My wife had been nagging me for a vacation for a long time, and I would make one excuse or the other to delay the eventual. There were many reasons for me doing this, one I did not find a place interesting enough to visit and other did not want to spend my free time travelling instead of being close to my TV.
As always I finally yielded to pressure, and agreed to make plans for a small trip during Eid holidays, this led to another problem , choosing the place to visit, after a few days of pondering over the net reading about different tourist destinations, both of us zeroed on 'Istanbul'.
This seemed a perfect destination as it had a blend of both the traditional Islamic heritage mordern turkish society in it. Finally we got all the arrangements done and all was set for the trip that my wife had been looking forward to for a long time.
We reached Istanbul in the early hours and I immeditely fell in love with the place, the climate was extremely pleasent, with nice warm faces at the airport. We made our way through the immigration and baggage section to a taxi outside the airport. The ride to the hotel from the airport was extremely wonderful as I kept looking at each mosque we passed trying to figure out if this is the famous blue mosque, but the driver corrected me and pointed out that to view the Blue mosque I had to take a detor and that would delay my reaching the hotel by over an hour. So we stuck to our plan and finally reached the hotel, a small cozy hotel Pera Tulip. The taxi guy had to ask for directions before we reached the place, it was only later that I found that he had charged me twice what he should have charged me in the first place.
Istanbul is an amazing place as I have mentioned its a perfect mix of mordernity and classical culture. Its a definte visiting place for someone who has interest in Ancient Islamic artifacts and palaces. The city is full of palaces and is a feast for eyes.
