Berlin is most definitely one of our favourite cities. We met up with our friends from Perth, who were also visiting Germany for a friend’s wedding. We stayed in a tiny hostel called Riverside Hostel in Kreuzberg http://accommodations.riverside-lodge.de/. We definitely recommend both the hostel and the area. It was such a cool, alternative, hipster place. We hired bicycles and rode around the city. So many parks on the river, great and cheap food and beer. So many quirky sites, it just seemed so progressive and accepting of everyone. Street art, markets, events happening every day, Berlin is a great place to be in summer.
Off to sunny (it actually was!) England and Wales for a few weeks to see the relatives. We actually had beautiful weather; Britain is quite lovely when the sun shines. We saw most of Anneka’s family – including some new additions, ate fish and chips, laverbread (a welsh delicacy made from seaweed) and Joe’s icecream (everything else is just icecream), drank warm ale, finally experienced the gay scene in Birmingham and drove in my uncle’s 1920’s Hodgkiss!
20 000+ Decorative Tiles in Sultan Ahmed Mosque completed in 1616
Decorative Tiles in Sultan Ahmed Mosque completed in 1616
Grand Bazaar Markets
Perfect place to relax; have a tea and chat with friends
Typical fruits and smoothie stall
Amazing cheese at Namli Gurme Karakoy
Eat meat at Namli Gurme Karakoy
Hope you don’t mind stairs
Wonderful streets of Istanbul
Whiny cats everywhere
Panorama 1453 museum
Panorama 1453 museum
Istanbul 3 – 11 July 2014
Where to start – what an awesome city!
We stayed in an Airbnb apartment hosted by Mert, https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1996037. It was a very funky and clean apartment, in a convenient and hip location. Unfortunately I did not have the best start though with some serious digestion problems, I felt pretty awful. It was doubly upsetting because my friend only had three days with us, and I was sick for nearly the entire time. Why do the travel doctors we visit before leaving home insist on giving us a truckload of diarrhoea medicine, but nothing for the opposite problem?
Anyway, we loved Istanbul, a relatively cheap city for being the gateway to Europe, and so beautiful and surprisingly clean. The Mosques were breathtaking, cool bars and restaurants, very beautiful, trendy people. We loved it! I won’t spend more time writing about it, other than to say, GO to Istanbul!
PS if you have a little extra time up your sleeve, and about $40 per person, we recommend checking out Suada, a swimming pool for Turkey’s elites in the middle of the Bosphorus river. It was quite relaxing, not to mention funny watching the ‘beautiful’ people strut their stuff. http://suadaclub.com.tr/en/index.html
