Post by Jstarzz on Jul 18, 2017 1:11:28 GMT
Two years ago I had the incredible opportunity to go on vacation to Turkey. I've been fortunate enough to travel outside of the country a few times in my life, and they've led to some amazing experiences for me, but if you told me that my favorite of these experiences would be me traveling to Turkey I would have never believed you.
Going into the trip I was very weary about the whole thing. Being a pretty ignorant person on the whole Middle East situation it seemed like everything over there was pretty volatile and it made me uneasy. But the family who we planned the trip with (my dad's best friend and his wife and two sons who conveniently were the age of my brother and I) told us we had nothing to worry about. They had been to Turkey countless times because my dad's best friend -his name is Steve- has a really close cousin who lives in Istanbul and had actually lived in Turkey for a little bit himself.
The plane ride to Turkey was nice. Nothing out of the ordinary really happened, but I got to drink my first legal beer during our layover in Switzerland so that was pretty cool! Actually flying into the airport in Istanbul was incredible. I guess I never really knew how big Istanbul but man, was it unbelievably large. I think it holds ~30 million people nowadays so you can imagine how large a city has to be to have that many people inhabiting it.
My favorite two things about Istanbul were the food and the architecture hands down. We were taken to these amazing restaurants in Istanbul with all sorts of incredible fish and meat that you can't get anywhere at least in the Chicagoland area. Most of the meat you can get is based around lamb and a little bit beef. Another interesting thing is the breakfast is mostly savory foods. It mainly consists of cheese and bread and light meats. The only really sweet breakfast options I encountered were honey to put on your bread and fruit. As for the architecture.. well it's just beautiful. Istanbul has so much history it's incredible to see the combination of all these modern buildings next to some buildings that are like 600-700 years old. The historic district is beautiful and it's so well preserved.
After a three or four days we flew down to Bodrum. Bodrum is a city in Turkey on the southwestern coast. It's basically like the Miami of Turkey. It has a huge port with all these crazy expensive yachts and clubs literally everywhere with beautiful girls walking down the streets. The clubs never close and around 4:30 or 5 everyone drunkenly stumbles back to cabs and recovers at their resorts awaiting the next day of clubbing and partying.
All in all it was one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had. And if you're ever looking for a place to go you should definitely think about Turkey. Everyone was so nice to us and it was so wonderful. I think lots of people (or at least the people I know) don't really think about how nice of a trip a place like that can be because it's really off of a lot of people's radars, but trust me it will not disappoint.
Going into the trip I was very weary about the whole thing. Being a pretty ignorant person on the whole Middle East situation it seemed like everything over there was pretty volatile and it made me uneasy. But the family who we planned the trip with (my dad's best friend and his wife and two sons who conveniently were the age of my brother and I) told us we had nothing to worry about. They had been to Turkey countless times because my dad's best friend -his name is Steve- has a really close cousin who lives in Istanbul and had actually lived in Turkey for a little bit himself.
The plane ride to Turkey was nice. Nothing out of the ordinary really happened, but I got to drink my first legal beer during our layover in Switzerland so that was pretty cool! Actually flying into the airport in Istanbul was incredible. I guess I never really knew how big Istanbul but man, was it unbelievably large. I think it holds ~30 million people nowadays so you can imagine how large a city has to be to have that many people inhabiting it.
My favorite two things about Istanbul were the food and the architecture hands down. We were taken to these amazing restaurants in Istanbul with all sorts of incredible fish and meat that you can't get anywhere at least in the Chicagoland area. Most of the meat you can get is based around lamb and a little bit beef. Another interesting thing is the breakfast is mostly savory foods. It mainly consists of cheese and bread and light meats. The only really sweet breakfast options I encountered were honey to put on your bread and fruit. As for the architecture.. well it's just beautiful. Istanbul has so much history it's incredible to see the combination of all these modern buildings next to some buildings that are like 600-700 years old. The historic district is beautiful and it's so well preserved.
After a three or four days we flew down to Bodrum. Bodrum is a city in Turkey on the southwestern coast. It's basically like the Miami of Turkey. It has a huge port with all these crazy expensive yachts and clubs literally everywhere with beautiful girls walking down the streets. The clubs never close and around 4:30 or 5 everyone drunkenly stumbles back to cabs and recovers at their resorts awaiting the next day of clubbing and partying.
All in all it was one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had. And if you're ever looking for a place to go you should definitely think about Turkey. Everyone was so nice to us and it was so wonderful. I think lots of people (or at least the people I know) don't really think about how nice of a trip a place like that can be because it's really off of a lot of people's radars, but trust me it will not disappoint.