What continent are we on?!

Friday, April 23 – Flew from Larnaca to Jordan to Istanbul via Royal Jordanian – awesome service, seats, food, wine, and newspapers! We got to Istanbul about 1:00 and immediately started to experience the Turkish hospitality. Everyone was so nice to us, even our airport shuttle who gave us free snacks and water. There were Turkish flags everywhere, so we asked our driver if there was a reason for it; he couldn’t tell us in English, so he called a friend and had him explain it to us – so nice! Also, there were flowers EVERYWHERE! Designs in the medians and shoulders of the roads and gardens everywhere you looked; it was GORGEOUS!! Our hostel was nicer than some of the hotels we stayed in throughout Europe! We locked our stuff up and started our explorations.

We found the Blue Mosque – it was beautiful! We stayed around there by the fountains and, yes, more flowers! Then we found our way to the Grand Bazaar – huge and stimulus overload! It is the biggest covered bazaar in the world with around 4,500 stores! They had everything from mosaic lanterns and handmade ceramic bowls (beautiful!) to watches and bags, etc. While we were looking around a store, one of the store owners gave us more snacks and water – these people are overly nice! Similar to Egypt, we got a lot of weird comments/pick-up lines (although, not as bad) like “Let me change your life!” to “How can I help you spend your money?” haha, always amusing.

Then we walked to the Spice Bazaar (above). It had spices galore – everything for cumin to chili pepper to curry to all sorts of different kinds of tea. It smelled delicious! After a Turkish dinner (beef in pita with veggies and yogurt) we walked back towards our hostel, but not before stopping and taking more pictures in front of the Blue Mosque/fountain lit up!

Saturday, April 24 – Breakfast on the roof of our hostel, then we walked to the Hippodrome, which used to be the center of the Empire of Constantine the Great for centuries. There was an Egyptian obelisque (it was huge, but apparently used to be 3x the size it is now!) that was originally built in 1500BC and Constantine brought it to Istanbul (Constantinople) in the 4th century (I think). The street around it is in the shape of a horseshoe and was the same road/place where they used to race chariots – crazy! We started walking towards the mosques and stopped to watch a woman weaving a silk carpet/rug. A Turkish man came over and started explaining it to us – he said to make a 1m x 1m silk rug it takes 1 year! He proceeded to ask where we were from – he went to school at UW-Lacrosse and now owns this rug shop – small world!

Then we walked to the Blue Mosque (above) – it was enormous!! When it was first built it was thought to be blasphemous because it had 6 minarets and people thought it was trying to out-do Ayia Sophia. It is named the Blue Mosque (or Sultan Ahmed) because it has over 19,000 blue tiles inside. It was absolutely amazing! My pictures don’t do it justice, but they are better than any explanation I could give...

We walked out to more flowers and flowering trees (ahh, I love this place!) and walked across the street/the fountain area and went to Ayia Sophia or Hagia Sophia (above). It was originally built by Constantine in the Great in 360 AD, but was rebuilt to its present form between 532 and 537. It served a church until 1453 when the city was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and it was converted into a mosque. In the halls before entering the main part there are tall ceilings and arches that yellow with red and black trim/decorations – it almost looked Spanish style. Inside the main part/nave = GIGANTIC! They were doing some renovations on the huge circular Arabic signs, so there was scaffolding up on both sides. The second level was a museum which had a lot of mosaics from when it used to be a church. When it was converted, the Muslims covered all of the Christian pictures and imagery. It was interesting to see where they covered up some of the crosses, but over time (or renovations) they have become somewhat visible. Ayia Sophia was astounding!!

We walked to the Topkapi Palace. We had some snacks on the grass outside the Palace and enjoyed the sun and flowers. We went into the Imperial Council Hall then into another building with sacred possessions – we saw the Prophet David’s sword and the tablet that the story was written on, lots of Islamic possessions (i.e. Mohammad’s swords, footprint, etc.), and Moses’ rod (I tried my best to get a picture without them seeing, this is the best I got) – so cool! We walked into the second Treasury and saw countless jewels, diamonds, and gold. The most impressive was an 86 karat diamond with 49 large diamonds surrounding it!! Apparently it was found in a dump and sold for 3 spoons, then it was sold to a jeweler who eventually figured out it was diamond. It was made into a ring (that thing would be bigger than the person’s hand!) and then a jewel decorating a turban – crazy! We walked through some gardens and overlooked the Golden Horn. The Palace was big, but we were ready to be done sightseeing, so we didn’t pay to go see the other major attraction area in the Palace.

