Istanbul: Day 88-94

Today we woke up at 6am and caught an Uber to the Dubrovnik airport. It was basically on the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro. We had breakfast, which which consisted of a stale plain croissant for me and a fresh nutella croissant for Maya.

We flew on hour or two to Istanbul (apparently turkish airlines is in the Guiness world of records for the most countries traveled to by one airline, I don't think they deserve that spot), and caught an Uber, which they said that 4 adults could sit in the back seats. We barely fit with 2 kids in the back. They also tried to drop us 2km away from our apartment. After all that mum get angry at my grandmother because she didn't tip them.

The next day we just relaxed all day. We bought some books and I got "The history of the world in bite sized chunks". We went to a cafe where I had o do my school work about amino acids.

In the evening we went to a park for dinner with relatives. There was Turkish pizza and eclairs. The chocolate one unfortunately had hazelnuts, so I had to have the vanilla one instead. There was my great grandmother, and her four kids. Dilek (my grandmother), Demet, Mehmet and Buket, and their kids and husbands and wives.

The next day we went to a shopping centre and we went to an aquarium. They had stuff like sharks crocs, naked mole rats, and lizards.

The following day we went to a place called Hoopla Loopla. They had a trampoline park with foam pits and (you guessed it), trampolines. There was a weird thing where there was a screen and you jumped, and a character moved on the screen.

The next day we went to my great aunt Demet's house for breakfast. After that, we caught a train to Reopen to Topkapi Place, we saw the ottoman crown jewels, and a bunch of other swords and stuff. Topkapi isn't really a palace. It was an old Ottoman palace where the Sultan lived. There was this little pot where people would put in money for the needy, and the needy would that what they need. The special thing was that people couldn't tell if you were putting in or withdrawing money, which saved the needy from embarrassment.

After that we had a street limit, which was way better than the ones in store.

The next day we went to the grand bazar, and I got a turkish eye and dad really wanted to "invest" in some gold.

After the grand bazaar, we went to the spice market, where we got some Turkish delight.

Can I just say that in Turkey, it's hard being allergic to walnut. In Europe, they love putting hazelnut in everything (which I am also allergic to), but that's nothing compared to turkey's walnut obsession. The grandpa used to make we carry bags of walnuts at the supermarket, and the turkish people can hide it in anything. Figs, walnut! bread, walnut!, salad, walnut oil! croissants, would you know it, WALNUTS!

I basically had to eat pumpkin soup and mashed potato like a baby every day, but it was better than the alternative. At Lyceum I basically had a reaction daily to hazelnut (actually I probably can't eat mashed potato and pumpkin soup because even they probably have walnuts added in Turkey). My dad's theory is that people with nut allergies just die off at birth.

That day, we went to my other great aunt Buket for dinner. They had a massive jar full of coins, and we searched all of them to look for cool ones. I got to keep some of them, so I guess that's souvenir coin #17, 18 and 19 (BTW, we also found a coin from 1943, and Buket's old wedding ring).

On our final day, before heading to Cairo, we had coffee and drove to the airport. It takes so long to get over the Bosphorus, because 20 million people have to funnel down into 4 bodies, and it took about an hour and a half to the airport hotel, and it was another 15 minutes drive to the airport.

We just relaxed for the rest of the day, because had a very early start the next morning.