Istanbul. Where to begin? I am so happy we went, especially since I highly doubt I would have ever chosen to visit Turkey over any other place in the world were it not for this trip (although Hagia Sophia's location there would have been a big push in Istanbul's favor). I feel so lucky to have been given this incredible experience of so much new and so much different. The world is a big place. Now I know that.
Istanbul is certainly a field day for the senses. I am convinced that it is a city you cannot truly understand or appreciate without the sounds, the smells, the tastes, without touching it. You can't know Turkey from photos. You have to smell the heavy aroma of a variety of spices in the Egyptian Bazaar. You have to taste the warmth and comfort of simple, delicious meat and potatoes in tomato stew, lamb kebap, baklava, and sweet, steaming hot apple tea. You need to hear the street vendors yell to each other and to you, using their best English to ask, "Can I sell you something you don't need?" You need to wake up to the mystical chant of the daily call to prayer at 5:30 am and to hear it again throughout the day, echoing through the markets, the mosques, the hill-and-valley streets, and later in the deep recesses of your memory.
You need to feel the refreshing heat of tea steam in your cold, dry nose as you take a sip, and to feel the hardness of stone under shoes melt away into soft, bouncy carpet under shoeless feet as you step over the threshold into a mosque. To feel the scarf wrapped around your head, a true relief from the bitter wind and cold and know at the same time that you've left your culture and everything you know behind, maybe in Rome, maybe in the U.S., but that's not really important. All that matters is the here and now, and even that is just a dream.
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