We sat by the Blue Mosque for lunch – roasted chestnuts and corn on the cob – they have venders selling these all over Istanbul. Then we walked across the bridge to Asia (picture above)! We were so excited to have walked to another continent! At first it seemed poorer and we rarely saw a woman out on the street, similar to the North side of Cyprus (but not that extreme). We walked up a long hill and got to the main street. There were people everywhere, gypsys dancing for money (pictured right) and stores, restaurants, and shops lined the street for as far as we could see. We walked for about 30-45 min and finally got to the square at the end of the street. We were getting hungry, so we walked back down the big hill to the water again and were trying to find the bridge back to the Europe side. We asked for directions to see which bridge was closer and they looked at us like we had 5 heads…we were still on the Europe side!! We were so confused, so we opened up the map…all the way, and found out that we had just crossed the Golden Horn, not the Bosphorus! (We tried to keep the map as small as possible to avoid looking like lost tourists…now we looked even more stupid!) So, we had spent the entire afternoon thinking we were in Asia! We were determined to get to Asia, so we ran to the first ferry we saw and jumped on it; luckily it ended up taking us to the Asia side :) Although, we had no idea where we were, and not many people could speak English, so we stayed close to the port.

The Asia side looked very different than the Europe side (above). It was much more metropolitan, signs and advertisements that showed men without shirts and women in bikinis (you would not see that on the more conservative, European side), no huge mosques dotting the skyline, and fewer women covered. Had a chicken kebab for dinner and they gave us free honey soaked dessert – so good!

Back on the ferry to the part of Istanbul where our hostel was (with the mosques and palace, it seemed much more sketchy at night). There were quite a few children out working or selling things or playing music trying to get money, it was sad. I was getting sick of people trying to get us to buy things or eat in their restaurant, so every time they started talking to us, I would just start making up words and speaking gibberish, literally. One guy goes, “You don’t know how to speak Turkish!” clearly. They didn’t bother me after that! :)

Sunday, April 25 – We walked to Cagaloglu Hamami. It was built in the 18th century and is one of the oldest Turkish Baths, 300 years old. It is in the book “1000 places to see before you die” and it’s where a lot of the famous people go (John Travolta, Cameron Diaz, etc.). We were brought into our own rooms and were told to put a towel on…just a towel. I opted out of that one and kept my swimsuit bottoms on. We put on wooden sandals and walked into the main room (the hararet). It smelled so good! It had all marble floors, walls, and seats that were all heated – it was hot in there. The ceiling was gray cement and had holes in the top that made it look like we were under a starry sky. We each got a little basin and a small bowl and were supposed to wash/wet ourselves. Then we went and lay down in the sauna room – again, it was all hot marble walls, floor, and seats. So nice and relaxing with just us in there! We got called to go back out into the hararet and we directed to lie down on the raised marble floor in the center. This umm…very large woman grabbed me. Her one-piece suit was useless because every time she moved it came down/fell off her shoulders…Well, I paid for this, so I might as well pretend this is normal and enjoy. She poured water over me and put some soap on me and proceeded to “message” me – it was more of a rub-down, everything from my face/head to my feet. Despite my attempts to relax and enjoy, it was SO awkward and weird at first (well, throughout most of it). Half way through she motioned for me to turn over, much better….until she thought it was necessary to pull down my swimsuit bottoms…had those on for a reason. Once that was over, she shampooed and conditioned my hair and rinsed me off one last time. During this whole time, there were other people in the hararet, and a mother and daughter (about 11ish?)… I walked out, got a towel and got dressed. They gave me some free soap – it smells so good! Well, despite that whole…umm…process, my skin was so smooth and I felt so clean! It was definitely an experience.

We walked around a bit more, sat by a fountain for a while to waste some time, then got back to the hostel to catch our shuttle to the airport (where we saw all these men wearing towels…just towels (about 3 on each person), that’s it. We later found out that they were wearing those because they were on their pilgrimage to Mecca? Something like that). Anyways, time to go to the Middle East! :)

 Istanbul was one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen!! The first day we were there it seemed to have a combination of the good parts of Egypt and the good parts of Europe. It was very unique. The main, tourist par of Istanbul (with the mosques, palace, and bazaars) was so pretty! On the other side of the Golden Horn it seemed to be poorer near the water by the bridge, but up top on the hill it was shopping central. The Asia side was very metropolitan and less conservative. Also, everyone was very nice and hospitable. And, as you can see, the flowers were one of my favorite parts! I absolutely LOVED Istanbul! :)

oooo...so THIS is Cyrpus

Last Tuesday we took a trip to the US Embassy in Cyprus. After going through the most scrutinized security of my life, we finally were let in. We heard from people who did all sorts of jobs in the embassy - sounds pretty sweet! (Just to put you at easy mom, its all business, politics, administrative, etc. not my cup of tea). But its a pretty sweet gig, they get their home paid for, education for themselves and their children paid for, and holidays for both countries! We also found out that one of the guys we hung out with at karaoke the other night ("creeper guy") is actually a Special Agent for the Department of Secrete Services....whoa.

