Istanbul

Administrative day…and what a day. We spent the morning dealing with e-mail and trying to get our Armenian Airlines tickets sorted out. The guy running the agency was an idiot and it took us 2 hours to get two airline tickets. We took him out of the loop on the Georgia tickets and went to Turkish Air ourselves and had the tickets done in 15 minutes. Then, it was another fight with Citibank and our hose job at Akbank (American Express’s agent) trying to get US dollars. It took the entire day to just get the basics done.

Photo courtesy of Flickr
We did get a chance to stroll through the streets of Taksim- a beautiful part of the city filled with elegant, but in many cases, dilapidated old Ottoman houses- very Victorian looking. We winded our way down to Galata Tower and took in the view of the city from the top. The tower was built in 1348 in connection with the expansion of the Genoese colony. The views were spectacular.