So after a long day of travel, I finally arrived in Istanbul this afternoon.

My flight landed at 12:30 and as we disembarked you immediately were made aware of the fact you’re here in Turkey.

It is hot!

It’s not so much the heat as it’s 28C here which is just a tad higher than it is back home in Vancouver.   It’s the humidity.

So humid.

Today the humidity was close to 80% and, man, you felt it.

After walking into the terminal, the first thing I wanted to do was change into some shorts.

Even though I had arrived in Istanbul, I still had a long 90 minute journey via public transit ahead of me and there was no way I was doing that in pants.

The journey downtown

First of all, there are two airports that service Istanbul.   There’s SAW airport which caters mostly to discount and regional flights and the new IST airport that serves as its’ main airport for all international flights.

Both are about 1 1/2 to 2 hours away from the city center.   One to the north and one to the south.

Either way, you have a long trip to get into the city.

If you’re going by public transit, which, of course I did, there are two ways to get from the IST airport.

One is by metro and the other is via an airport shuttle bus.   Both are reasonably priced and both terminate near downtown where you catch the main T1 tram to your final destination.

I decided to take the metro which, in hindsight, wasn’t the right decision.

It did get me to the hostel 30 minutes faster but, holy smokes, transferring between 3 different metro lines in the heat with a big backpack was not fun.

Now, the metro train cars are air conditioned but unfortunately the metro system is set up in a way where you have to walk quite a bit to get to your transfer line.   In fact, I had to actually leave the station twice, walk down the road to another station and grab the train there.

The best part was that the only way you could exit the final station was to take a crowded elevator to the top of the station.

A packed, unairconditioned little elevator cart with 15 people in it.

Yeah, that was fun.

Anyway, after an hour I finally got downtown and just had to grab the T1 tram for about 20 minutes and my hostel was a short 5 minute walk from there.

The T1 tram goes through the main touristy part of the city and, naturally, it was packed brim to brim with people.

It was also not airconditioned.   I seriously thought I might faint, it was that uncomfortable.

But I persevered and, soon enough, I was in my hostel here in Istanbul for the next 5 days.

I quickly settled in, got all my stuff organized, uploaded the blog from part one of this day and took a nice, hot shower.

Oh my God.   I felt so refreshed!

Waiting for Nathan

For the first three weeks of my trip I’ll have a travel buddy by my side.   My friend Nathan who I work with back home will be traveling with me here in Istanbul as well as in Romania and Bulgaria.

He has been traveling with his family in France for the last week and we each flew into Istanbul today.

I was expecting him to arrive around 5pm tonight so I figured I’d just hang out in my nice air conditioned hostel room for a couple of hours while I waited for him to arrive.

Well, 5pm came and went and then 6pm.

Hmmm, I was in a quandy.

I was soooo hungry and desperately wanted to try me some Turkish food but it just didn’t seem right to do it without Nathan considering it was our first day traveling together.

So, I compromised.

I popped down the street to a corner store and picked up a bag of chips.

I hadn’t eaten anything for the last 8 hours so I figured I’d whet my appetite and then when Nathan finally checked in, we could head out to dinner together.

I ended up hanging out on the hostel’s rooftop patio chatting with a couple people from my room while I waited for Nathan.

By 8:30 I resigned to the fact that his flight must have been cancelled or missed so I decided to head out for dinner.

I ended up at some overpriced touristy place across the street.

It had been a long day and I was hungry so the first place I saw, I went there.

My first meal in Turkey?

Chicken fajitas.

Not quite Turkish, but at least it wasn’t Burger King so I guess there’s that.

No worries though, there will be plenty of great Turkish meals ahead for me over the next few days, I’m sure.

Late night drinks

I got back to the hostel around 9:30pm and literally 5 minutes afterwards Nathan finally showed up in the dorm room.

For some reason, I had it engrained in my head that his flight was landing at 3pm and with going through customs and the ride into the city, I was expecting him around 5 or 6pm.

Apparently, his flight was leaving at 3pm so my times were all messed up.

Anyway, he was here now.   Time to catch up and have some drinks.

We headed back up to the rooftop bar and chatted about his week in Paris and my adventurous day getting to Istanbul.

As for drinks, for the people who know me, it’ll come as no shock that wanted a nice sweet drink that goes down easy.

No Moscato wine to be found so I settled for a Long Island.

Turns out though, the two people working the bar tonight didn’t know how to make mixed drinks.   Yeah, I know – don’t ask me…

Anyway, I ended up going behind the bar and whipping up my own drink and it was perfect if I do say so myself.

After I had a second Long Island, the bartender who knew how to make drinks, Augustina from Ghana, had arrived so she made my third drink.

Holy smokes!   That sucker was strong!   Literally tasted like I was drinking pure booze with no mixer.

Turns out while I was putting in 1/2 ounce of each of vodka, gin, tequila, and rum, she was putting in a full ounce of each.

My 1oz drink was no match for her 4oz drinks.   So yeah, apparently I was underpouring myself and ripping myself off.

Anyway, after chatting for a couple hours, it was almost 1am and it was time for bed.

It had been a ridiculously long day.

But, here we are.   In Istanbul.   Traveling again!

Let’s start exploring!