following the racesteps of my cousin (istanbul, turkey)

at some point while cousin bryn was living in Germany, he mentioned something about running a race in Istanbul...randomly I remembered him having run this race, so I figured out when it was, asked a friend about staying with her, booked my (surprisingly cheap) tickets, and I was ready...I love that there is an evening flight by Turkish air straight from Kyiv to Istanbul!
Amanda met met at the bus stop in the city, then we took a taxi back to her place...it wasn't far, but it was quite late at night and she didn't think it was a great idea to walk...we stayed up quite late chatting about everything, getting caught up on each other's lives...it's funny how the friends i've made as an adult have a wide variety of opinions, and are able and happy to talk about so many different topics...I love having friends all over the world...(a major benefit to living abroad, and keeping in touch with friends from those places who then move to other places:)

the next morning we got up and went to where we thought the expo would be for the races...unfortunately, the expo was in a different place, and Amanda had to go to a weekend conference for work, so I was on my own to figure it out...fortunately, I had a map, and a clue of where to go and how to get there...plus the buses going that way had their own dedicated lanes, so they move more quickly than the rest of traffic...yay...
before splitting up for the day, we had lunch...Turkish pizza, yum...I wish Kyiv had better food!! I added rice pudding for dessert, even though I didn't really have any room...
it was easy to find the right building where the expo was held, and the expo itself, but I got a bit confused as to where to pick up my bib number, timing chip, bag, etc...i'm pretty sure I walked through every square inch of the expo while searching...

afterward I took the metrobus, metro, and dolmus to dolmabahce palace...it was the biggest sight I hadn't yet seen in Istanbul...the entry fee is 40TL, you have to go with a tour group, and no pictures are allowed...for that price, and those restrictions, I was expecting a lot...
unfortunately, reality did not live up to expectations...the tour guide didn't speak very loudly, and didn't usually wait for the entire group (which was big) to catch up before starting his spiel in each area of the palace...he didn't give nearly as much information as I was expecting, Wikipedia probably has a better explanation...argh...that being said, the palace was beautiful...or rather, it was impressive in a fancy shmancy sort of way...huge rooms, giant chandeliers, gold leaf, a crystal staircase, etc...

the information given, and descriptions in the harem were even more disappointing...it was still impressive though...during the tour of each building (the palace and the harem) everyone had to wear blue plastic booties over their shoes to keep dirt from being tracked everywhere...
by the time I left the harem the sun was down...I was a wee bit scared, but I still had to go home...
I stopped for tantuni on the way home...I don't know how to describe it other than to say: YUM...meat, cooked on what looks like a big wok, with spices thrown in, placed into a thin tortilla, and rolled up...SO GOOD...yet another turkish food i'd be willing to eat all day every day...

the next morning both of us were up at 0600...Amanda walked me to taksim square and put me on a shuttle bus to the starting point of the race...thank you sooooo much for getting up that early for me!!
the bus took me across the bosphorous bridge, to the starting point of the races...(I was running a 15K, others ran a full marathon, or a 10K)...there were heaps of these shuttle buses, each dropping off runners from around the world...I must've been on one of the first buses, it was awesome to watch everyone as it got closer and closer to race time...I love the atmosphere right before races...everyone is excited, everyone is happy to say hello and good luck, etc...lots of random photos taken, just because...eventually I dropped my bag at bag check, and went back to watching people doing last minute prep...it's funny how marathon runners train for months for a specific race, but all the stress comes down to those last minutes before the race starts...

the race was well organized and supported...the course is great (how awesome is it to run from one continent to another - asia to Europe - as well as see some great historical sights while running? plus, there were regular aid stations, nicely spread through the course...my time probably wasn't any good, but i'm not very competitive, and 15K isn't a common race distance, so it didn't matter...(my time has never mattered to me in races I've run in the past 15 yrs)...the only downside to the race was the finishing area...it was waaaaay too crowded right after the finish line, and not easy to figure out where to go...I was given a bag with water, a banana, juice, a race finisher medal, and a rain poncho...
I grabbed all my stuff and walked further into the neighborhood of sultanahmet (sp?)...another sight I hadn't seen during previous time in Istanbul was the basilica cistern...basically the area where water was kept in the days of the ottoman empire...

it's a little spooky down there, and would be chilly if the humidity didn't keep it warmer...occasionally water dripped on my head, which of course I didn't love, but oh well...according to the pamphlet, the cistern was only discovered relatively recently when considering how much historical stuff there is in Istanbul...in the 80s or 90s I think?
another downside to the race: public transport was shut down in the race area, (which is great if you're running city streets) but that meant I had to walk 30-40 minutes to get to an open metro station so I could get back to Amanda's flat...if i'd just run a full marathon there is no way I would've been able to walk that fast or that far!

back at Amanda's flat I showered and packed up, then met Amanda at the bus stop for the shuttle back to the airport...(she was in her second day at a weekend conference she wasn't able to get out of)...despite traffic, we got to the airport in plenty of time...we found a café nero, as I wanted a last chance at a great chai latte and chocolate mousse cake...YUM...I was sad to go back to Kyiv...