Thursday, after having an awesome night full of way too much guacamole and finally meeting our Nigerian neighbor, we hopped on yet another bus for our weekend trip to Limassol and Paphos (on the south/southwestern coast of Cyprus)! Looking out the window you can see random ancient ruins from over 2000 years ago! We saw one archeological site in particular that had five circular foundations of what used to be huts. I think Cyprus could be much more well-known and a huge history-geek tourist attraction if they cared (or were not so lazy) to unearth more of the history and advertise it. Anyways, we drove through Limassol and then went to the Limassol Fort and Castle. It was built in the 14th century on the site of an earlier Byzantine castle. It was here, according to tradition that Richard the Lionheart decided to claim Cyprus as a British possession, but today the castle houses the Medieval Museum. It was pretty boring from the outside (a small square “castle” built of plain limestone), but once we went in it was more interesting. We could walk through it and touch everything. In the museum part they had knight’s suits of armor, old jewelry, pottery, etc. on display in old jail cells. But, only parts of it had old relics, the rest looked like it was original and the knights had just left it – very cool! Outside of it was a huge wooden/concrete contraption where they used to make olive oil. It looked really confusing, and I couldn’t figure out how it worked, but it was still very interesting.

Then we went to the Kolossi Castle (above) built in 1200-1300 AD. It looked very similar to the Limassol castle (3-4 stories tall and small, square shape), but it had BEAUTIFUL flowers in around it. We went to the top and had a view of the fields/plantations around and a small village…much prettier than Makedonessita (where we live). It was in this castle where the knights perfected how to make the famous sweet wine of Cyprus – Commanderia.

We made our way up the side of a mountain/cliff to Kourion – an ancient city-kingdom. We went into the House of Eustolios, which used to be a private Roman villa built/renovated around 400 AD. It had huge mosaics on the floor. It was very well preserved – you can still clearly see the pictures, designs, and words. Next to this was an ancient Roman theater built in the 2nd century AD. This was also very well preserved, and we could sit/climb around on it. One of the guys with us was prodded to “testing the acoustics” and he did a whole song and dance to the Temptations for us – it was great!

Then we drove to a spot where we could overlook the Sea and Petra Tou Romiou (“The Rock of the Greek”): Birthplace of Aphrodite. It was here, at one of the small, black, mushroom-like rocks tha according to legend, Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, rose from the waves. The Greek name, Petra Tou Romiou, is associated with Dighenis Akritas, who kept the raiding Saracens at bay by throwing this large rock into the sea destroying the enemy’s ships. Anyways, the water was unbelievable!! It was turquoise blue and crystal clear – gorgeous!

We had lunch by the harbor in Paphos watching all of the British tourists, then went to our last sight of the day – the House of Dionysos named after one of the mosaics depicting Dionysos, the God of Wine. This had spectacular 3rd- 5th century Roman mosaics – perfectly preserved after 16 centuries under the soil. Most of the mosaics were depicting Greek mythological figures and stories and were all decorated. It was awesome!

We drove back to Limassol (about 30-45 minutes away), checked into our hotel and went in search of food! The restaurant we ate at was fine, but the family that owned it was so nice!! We met the owner (who was born in Cyprus, but lived in London all his life), his son was our waiter, and his daughter was another waitress. We stayed for karaoke – the owner started it off by singing “New York, New York” for us, “the ladies from the USA.” He was an unbelievable singer! Sounded exactly like Frank Sinatra!! After we sang, our waiter (the son) sang, and then the daughter. Then they did a duet to “Love Shack.” They were all awesome singers (but nothing compares to dancing/watching Erik dancing to Love Shack at every Koch wedding!)

