We arrived into Istanbul to a great surprise....we were met
by a local who had a car and a driver waiting for us. This was a wedding
present by Wendy's close friend Udi and his family - THANK YOU !!!!
It was a great way to acclimate ourselves to this wonderful city.
Click to enlarge a picture
Since the wedding
kept us so busy, we didn't do a lot of research on Istanbul. As we
found out - there are 15 million people living there and it is the only
city that exists on Two Continents - Europe and Asia. The great
Bosphorus Straight separates the two, and there is a bridge that you can
cross in 2 minutes (by car) that will take you from one side to the
next. Very awesome.
Our driver was
great and showed us many places (Mosques, the Grand Bazaar, the
Spice Market), and walked us around to keep Wendy out of trouble. (I
never knew what a trouble maker sh...oh wait - that's me.)
We took an all day boat/bus tour of the city and learned a lot about the
history and it's people. We even got to go to a Turkish Rug making
School - and to our amazement - they even offered to let us buy a
rug...that was very kind of them. ("$4,000 - but - you can
have it for $2000" - such nice merchants.)
The food was very
tasty and very inexpensive, which is not so true for the alcohol. At
some restaurants, a drink was more expensive the the dinner plate - and
these were not tourist places.
The Spice Market
was our favorite place to walk around and buy things. As you can see
from these pictures it was very colorful and lively. The Turkish
delights were very sweet as they used a lot of Honey for their sugar.
Istanbul was one
of our favorite parts of the trip - the city and the people were good to us
and really helped kick off a terrific honeymoon for the new Rudd
Family.
Wendy and Jeff