My amazing journey in Turkey day 2

During our second day of the trip, we planned to visit the most emblematic castle of all turkey probably that is called saint sophia near the blue mosque. We therefore began to prepare ourselves after we spent an amazing night with the head full of the most amazing souvenirs of our first day with our turkish friend. our planning was of course prepared from days before to not waste time during the trip for searching the way of our mean of transport and to exploit every minute to discover this amazing country and what has istanbul to offer to us from its various surprises.

Our turkish friend and guide was present in our meeting and we could go with him in his car as he invited us so kindly and as knowing the different streets more than us so we accepted with pleasure to go for the adventure.

During our trip in the car we could have long conversations about the nature of people and exchange more about the culture and we discovered that the Turkish men did not have big attraction towards their female partners in turkey and wanted more to be with foreigners and when we asked why we received a weird answer that the women were attracted more about the socioeconomic situation of the man firstly, meaning his wealth more than her feelings towards him, it was an issue for our friend to even find a women to marry. The funniest part is that most of Turkish men are very good looking so we were very surprised to know this and we started to laugh and tell funny jokes. The Turkish series were all with prevalence of romance and were all with the most handsome and good looking actors that we, in Tunisia admired so much as these series were also translated in Arabic language for us so in my opinion, this increase the cultural exchange and allows people to interact more easily and be very fast big friends.

1- Saint Sophia Palace

We finally reached our amazing destination, the castle was already fabulous from the outside and as people were few and there was not crowded movement, we enjoyed the time to do many pictures of this amazing monument that showed a strong presence and a big historical heritage and moving stories behind its construction and the queen that was living inside. We could distinguish Arabic inscriptions in the walls which were really impressed to read showing the predominance of the Islamic religion for decades in that region. The entrance was really meant for kings and queens with a huge garden decorating it and beautiful flowers from both sides of the entrance making it be so beautiful to visit and to discover. The palace was so spacious and wide from the inside with much detailed decoration and with gold inscriptions in walls the upper part was even more fabulous testifying of great art and amazing and beautiful design to construct such a masterpiece and eventually conserve it as its initial state, this is really what impressed us the most is its conserved state for decades. A huge swimming pool with so much clear water color was decorating the entrance of the castle making it on the most emblematic palaces ever and showing the most beautiful landscape we could see ever.

2- The famous hammam

The Harim Sultan Hammam is very famous sauna as it represents the sauna where the past king sulayman was taking his bath with his various wives as the myth says. We had great discovery of the whole story about this hammam and about its characterics while we watched the Turkish serie translated in Arabic called Harim sultan, it crashed all the success of any other serie before and showed really the story of this king with the women his heat loved, the inside was made was made from marble with large swimming pools and amazing design, we could really see that the Turkish hammam resembles a lot an Arabic sauna in terms of architecture and design also in the inside and I can say that we couple of Turkish saunas in Tunisia that have exactly the same style. We could enjoy many picture with this huge monument and decided to go after for lunch. For our lunch we prepared food bought from outside and bring with us all sorts of fruits, vegetables and Turkish sweets to do an amazing picnic near the castle part in a deserted garden where we put a cover on the herb and decided to be in the most relaxed mode ever, We brought with us cheese to do sandwishes and we unpacking our things while laughing and feeling much joy for our amazing journey. That’s when our friends told me to not turn around because an animal was there and the food attracted him by its smell especially cheese, I was terrorized and did not like this joke at all, but then I could distinguish the sound of a small mouse that came out of its home to come and have our lunch the funniest thing is that I was the only one in fear, the other friends did not decide to change the place but I told them that it was impossible to share our food with such an animal so we had to change our place to another more quite and calm to enjoy our meal in tranquility.

3- Tramway tour

After having our lunch with our Turkish friend and having long conversations about many cultural subjects and about the studies conditions in turkey, we discovered from our faithful friend that for people interested in turkey as a country and loving its atmosphere that there is a special scholarship where they could apply to be able to do a research or an internship in the Turkish research labs for example for students in Phd that want to persue part of their research in turkey. This scholarship is given by the Turkish government to students in need and could finance their stay inside the city. We then went to discover one of the most conserved characteristics when we here about Istanbul which is the tramway, exactly like Lisbon, the tramway still exist inside turkey as a main mean of transport and without any doubt is considered very touristic and amazing attraction to try. We decided to do a tour with it to show us the districts that we could may be not reach by walking inside the city, the tramway was an amazing way also to do pictures very close to monuments and it was amazing to try this tour as it had different various stops, and people could for example go out of the tramway for the first top go around by walking and see the city , do pictures discover the charm of that place then decide to go back to the tramway in the next stop and catch another one to continue their trip to the terminus and by this way they could not loose anything from every stop the tramway offers, without so much energy in walking or so much spending to use other mean of transportation.

---

Photo gallery