Across The River

After my expensive adventure the night before, I needed to tighten up my budget for a few days. I decided that it was going to be a self guided tour of Asia on the shoe leather express. Luckily, in Istanbul, Asia is just across the strait of Bosporus, a metro train stop away from Europe.

I popped up out of the metro station and had the immediate feeling this side of the river was different. Strangely, it felt more western than the west side. the town center seemed much newer. Not a typical European old city center that I

 grow a bit tired after the first few. There are narrow walking streets. Lined with bars and restaurants and a lot of book shops and records stores. Its pretty cool to walk around for an afternoon.

It was hard to decide on lunch because there are tons of food stalls and everything looked delicious. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t miss any option so kept looking and looking. Finally, I just  hopped into a random sandwich shop and ended up with a delicious meat sandwich. It seemed like a specialty but I have Googled and Bing’d unsuccessfully to find out what it is called. I stopped in one of the alley way pubs and had a beer to watch the world go by for a bit. 

I was planning to head out in the morning. Otherwise, I would have stuck around to see what happens at night. That     being said, I would definitely stay on this side of the strait of Bosporus.    I decided to head back to the Europe on top of the water. The ferry ride was much more scenic then the train but very much slower. But there was no hurry since I didn’t really have anywhere to be until the next day.

I packed up my stuff and headed out for an evening stroll and dinner in my neighborhood one last time. I had to head to the airport around lunch and I wanted to get up early to make full use of the breakfast buffet before heading out.