Saturday – BEACH!!! We were FINALLY able to see the water (yep on an island ½ the size of Connecticut and have yet to be by the water)! We laid on the sand, went swimming in the Mediterranean, and went kayaking! The water was so blue; it looked like it had food coloring in it. And I could see to the bottom no matter how far I went out! It was unbelievable! For dinner I went out with a new group of girls and we had Greek/Cypriot meze and wine – nummy!! It was so much fun; the perfect day!

Sunday – we didn’t have to leave until 11:45, so we got some more beach time in for a couple hours before going to Lefkara (above), a small village in the mountains famous for their handmade lace and silver. According to tradition, Leonardo da Vinci visited the village and bought an altar cloth which he donated to the Milan Duomo (Cathedral). The little village was so cute! It had little winding roads with lace/silver shops everywhere! And the little old Greek men and women shopkeepers sitting outside (and occasionally taking a nap). In a lot of the stores, the woman made the lace and the man (husband) made the silver. A small lace piece (smaller than a placemat) takes over 1 month to make! The shopkeepers were so nice and hospitable – I guess it is true what they say about Greeks/Cypriots, just not in Nicosia! I LOVED the little village!


This trip was EXACTLY what I thought Cyprus was going to be like…I have been about an hour away from it this whole time, dang! (After this it is official, I do NOT like Makedonssita or Nicosia! Everyone on our trip concurred) It had ancient ruins, little villages, cute harbors, beautiful water, and overly nice people – I loved it! I guess I’ll just have to go back before I leave! :)

Budapest

Thursday, April 8 – Woke up at the crack of dawn to catch our flight to Budapest (pronounced Budapechst). We met our tour guide and hopped on yet another bus for a tour of the city before our flight to Cyprus. The first district we went through was super sketchy, dirty, and run down; I didn’t like it. But our tour guide was great, she pointed out more of the communist apartments that are still there and explained the layout of them – she said they are extremely small; you can’t fit a double bed into the bedrooms.

We first were on the Pest side of the river, drove by a zoo and a castle and to the Heroes’ Square (below) – a monument built after the conquest when Hungary became independent (I think). We drove toward the center, this part was much nicer. The Parliament building was awesome!! It looked like a cross between a cathedral and a castle and a palace – it was beautiful!

We crossed the Chain Bridge to the Buda side and went up to the church at the top of the hill. We saw a building that had a ton of divots/marks on the side; it was from bullet’s hitting the building during WWII, whoa! We walked up to the Matthias Church (right) which had a really cool, multi-colored designed tiled roof. The Fisherman’s Bastion (below) was in front of the church and overlooked the river to the Pest side – it was gorgeous!

Parliament Building on the Pest side

We went back to the Pest side to go to Vaci Street towards the Central Market Hall – a huge hall with lots of fruits, veggies, books, tourist stuff, everything. We shopped around (everything was so cheap!!) and went to dinner – goulash soup and a salad that could have fed a family of 5 for a good 3 days!! We walked down by the river/bridge (almost got hit by a train) and took some pictures of the sun going down, it was BEAUTIFUL!!! Some of my friends went wandering around and found a church with a bunch of lights and paparazzi around, then they saw Uma Thurman! Turns out Uma Thurman and Robert Pattinson were filming a new movie in the church in Budapest – crazy! Back on the bus -> airport -> and finally back in Cyprus at 5 AM!

I loved Budapest; I wished we could have stayed there longer. The city center is beautiful! It was a perfect end to the trip!


This 16 day trip was unreal! I saw so much of Europe in such a short amount of time, it would have been nice to have a little more time in each city/time to decompress and take everything in, but it was awesome!! I learned more in this 2 ½ week trip than I could have in any textbook, everything from history to politics to culture. There are so many things that I love about Europe (don’t worry mom, I will come back…eventually). But I was definitely ready to be back in Cyprus! Time to rest, diet, and get a few things done before our next adventure! :)

Berlin

Tuesday, April 6 – Arrived in Berlin, out hotel was on the outskirts of the East side of Berlin. We took the U-Bahn to Alexanderplatz and had dinner at a really good German restaurant. Tried the beer sampler (when in Rome…or Berlin) and had spätzle. BEST DINNER EVER!!! It had tomatoes, broccoli, onion, and tons of melted, creamy cheese! Ahh, I lover Germany/German food!

