I'm In The Future, or how my first morning in Istanbul is

So I made it to sleep before 1am (Istanbul time, which is +10 from PST and +7 from EST)...

But then I woke up. At 4:30. And laid in bed for almost two hours before giving up and deciding that a hot shower would be nice. (And nothing makes you stink like 18 hours of travel.) (Though it was really just the 45 minutes of figuring out the trams and being scared they would stop running that really set the stench.) (Sorry if that was too much information.)

So now, it is about 7am and I have a picture of the sunrise for you!

Here are some of my first observations about Istanbul. There are stray cats and dogs wandering around, all the streets are cobblestone, and the buildings are fairly claustrophobic.

Here's my "arriving to Istanbul" story.

I got off the airplane, paid the $20 for my visa, and picked up my luggage. I knew the trams stopped working at midnight, and it was 23:00, so I was getting a little worried, not knowing how long it would take me to get to my transfer location.

I wound my way through the airport, past some ATMs, and down the slowest escalator I've ever been on to the entrance to the light rail (which I had to take to the tram transfer.)

I walked up to the window, and they didn't take credit. I was a bit frustrated, but not too surprised. So I figured I would just walk back up to where the ATMs were and get out some cash.

Wrong.

Unbeknownst to me, when I walked out the doors to go down the exterior escalator, I had passed security. The only way to get back was to put all of my bags on the conveyor and walk through a metal detector.

So I put item after item on the belt, and tried walking through the metal detector. And I set it off. Then I put another handful of stuff on the belt, and still set it off. I was getting a bit frantic at this point, and by the time they let me walk through (I had still set it off, but I think they were sick of me), I was frazzled. So I collected my belongings and got to the ATM.

I don't think I got enough cash out (my brain was converting the wrong direction), but it is a start.

Then I realized that I didn't have my coats. I walked back toward the security lane, got my coats, and hustled down to the light rail.

The light rail system (and the tram, for that matter) operate on these little plastic tokens, so I popped one in and was all set.

Both the light rail and the tram were pretty easy to navigate (which is good, because I'll be using the tram a lot.) And at the nice price of $1 (1,50 Turkish lira), it's a pretty sweet deal. And I made it to the hostel by midnight (with a little bit of help from a taxi guy and tea seller by the side of the road.) Not my fault the Blue Mosque doesn't look very blue at night.

Well, since I couldn't find my converter while I was digging around in the dark this morning, that's all for now, folks!