Helium - Travel Diary: Our Trip Through Bulgaria And Into Turkey - Guide

Travel diary: Our trip through Bulgaria and into Turkey - Helium
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Also businessmen or boys will come up to us and offer to show us around if we will later go to their carpet shop. By the time we got ready to come home we had almost mastered it. Carpet salesmen were always assailing us every time we passed a shop. For the two weeks we were in Turkey we were millionaires. For us 400 years is a long time, but 4000 years is nearer to their time frame. I will try to give you a little of the flavor of that unbelievably old, exotic place. If you have never been there, I will certainly highly recommend it as a worthwhile trip.My two Peace Corps Volunteer comrades had made reservations at a Hotel in the Sultanahmet section of Istanbul. It grew rather tiresome after a while, but we were usually polite in our rejection of their pitch. It is called the "cradle of civilization" and that certainly seems fitting.The first couple of days we toured "on our own" the regular touristplaces such as Topkopi Palace, the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, and theYerebatan Cistern. It was a challenge trying to figure out millions when we went to pay for things. It was completed in 532 and was used until the 16th century. It will hold about 80,000 cubic meters of water.If we wanted a guide there were always men available to oblige. Luckily the bills were in large denominations so we didn't have a fist full of bills to contend with. Our taxi from the airport to the hotel was $10, which didn't seem bad when split three ways. Should travelers explore their home country first or travel abroad as often as they can? Skin care and the aging process The top 5 keys to a longer life Can science settle the question of whether money can buy happiness? That is in the old part where a lot of the historic places are located. That way we can go at our own pace and rest when we needed to. The Cistern was an underground water container built during the Byzantine period to store water to supply the city during times of siege. The exchange rate for the dollar was about 1,700,000 Turkish Lires to the dollar. The first and only time in my life when I will be able to say that. The lowest was 250,000 then there were 500,000 and 1 million bills. To see the places that have been occupied for so many thousands of years boggles the mind. We had to be careful to count the zeros because it was easy to confuse the 500,000 with the 5 million. We preferred to go on our own rather than pay the guides. You are reading the article ranked and rated 1 by Helium's writers.