Llewy Gone Wild: Istanbul Day Two

Today was our first full day in Istanbul! After we finally got off the boat and stood in a mess of a line for a taxi, a cab driver walked straight up to us and said, "I'll take you, no problem" (We have a pretty silly amount of bags). We walked over to his tiny taxi and were thinking we would have to take another one for our bags. He piled them in the trunk and didn't close it all the way and just said, "good!" and walked to get in the car. We were all terrified the bags were going to fall out! We are now also mad we didn't take a picture. It was pretty funny looking. Well it turned out that the taxi driver, Haydir (my best guess on how to spell it), was hilarious, So we thoroughly enjoyed our extra long cab ride to the hotel. It was extra long because he definitely had no idea where the hotel was. Great start to the day.

So we dropped our bags off and Haydir took us down to the ferry area to hop on a Bosphorus Cruise! The government run boat cruises up the Bosphorus for an hour and a half. Drops you off very close to the Black Sea in a tiny little town for 3 hours. Then back to Istanbul. We had little audio guides to point out the different building along the way! It was gorgeous. And we were blessed with another beautiful day!

We obviously had to get Turkish ice cream! Well we were just missing ice cream in general.

We ate lunch at the restaurant just to the right of my parents! (Your right, not theirs)

After the ferry ride we decided to be adventurous and walk back to the hotel. We went the way that seemed like the most direct walk. That turned out to be steep hills and random side streets, but I thoroughly enjoyed it! Especially being on a few streets not overrun by tourists. We checked into our hotel and were told that the rooftop terrace was free to use whenever and we could bring our own booze up there! So Dad ran to the store and we sat out on the terrace for a while just talking about the trip and having a great time.