portugal: lisbon again

the next morning i took a bus back to lisbon for the last couple days of my trip...it was easy to get to and easy to find my hostel, and i was able to check in straightaway...i relaxed for a couple hours, to get over the travel and early morning i'd had...
i finally figured out how to get to a church i'd wanted to see, but ended up balking at the entrance fee, so i only looked at the outside...well, i visited the church itself, but didn't pay the entrance fee for the monastery/museum part of the sight...
lunch was the house special at a nearby cafe...codfish and rice...pretty good:) (but lacking in vegetables, as usual)

for the rest of the day i walked toward belem again just because i could, and the weather was nice...i love to walk...at some point i turned around, then shopped for a while, just to kill time...i remember trying on four dresses in one shop and hoping the mirror was a bad mirror, as i felt like my legs looked quite large...i'm not normally one for shopping anywho...
the next morning i woke up early, but was really really slow about getting out the door...i walked to the parque dos nacoes area of town, as the description in the guidebook sounded nice...i don't know if it was the weather or the season, but i was disappointed...the gardens were hardly worth mentioning...there was a big mall, which was great for people watching, but otherwise nothing worth mentioning...
as i got back to the city centre i visited several souvenir shops in search of the cheapest postcards...when you buy them in the quantity i do, a small difference in price can make a large difference! i bought so many at one shop that the owner gave me a free keychain...how awesome is that?

the next morning i was up early, waiting for the shuttle i thought i had arranged to take me to the airport...the scheduled time came and went, and no shuttle arrived...ugh...i walked a bit to a fancier hotel, and grabbed a cab to the airport...it cost me more than twice as much as the shuttle would've cost, but at least i made my flight...
that was only the first mishap of the day...i'm pretty sure my phone fell out of my pocket in the cab, as i later realized i had no idea where it was, and i knew it had been in my pocket that morning...i had two flights that day, both of which went smoothly; the connection was in rome...

my bag must've decided it wanted to visit rome, as it did not make the last leg of the trip back to kyiv...i was not the only person who started the day in lisbon, then connected in rome, and finished in kyiv, and i was not the only one who did not get their bag back...i'm glad their were others in my same predicament, it was easy for all of us to get mad at the airlines together...i'm also glad i lived at my final destination for the day, as i had other clothes and personal belongings to wear/use...a couple days later my bag was delivered to my flat:)...that was almost more convenient than me getting it home from the airport myself:)

the frustrating part of dealing with lost luggage at the kyiv airport is watching the way a queue does not work...there was a queue, but locals kept jumping queue and interrupting people being served...the people working in the office would talk to the interrupters and stop working on paperwork with whoeva was sitting in front of them...it took me over an hour to deal with just my claim, even though my actual time of talking/filling out the form was less than ten minutes...argh...i hate the way so many locals think they are more important than others and feel it's okay to interrupt...

the end of turkey

from canakkale i originally wanted to take a bus to erdine, a town on the european side of turkey...but the only time a bus to erdine left canakkale was at 3 in the morning...i decided not to go, basically because i didn't want to wake up at that hour...i am not a night person...
so i took a night bus back to istanbul instead...the bus i chose was supposed to leave at 2300...when i got to the bus office at 2230 they told me there was something wrong with that bus, and that i could take the 0100 bus instead...yippee skippee...i hate having to do things in the middle of the night...but i did...i went back to the hotel and read a book until 0030, when i went back to the bus office...
the bus ride was fine...faster than expected...the bus pulled into the massive bus station in istanbul at 0630 the following morning...i was expecting 0700...just like most airports, the arrivals and departures section of the bus station are in different spots...since i didn't know this ahead of time, i was a bit worried that i was getting off the bus in an unknown section of istanbul...thankfully, it was fine...that bus station is surprisingly busy at that hour of the morning...

it was easy to catch a service bus into the middle of town, then catch the metro back to close to amanda's flat...an easy walk from there...
we spent most of saturday doing a whole lot of nothing...the weather was crap, neither of us was motivated to do much of anything...we were productive in going to the grocery store, but that's about it...i picked up a bunch of tea to bring back to ukraine with me, as well as 2kgs of chickpeas...they're probably somewhere in ukraine, but i haven't found them...i also got pudding...my last chance to have real chocolate pudding until this summer, when i return to the states for a few weeks...dinner that night was roast chicken...sooooo good...
the next day the weather was even worse...rainy and windy...yuck...but i still needed postcards, and i wanted to go to a steak restaurant amanda had mentioned previously, so we had no choice but to leave the flat...(which was probably a good thing really)...we walked, took the metro, took the tram and walked into the city...a quick search for postcards, and then we made our way to a different bus stop, one where we could catch a bus to the mall where the steak restaurant was located..

a fabulous steak dinner followed...the meal was mostly steak, there was a small side of vegetables served with the meat...this had to be one of the best steaks i've ever had...cooked just as i ordered, the flavour was awesome...the only downside to the meal was the family next to us...a couple with one young child...they let the child run all over, and several times they lost track of where the child had run to...the waitstaff in the restaurant rescued the child more than once...i know i'm not a parent, but i found the behaviour appalling...shouldn't the child learn that meal time is meal time, and they shouldn't be allowed to run all over? especially because it wasn't just the parents involved...it was the waitstaff, and us because we were sitting next over, etc...we were both annoyed...
after dinner we walked through the mall...it's one of those fancy shmancy malls with a lot of high end named stores...the turkish government taxes imported goods like i've never seen before, so goods that shouldn't be expensive end up that way...a simple, black and white cell phone ends up being almost $100!! crazy...i got a phone just like it in ukraine for $30 or so...hmmm...we stopped at a cafe and had dessert and chai...my chai and chocolate fudge cake tasted just like what i love from coffee bean...coming from me, that's really high praise...basically, when we left the mall, i was in hog heaven...fat and happy...

sadly, i had to leave turkey the next day...booooooo...i said goodbye to amanda, then slowly packed up my stuff, had a cup of tea, etc...i left her flat, took the metro to the center of town, then took a bus to the airport...everything at the airport went really well, including changing the rest of my lira back into dollars...the best part of that was the way the dollar had depreciated against the lira since i'd exchanged upon arrival, so i actually made money on the exchange...gotta love an airport where they don't have obscene rates to exchange money!!! woo hoo...