My wonderful travel to Turkey first day

During my internship, I had great opportunities to visit many countries all over the world as the Visa student allows you to go wherever you desire in the Shenghen area. While there are some countries in the world that exige having a visa for entry to visit them, turkey is one of the countries that does not apply such an obligation especially for Tunisian people so I had the great idea to organise the best trip ever to Turkey during the holidays and to go with my dearest friends that really were dreaming of a travel in group and were therefore much excited to organise and plan the trip day by day, to calculate the budget needed, the places that we want to visit and the crazy things we could experience as one of our friends was about to marry so this travel was also meant to celebrate her last days of being single in this earth.

1- Arrival to Turkish airport 

After we organised our baggage in a good way, we revised for the last time our planning, it is important to note that everyone needing to travel must firstly do a mathematic equation to see the correlation between his budget and the things he wants to experience in the country, for us the Turkish currency meaning turkish liras went down in the international level very fast and it costs currently seven times as much cheap as the Tunisian dinars so in practical terms we could change small amount of money that would be converted into a lot in Turkish money and this is even better in euros, this is one of the tips many people must do in order for them to enjoy the best times abord and not spend so much money from their pocket. We prepared all our baggages and went by different cars to the airport Tunis Carthage for our amazing trip with the heart full of enthusiasm, big expectations, joy and much more of the feelings we can feel when putting our feet inside the airport.

After the check in processes, we changed firstly our amount of money to American dollars as the Turkish liras are not available in the Tunisian airport , we must therefore change again the amount to Turkish liras when we arrive to the country of destination turkey to be able to use them, we have also a travel card where we can put by bank processes an amount of money and use it in the different adequate distributors to pay many things like a hotel reservation or the cost of travel from airport to the hotel. During that so much festive atmosphere full of delight, we discovered suddenly that our flight was being late for three complete hours. We had therefore just to wait in the waiting room until we discover something new about that. But this incident did not prevent us from being delighted to go to this amazing city full of charm, surprises and magical armosphere. Even though we did not know so much about the Turkish language but we were counting on the English as an international language to speak also we had close relationship to Turkey as it was the home of the most famous actors we really liked especially that the Turkish series got translated in Arabic language and are constantly diffused in the Arabic world TV channels so we got to know much of the way of living, style, way of thinking and characteristics of this amazing country just from these romantic series. We wanted to go visit the filming sites and discover the landscapes we were seeing in TV right in front of our eyes. This is also good in terms of cultural exchange between countries and to develop our intellectual capacities. After three hours of waiting we were called to regain the plane as it was the time for departure.

We regained our sites with the smile wide open in our mouth, loughing smiling and telling our funny stories, in that exact moment, the pilote had to interfere to say that four passengers changed their mind for the travel and had To go back  it was therefore necessary to   pick their baggage from the plane so it will cause another waste of time. We were about to be a bit angry but we had to understand that these things can happen and it was useless to waste the time into being annoyed and what should happen actually happened the four people caused so much late to the departure and we had to wait one half hour more. Finally, the pilote announced the time of our depart so everyone was clapping happily and encouraging the pilote to land us in safe way.

2- First day in Istanbul 

After two hours of travelling in the air, we reached finally the airport of Istanbul, we  actually paid in advance a service in internet meant to assure our transport from the airport to the hotel. After getting our baggage, and completing all the formalities in the airport, we felt the world between our hands our freedom our desire to discover this amazing city that have so much hidden tresors for us to discover and to enjoy, nothing could at that special time annoy us or let us overthink it was the time for our explosion discovery and much more.

We found a man waiting for us in the terminal that was from the transport company and that assured our transport to our hotel, as it was night, we could barely distinguish the monuments of the city but the travel was really worthy to do as this city is very famous for its historical heritage, it's amazing characteristics that give it a unique style also it was very mixed and moderate country so we could see women veiled and other unveiled , some of them were muslims and the others were Christian so we could really see an heterogeneity of people living together in the same land.

Our hotel was located in the central square of the capital called taksim , this square is like European countries characterised by many pijeons everywhere and so much shops around offering great nutritional products. We were also very much surprised in the positive way about the hotel commodities and the rooms were clean tidy well organised with all the necessary needs for us we really realised at that time that we were in the most amazing and beautiful city ever, we went to have dinner downstairs and we found an amazing restaurant offering superb menues of food , especially the Turkish kabab that is actually grilled meat offered with vegetables potatoes and some rice, the menue falafel was also Turkish which is a mix of vegetables with chicken breasts and there is also the kbab chicken or the grilled mix of meat from cows and chicken together in a same plate decorated with pasta or rice and we could really enjoy good qualities and quantities that left us much happier.

