Ok. Time to start posting. I was jet lagged for the first two days in Türkiye and then flying to different areas in the evenings, so blogging took a back seat. I have really limited/non-existent Internet connection here as well.
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The flight was thankfully uneventful. I had booked a window seat and gotten a prescription of Ambien from my doctor to hopefully make a part of that flight in slumber. In the middle seat next to was a 3 and a half old (I’m guessing) girl, Lily, who was traveling with her mother in the aisle seat. Since Lily’s legs went only past the end of the cushion, her mother graciously allowed me to stow my backpack under the seat in front of her. Leg room!
I had brought along Ted Chiang’s collection of sci-fi short stories “The Stories of Your Life” and set into reading the one entitled “The Tower of Babylon”. You may recognize the most famous story from this collection, “The Story of Your Life”, as the source for Denis Villenueve’s film “Arrival”.
I was to get four hours of sleep in with the help of the Ambien and, aside from being intermittently pummeled by restless, napping toddler, there was very little drama from the plane or my fellow passengers.
We arrived in Istanbul on time and, after collecting my luggage and going through customs, found the gathering spot for the tour group I had chosen for this week.
It was a long cab from airport to the Old City neighborhood of Istanbul. My first impressions were basically, “Oh, a modern European city with a layer of Islam interwoven in its fabric.” A mixture of old buildings intermixed with glass and steel skyscrapers with domed mosques dotted throughout.
After checking in at the hotel, I took a stroll down to the Sultanahmet Square. The tour company will bring me and whomever else is on my same itinerary back here tomorrow for a proper tour, but it would be nice to get an overview of the place and find someplace for dinner.
I walked down the hippodrome plaza. The old hippodrome is long gone and in its place is big plaza which runs alongside the Blue Mosque up to the Hagia Sophia.
Since I was getting a full tour of the area tomorrow. I decided to just stroll around the outside and get my bearings.
I finished the evening with dinner next to the hippodrome plaza. Then back to the hotel for some rest and try to get some sleep through the jet lag.
2023 Shikoku Henro 