largest covered markets in the world and boasts a wide variety of goods with varying qualities. We spent a little over an hour inside the market and barely scratched the surface of the place. The market is has 58 'streets' which contain 4,000 shops. There were some items that seemed to be everywhere, lots of rugs (most of them 'fake' or factory made rugs), thousands of scarves, chess/backgammon boards, shoes, and other such things. Lots of tourists, but also many locals as well. I was impressed by the people running the shops, many of them spoke English as well as some Italian and German, so they were adept at bartering in a few different languages.

Here are some pictures, it really is also a lovely place to visit as well, quite the atmosphere:


This is us outside the entrance to the Bazaar. I'm pretty excited.



Inside the Bazaar:



The Lovely Jessica:

Arrival!

Hello!

Back by popular demand, I have once again resumed a chronicle of my life on the road. As the title of this particular blog indicates, I am in Turkey - Istanbul to be specific. I have arrived with four other friends, and our plan is to get to stay in Istanbul for a while, learning about the people and the culture and teaching some English to support ourselves.

So in this blog you will hopefully find some posts about the history, architecture and hotspots in and around Istanbul, as well as some of the joys and trials around the life of an English-as-a-foreign-language teacher. And I'll try to post some pictures to keep things interesting.

Today was our first full day in Turkey, taking a tour around our part of the city, a district called Beyoglu. It's a vibrant and happening little area of the city, full of busy streets and winding back-roads.

It's an exciting city to be in, I'll be sure to keep you updated on the continuing adventures!


Our Place in Istanbul: