Novelty

So, Rachael and I have safetly arrived in Istanbul. Amidst torrential downpour yesterday that turned the streets into rivers, we found our hostel. It is in an excellent location, right in the old city between the aya-sophia and the blue mosque. I'm not really sure what either of these things are, but will find out soon as soon we are going to look around and explore.

Arriving at the airport went very smoothly, aside from we had to purchase a rip-off visa... It was 60USD for a sticker in our passport. It was actually a sticker, and they didn't check anything. I'm sure Turkey will be worth it though, it has already impressed me. We made it to our hostel without incident, using the metro system, which was very easy to navigate, setteled in and then ventured out in search of food. We, being both obviously non-Turkish got a fair bit of attention. It seemed to work in our favour this time though. We ended up picking a rather fancy restaurant (not that fancy, but it wasn't street meat) and got quite a few free thing from our server. This included free apple tea and peach liqueur (both very good). If this is what blonde hair gets me, I'm sure I can deal with it. I think it's mainly just the novelty factor, I didn't see a single person yesterday with naturally blonde hair, and got a lot of Germany shouts

We are hoping to head to the largest undercover market in the world today, so I'm sure many more stories will come of that.