Wednesday, April 7 – Had a huge German breakfast with yogurt and muesli, bread, cheese, jam, fruit, eggs, crepes, and cake!! Yep, had a giant slice of German cake for breakfast…add another plus to the Germans :) We had a 3 hour bus tour of Berlin. We first went to this red castle-like bridge that used to be a pedestrian crossing/checkpoint to the East/West. We also saw the Berlin wall, but this portion of it was very new and had a big mural on each section that depicted everything from dark paintings to bizarre/abstract to peace paintings. Then we went to Checkpoint Charlie (right) which wasn’t too much to see except the giant picture of the US solider and a fake US solider there for pictures. But they did have big posters up about historical facts and information about the wall/checkpoint. The most interesting was a description about people’s attempts to cross to the west. Most that made it across either were smuggled across inside of trunks of cars or with fake US uniforms or fake passports (usually Switzerland). They had a bunch of pictures of people who were caught hiding in cars and they put black lines over their eyes, which made it much more scary and dangerous-looking. Back on the bus we passed by another part of the wall, this time though it was part of the original wall – it had a fence around it protecting it, but I could still see faded colors from graffiti and holes in the wall – very interesting to see!

We drove through Charlottenberg, which was very pretty, then to Reichsthe – the German parliament building with a big glass dome (above). We weren’t there for long enough to go up inside the dome, but we did enjoy lying on the grass under the sun looking at the building with the German flags – I loved it! We finished our tour by driving through the museum district and past the Holocaust memorial and to the Brandenburg Gate.

By this time in the trip, being with 8 other girls 24/7…I decided to go off and explore Berlin solo. It was great! I found my way through Hauptbanhof and found the best döner kebab in the world!! Well, I think I found it, Steph (one of Jill’s friends who lives in Berlin) gave me very rough directions: “out of the u-bahn station, toward the sex shops, and under a covered walkway.” Nevertheless, it was amazing!!! Went to Ka-De-We, one of the biggest malls in Europe that has a famous 6th floor which had every kind of food and drink.

Then I went back to Alexanderplatz and saw the Berliner Dom (below) and then went to the DDR museum which is a small, interactive museum about what East Berlin was like under the communist rule. It was very interesting! They had community bathroom breaks in school where they could not stand up until everyone was done; they built hundreds of apartments/concrete slab buildings that were very small, but you can still see them all over East Berlin. Also, “young people” would go to some place and listen to blues and rock and music that the government didn’t approve of, so people from the government were sent to take pictures of everyone there so they could keep tabs on them in the coming months and years. So they had a little TV set up with real pictures of these people sitting and talking to friends or walking around. Then it said that the black circle around the pictures means that it was taken from a briefcase – crazy!

I walked a little ways further and went to a big square (right) that had the “White Library” which was a hole in a square with a piece of glass over it showing white, empty shelves. That was the spot where the Nazi’s burned the books in 1933 that did not fit with their philosophy! It was like standing on history. Then a few of us met up and went to a wine bar then to another German restaurant for a repeat of my dinner from the night before – more spätzle!!!!

Overall, I liked Berlin. There is still a stark difference between East and West though. The East is kind of dirty and rundown and just behind the times. Whereas West Berlin is very nice and looks like most other European cities, very strange! Berlin has about 30% of green parks in the city, and everyone utilizes it; it’s really nice. The history is very interesting, especially because it is so recent and well preserved. Everyone I talked to was very nice, oh and did I mention the food! I feel like there is still so much that I haven’t seen in Berlin yet…

Dresden

Tuesday, April 6 – Stopped in Dresden for a few hours. The city was completely destroyed near the end of WWII by allied aerial bombings. Much of the city was under construction and being rebuilt or renovated. It was really interesting to see some of the buildings (mostly churches) that they rebuilt or tried to salvage – they were all charcoal black! Or had ½ new renovations and ½ old charred materials – very interesting. We walked by the Fürstenzug (aka the procession of the princes), a big yellow mural painted on the wall (right). We saw the famous church, Neumarkt mit Frauenkirche, but could not go in because there was a service. I think it is so iconic because they rebuilt it as a sign of recovery and prosperity for the city after WWII.

We walked through a beautiful park and across the bridge to the new district, Neustadt (the old district where we were is Altsadt).

We walked down a cute little pedestrian walkway/street lined with trees and park benches and came across an interesting church, Drei Königs Kirch Turm. The bottom foundation was brand new white and cream stucco, but the top of the church with the steeple was charred and black. We went up to the top of the bell tower/steeple and overlooked the city – it was beautiful looking back over the river at the old buildings and churches!

I really enjoyed Dresden. It was a very small, slow-paced town with interesting buildings/churches that they salvaged as much as they could. I wish we would have had a tour guide to know the history and significance of what we were seeing…next time! :)