Istanbul, Turkey (Tuesday)

Our flight plans back to Saudi were better, but included a 15 hour layover in Istanbul. Instead of waiting around for 15 hours, we stored our luggage and explored the city.

Note: Turkish Airlines has fantastic airplane food. They have a wide selection of special dietary options that you select online at least 48 hours before your flight. For most of our trips on Turkish Air, we opted for the Vegan meal and it has been great. One breakfast was just so so. There is even a chef on board (it could be an attendant wearing a chef hat and coat, but who cares, its awesome). You also get Turkish Delights, and a flight kit that includes socks, lip balm, head phones, ear plugs, toothbrush and tooth paste, and a sleeping mask. All of which come in handy!

However, our recent experiences AT the Istanbul Airport have been negative. Our sprinting through to catch the Male flight aside, the people working there really act like you are a huge inconvenience. If it wasn't for the fresher air and variety of color on the walls, it was almost worse than Dammam airport hospitality. We are not sure if the people were Airline or Airport employees, but most of them were awful, usually sitting in a chair doing nothing (one was even looking at photos on their phone) and could not be bothered to answer a question.

We registered for our visa online with their new "e-visa" system. Phillip had made a screen shot of them with the info and a bar code. We had used e-boarding passes with bar codes with airlines in the States so what could the problem be? Long story short they didn't except the electronic one, we spent 20 minutes figuring out where to go to print it, and another 40 waiting in line for people to process theirs and then an opportunity to switch to the one computer that printed.

We eventually made it through the hurdles and negativity, and found our way to the metro. Phillip thinks this was a good thing because we were only out around 5 1/2 hours anyways we didn't want to leave too early. As we made it into the metro at the airport we were clearly tourists because Phillip was wearing a t-shirt, and Brittney was in flip flops. It was pretty chilly. We got stranger looks here than we did beachside in a different Muslim country.

 We made our way into the Old City on the west "Europe" side of Istanbul. Across the river was the "Asia" side, which we didn't get to visit. We found our way to three major tourist destinations the Aya Sofia (old Roman church eventually converted by the Ottomans into a Mosque), the Grand Blue Mosque, and an old Under water Basilica.

The Blue Mosque reminded us of the ones we had seen in Bahrain and Oman, but this one had very low chandeliers. 

The Aya Sofia was amazing because it was the only standing building in the world that I know of that has Christian mosaics like the one of John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary only 10-20 yards away from huge wooden Qaran writings in arabic with Muslim designs.

 We found lunch at a restaurant named Fuego and it turns out later it is ranked on Trip Advisor as the #13 restaurant in Istanbul out of 10,500+. They turned on an outdoor heater over Brittney as it was warming up to the low 60s. We had a great lunch of hummus, grilled veggies with Turkish yogurt and their "salsa" like dip, and a veggie pizza.

After lunch we made it to the underground Basilica were we were walking over a pool of water with koi fish. It must have been an old Turkish bath or Roman aqueduct. We decided to go for the tourist trap of dressing up like an Ottoman king and queen. The picture came out great. it was 1 picture for $7.25 or a disk of a dozen for $45. We stuck with one.

We decided to stop at the Grand Bazaar on the way back. We went into two rug shops letting them know we didn't have the money to buy any Turkish Carpets. We did get an education and at some points we were confusing ourselves if we really were interested in buying or not. Handmade things from this part of the world are very expensive though and out of our price range for this year. We did however by a ceramic ornament to add to our collection of hanging lanterns from around the world. And had to stop by a shop for Turkish Delight.

It was easy to get back to the airport. We flew off to Dammam even though the airline attendant at the gate didn't feel like Phillip's visa was up to date. It was issued November 26 and good for 180 days. This argument was the one that allowed him to board the plane. And we are back, almost settled into our new townhouse on our new compound and ready to start our last 10 weeks of school now that Spring Break is over.