Turkey and Eastern Europe
During our Christmas break Cameron Brunke and I went on an expedition into Turkey through Hungary and Romania. We had many adventures which I would love to tell you about sometime over a fine Polish piwo.
Budapest
Our first leg was by bus from Krakow to Budapest, Hungary. This was where things started to get a little crazy. We got here late at night and immediately got Hungarian Forints so we could get on the metro and get to our hostel. Well we seceded in the first parts but when we transferred lines on the metro we got caught by the metro police because we did not get transfer tickets, who immediately tried to charge us some extravagant fees. This forced us to go to the ATM to get more Forints. In the end we refused the fees and only paid half of what he was demanding. As it turned out the amount we actually paid was the correct amount. All good now but we still had to find our hostel and it was well after midnight. No fear because we were armed with our Lonely Planet Eastern Europe guidebook and we could find any hostel even in the sub freezing cold of the Hungarian night. Well the first two places we tried did not exist any more and the others were well on the other side of town so we decided to stay anywhere we could find on the streets still open after 1AM. We found the Hotel Frankfurt run by a German expatriate the price was actually reasonable and the rooms and service were great and it even came with a fine German style breakfast and a couple beers for freezing cold Americans at 2AM
While in Budapest we went to the Hungarian National Opera to see the Nutcracker since it was Christmas time.
Cam met Franz List.
And I met the Milka girls
We had dinner in a Budapest Pizza Hut
Hanging out at the Bucharest trainstation waiting on that train.
The train ride was maybe our biggest adventure but is such a long story that I can't do it here.
Istanbul
Finally we got to Istanbul, the Hagia Sophia Once the largest cathedral in the world, then a Mosque and now a museum.
These mosaics were uncovered when restoration was being done on the cathedral.
The Obelisk of Thutmosis III brought from Egypt.
The Obelisk is solid granite and a few thousand years old, so can someone tell me how they carved these glyphs?
Cam bargaining with our carpet salesman
The Straits of Bosphorus
Antalia
From Istanbul we went to Selcuk to visit Ephesus but those photos will appear on the next page. These are our fotos of Antalia.
Mt Olympos
Our goal here was to see the Roman ruins of Olympos but to get there we had to cross rain swollen rivers. We tried to drive around two different locations but the car wouldn't make it across the rivers so eventually decided to go wading on a fine, rainy, December day.
Some fotos of the Roman ruins