In my opinion, it's a must to taste the country '' specialities because this is the real adventure this is when we really feel our new discoveries not by going  just aboard and limiting ourself to taste the known food for us, not at all poeple must be aware that travels are not meant to stay in restaurants and coffees and limit ourself to our traditional food only it's a journey of discovery so they must taste the plates of the country even if it is much hot or too much salty. for the breakfast we decided to go around the square taksim to taste a turkish speciality.

We could discover that most of the shops offers multiple specialties of sweet cakes, and special sweets called chami and halkoum that have very special way of cooking  that we could probably never taste in another place, the beautiful decoration made us be more enthusiast to taste this amazing plates, we could also distinguish that there are many street vendors offering all type of sweets also but we preferred to taste the sweets from the shops accompanied by the Turkish coffee.
As I had a Turkish friend very close to me before, we used to exchange much about his country and mine and talk about many interesting subjects, he was very happy by knowing that I will be passing through his city so he decided to come meet me with my friends in the coffee and he could by this way guide us through the city and tell us more about every place we went through and the historical heritage of each monuments, we were of course glad by this to have a local by our side to make our travel be even more interesting and more beautiful. It is Important to know that from the first day we discovered that the Turkish people were not good in English at all; so even if you get lost in the street and you ask them to help you, it is very likely that you do not understand each other because many people does not talk English and talk only in their native language which can be a really disadvantageous criteria for the people living there.

2- Carriage ride

We met our Turkish friend and it was really a moment full of joy happiness and warm as he was very happy to meet friends from Tunisia but also because we were very close and happy to establish proper relations in terms of friendship, respect, honesty and confidence.
After walking for hours and trying all the Turkish sweets we had in front of us, we decided to try an attraction that is very cool and that exists until now in this amazingly conserved city which is to ride the horses or more specifically do a tour in carriage with one very beautiful horse of pure race with the hair very well dressed and the skin shining in the sun. Even though the weather was changing a bit but nothing would let us at that point distracted from having fun to the extreme level in this amazing city. The Tour cost like 10 liras per person we ride inside and our tour began for almost fourteen minutes of pure pleasure, we passed by the most symbolic places in the capital Istanbul, we could discover for example the most conserved castles of past kings like sulaymen and Queen Sufia, we could also pass through the narrow streets to see the architecture and amazing design of the houses with their white facades and their wonderful organization, we could also turn by the coastal part where there was the most famous bridge Bosphorus with its very famous and beautiful port on one side and also the boats coming and going to transport people for tourism or affairs; the view of the bridge was amazing that we could even not leave before seeing the Sultan Ahmet III Fountain characteristic of the city, from far away the port was not so long actually not as long as the Vasco da Gama bridge that I previously saw in Lisbon, but there is something that reminded me right way the Portuguese bridge. We also discovered through our carriage tour the existence of three more bridges in the city that are the bridge of Galata, the bridge of halic very near too and a third one very close and showing the boats maybe destined for transport of freight internationally, I think that view was one of the most beautiful views I saw inside the city and the river crossing the city and separating it into two sides made the landscape even more charming. I could also distinguish the presence of various mosques since the city have a percentage of Muslim people but it remain always very mixed in my opinion.

3- The Turkish market

After our very beautiful tour by the carriage with the beautiful horse, we decided to discover the Turkish market not very far from Taksim Square which is the main part of all the capital and from where usually our trip began for the whole journey, we discovered in the beginning of the market a serie of colorful flowers presented in the most beautiful way to attract more people to discover the treasures existing inside this very famous market. We could clearly distinguish that the shops were meant for various products, first we discovered the clothes shops where we could distinguish that the clothes were of an average quality meaning that the tissues are not so much luxurious we could find similar in our Tunisian market too with the same decoration and design also because the Tunisian market do importation mainly from Turkish ones so that can be explained, but we could also discover other shops with better quality and beautiful design where we could buy many clothes in various colors and without spending too much, actually the cost were like from 30 to 100 liras for the clothes so anyone wanting to buy with a proper budget he can really have much beautiful things. In the other hand, the shops offering all sorts of perfumes were also there from the cheapest to the most expensive ones, we could also see the various sweet shops so everything was really melt together in the most amazing mix ever so that people can access everything in the market. Our journey was really promising much joy, much happiness a lot of good meetings and amazing landscapes for the next days of our trip.

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