Out and about

What a day!! Today we went to Dolmabahce Palace which happens to be my favorite palace in Istanbul (or anywhere else for that matter). A little history...the Dolmabahçe Palace was home to six sultans from 1856, when it was first inhabited, up until the abolishment of the Caliphate in 1924: The last royal to live here was Caliph Abdulmecid Efendi. A law that went into effect on March 3, 1924 transfereed ownership of the palace to the national heritage of the new Republic. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding leader of this modern republic, used the palace as a presidential house in summers and enacted some of this most important works here. Ataturk spent his last days and died here on 10th October 1938.
The palace has an area of 45,000 m² (11.2 acres), and contains 285 rooms, 44 halls, 6 baths and 68 toilets. I think we saw saw pretty much everything in it including a ridiculous amount of chairs. It's absolutely beautiful inside. There were 14 tons of gold used in the ceiling when they were making it which just goes to show that it's amazing from top to bottom.

You have to wear what look like showercaps on your shoes to help to keep the palace clean. They are pretty attractive as you can see for yourself. :)

I was pretty excited to be back in the palace.
Afterwards we went to Taksim which is the heart of Istanbul. It has a long street called Istiklal Street that just has tons of shops and cafes and all sorts of stuff.
We walked around there for a little while and stopped for a late lunch and some Turkish coffee. No one in our group really likes coffee but we all got it because it's an experience and we are in Turkey!!

On the way home we had an interesting experience. We some how managed to find the most clueless cab driver in Turkey. At first I thought he was trying to scam us because he asked if we knew which way to go. Unfortunately, that's not something you can really fake in Istanbul. The streets are super confusing and half of them don't even seem to be labeled. I had to say no but I told him to take the first bridge (since we had to cross back over to the Asian side). Then as we were driving along he kept rolling down the window and asking for directions. At one point some guy told us there was no way to get to the bridge from where we were so the guy had to go back to where we started and go in a completely different direction. Needless to say, we were all pretty relieved when we made it back to the hotel.

On to the highlights of the day...I got my luggage back!! And it was quite a miracle too. Somehow the big white sticker tag that they put around the handle of my luggage fell off. I know they put it on in Michigan because I watched them. My luggage must have at least made it overseas because the guy called me today and said "I just talked to your mom and we have your luggage." I was so confused. He said that the tag came off so I thought that was the tag with my information on it. Luckily, there is another one on the luggage that has my mom's information on it. So they called my mom and she gave them my number here which is how they got a hold of me. It's quite confusing and I'm not sure if I really understood what happened but I have all my stuff and I'm stoked!

Tomorrow is our first day in the office. It's a shame we can't just go sightseeing and have adventures every day!