Day 5 - Istanbul

Our last day in Istanbul. We decided to do a little bit of shopping up at Taksim Square/Istiklal St. (the trendy section of town). I purchased my obligatory t-shirt with the city's name on it (yes, I plan to do this in every city). Actually, I ended up getting two only because I felt like haggling. For lunch, we went with our go-to meal: Doner Kebabs. It hit the spot.

After this, we headed to a Hamam (Turkish Bath). We weren't quite sure what to expect. The Hamam we went to, Cagaloglu Hamami, is listed in the "1000 Places To See Before You Die", and they made sure to let you know this fact. When we arrived, I made a critical error by entering unknowingly into the women's side of the Hamam. In my defense, the entrance was not labeled and was on a separate street from the guy's entrance. I walked in, pranced through beads, and before me sat dozens of half naked women. Before I could even realized what was happening, one of the women Hamam workers (who could've easily snapped me in two) came at me with a horrified face, and "corrected" my error.

Still shaken from the incident, I went to my side of the Hamam. In the changing room, I wasn't sure how much clothing they expected me to be in. I came out in my bathing suit at first, but they said "No no no... towel only". They gave me oversized, wooden clogs to wear (they got much amusement watching me stumble around in them) then took me to a huge (and I mean huge) marble sauna. I sat there alone for about 15 minutes (dousing my face with cold water at the bathing stations to keep from passing out) and was starting to wonder if they had forgotten about me. Then the dungeon-like door opened. It was my Turkish "bather." With towel on, I got heavily scrubbed, soaped, cleaned, and massaged. Some of it was intense (almost painful), but all-in-all I felt pretty good afterwards. I would say the Hamam is something you have to do once, but I'm not sure I would do it again. Kim later gave me a similar report from the women's side.

Afterwards, as I was waiting for Kim across the street from the women's side of the Hamam, I made friends with a Turkish native, Mario. Great guy... we talked for 30 mins or so about life, politics, marriage, etc... and we even drank tea together. Then he tried to sell me carpet. Oh well.

In the evening, we headed to the airport to catch our flight to Cairo. At the airport, we finally broke down and ate some good ole American fast food: Burger King. Fully relaxed and recharged, we were now ready for Cairo!

Additional notes/thoughts:

- Istanbul has a lot of hills.
- It is very hard to dispute a restaurant bill when the waiter only speaks Turkish (they usually win the debate).
- In Turkey, just remember that Ataturk is the man.
- The infrastructure is so old in Turkey that nobody drinks the tap water, but that's not a problem because bottled water is cheap and abundant. You can buy it from street vendors on every corner for ~35 cents.
- Besides water, Turkey is big on street food. Everywhere there are stands selling ice cream and doner kebab, but more interesting are the stands selling hunks of watermelon, roasted chesnuts (in July?), simit (pretzel-like bread rings covered in sesame seeds), and the ubiquitous corn. Yes corn - on the cob. For ~75 cents, you can get an ear, either boiled or grilled over hot coals. The grilled one kind of tastes like popcorn.