Istanbul...Let's Start Over.

Our city is an easy 1.5 hour ferry ride away from Istanbul. The theater geek in me has been dying to go there since first hearing "Istanbul, Not Constantinople", and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't singing it in my head the entire trip. We've been trying to go the past few weeks and finally got the opportunity. We took the ferry with a group of D's teammates and went to check into the "Pet-Friendly" hotel we booked through Expedia. Upon checking in, the man at the front desk told us they weren't, in fact, pet-friendly, and we couldn't check in for a couple of hours but he'd try to see if we could sneak Tucker in without his manager knowing. Rather than sit around and wait for our room to be done, we decided to take Tucker around to see the sites with us. We stayed right next to the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque so we walked over to this area known as the Ancient Sites of Istanbul. I was in complete and total awe over these buildings. You walk down a long path that connects the two and on both sides are these enormous, absolutely stunning buildings. In between were gardens filled with Tulips as Istanbul celebrates a Tulip Festival this time of year. It was incredible. 

Fun fact: Tulips originated in Turkey, not Holland!

Blue Mosque

While watching Tucker parade around the Hagia Sophia, I had to ask myself if he knows how totally awesome his life is or if he thinks sniffing around a building that changed the history of architecture as we know it is a normal thing most chihuahuas get to experience. Turkish people feel one of two ways about dogs: 1) They are deathly afraid of them or 2) They are aliens from a different world that they must stop and take pictures of. To sum it up, Tucker was a total rockstar in Istanbul.  I can't tell you how many people stopped to take pictures of him. I literally felt like I had Justin Bieber on a leash. D suggested we put out a tip jar next time. Not a bad idea, actually.

Some of Tucker's many fans

This is a normal thing, right?

After touring the sites, we went back to our hotel to check-in. I was preparing to sneak Tucker in my purse or D's backpack (this aint my first rodeo),  when the front counter man decided that we could no longer stay there. After specifically choosing this hotel because it allowed pets, or so Expedia said, you could imagine my frustration getting asked to leave. Does this guy not realize Tucker is the biggest celebrity in the entire city? People were begging for pictures and this man won't even let him in. Hilarious. After lugging our suitcases around the city, we finally found a Pet-Friendly hotel (or so it said, I still snuck tucker in under my shirt just in case) that was much less swank than our previous diggs, but at this point we couldn't care less. After waisting over an hour of our already too short trip on finding a hotel, we cracked open an Efes (Turkish beer) out of the mini-bar, looked at each other and said "let's start over".

After chugging our beers in record time, we walked around to find a good lunch spot. There was a beautiful outdoor restaurant filled with people so we thought it was a safe bet. We ended up sitting next to a Canadian family with two young girls who were taking a year off to travel the world. It was really cool hearing their story and one of the little girls was so cute I wanted to take her with me (inappropriate considering Taken 2 was filmed in Istanbul). Well, the lunch ended up being absolutely terrible. the food was atrocious and our waiter told us the chef quit so they had to improvise. Somehow I wish he would've dropped this ball before we sat down to eat. Leaving starving after choosing to forego our lunch in fear of food poisoning, we looked at each other and said "maybe we should start over".

We got a cab to meet some of D's teammates at this huge mall on the other side of town. For those not familiar with Istanbul, it's pretty much the coolest city ever because it lays on two continents: Europe and Asia. We were staying on the Europe side and had to take a taxi to the Asian side where the mall was. You haven't really feared life until you've driven in a taxi in Istanbul. I'm not sure if our cab driver was just having the absolute worst day of his entire existence or if he chooses to constantly live in this stage of constant anger and misery. What we thought would be a 10 minute cab ride turned into roughly an hour with the traffic from a soccer game between two of the biggest teams in Turkey. Our cab driver rotated between chain smoking a carton of cigarettes, hacking up the remnants of the aforementioned cigarettes, jumping as many lanes as possible in a five-second time span and slamming on his breaks and sticking his torso out the window to cuss out his fellow drivers while in the middle of a highway. Really, it was quite a peaceful commute. An hour of this later, he lets us out in the middle of the highway and tells us it'll be easiest for us to just cross on our own to get to the mall. Truthfully yes, I would rather run across a highway by myself than do so in your vehicle, sir. Finally exhaling after an hour of holding my breath (from the cigarette smoke, the man's body odor and out of just pure and utter terror), we looked at one another and said "well... let's start over".

The mall was incredible and had me feeling like I was shopping at the lovechild of Rodeo Drive & Worth Avenue. Exhausted, both mentally and physically, some retail therapy felt absolutely necessary. As did a chocolate milkshake from Shake Shack, which I was enthused to see was in the mall's Food Court. 

Our taxi ride home from the mall was substantially less terrifying and we took a few minutes to rest before heading out for dinner. We had a delicious Turkish meal and walked around to see the Mosque lit up at night. It was equally as gorgeous as it was during the day and I felt like I was in a scene of Aladdin (Tucker clearly being cast as Abu). On our walk home, a stray dog followed us all the way back to our hotel and I was about to bring him up to our room until D suggested he most likely didn't have his shots. There are so many beautiful strays in Istanbul and it breaks my heart to see them without homes. My life long dream of saving every stray dog and living on a big farm with them all continued to replay in my head. 

We had to catch the 12:00 ferry the next day so we woke up early to hit the Grand Bazaar. Istanbul is famous for this huge marketplace where they sell everything you could ever imagine. It's made up of 61 covered streets with over 3,000 stores and it attracts close to half a million visitors a day. I was in absolute heaven. After making a few purchases, I know D was thinking in his head "okay...let's start over" :)

andddd heaven on earth right here!

Despite our many setbacks, we had an absolutely amazing weekend in Istanbul and I'm already itching to go back. The city has almost 20 million people and there are tons of beautiful sites to see and fun activities to do. The day after we got home, CNN released it's list of the World's Top 25 Tourist Destinations and Istanbul came in at #1, jumping 11 spots from the previous year. I'm not saying the timing of this had anything to do with the fact that we just moved here, but I'm not, not saying that either.  My advice to you: if you ever have the chance to visit this amazing city, you should absolutely do it.