Istanbul

After travelling for 24 hours straight we've made it to Istanbul from Amsterdam(highlights include sleeping on the floor in heathrow...everybody HAS to do that at least once or it's not officialy a Europe trip)

Istanbul is quite the sight.... you sure don't see 1000 year old buildings when you're cruising around kitsilano.... we're staying in sultanahmet which is the downtown toursit core, though it doesn't seem very busy right now which is nice....rooms are cheap (12$ US each) and pints cost 3$ CDN.....we hear that the rest of turkey is much cheaper so loooking forward to getting to the south and the beaches....

last night we hooked up with jeff's buddy Gokhan who took us to this exclusive istanbul club right on the bosphorus (imagine skybar, but with less pretentious turks and RIGHT on the water)...the kind of place where nobody pays the bartender becuase all the drinks go on your tab....very cool....and the turkish ladies are beautiful, they look middle-eastern, asian, and white at the same time....quite exotic...though again the language barrier is preventing me from actually talking to any of them....

going to try and see some of the tourist sites today like Topkapi Palace and the Blue Mosque etc...

it looks like getting pictures sent back may prove a bit difficult but i'm going to try and find a way....

L8r,

ryan