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After quite some time in the bus at the border, they finally make us get off the bus, and I’m officially visiting my first Asian country! Well, I’m still in geographical Europe, but you know what I mean. The border control also makes us take our luggage off the bus, to check them along with our passports. It takes a while before everyone is back in the bus, and we’re off… For 50 m. This time, the police enters the bus and recheck our passports. The whole border crossing took a good hour, but we’re eventually sent back on our merry way (if such a concept applies to bus rides).

İstanbul (Istanbul) is out the charts. The lights from the suburbs started to appear well over an hour before we arrived at the bus station. Which is GIGANTIC, I have never seen something quite like that. It’s an immense underground multi-storey bus hangar, in which i’m sure you could park hundreds, if not thousands, of buses.

We arrived there at 3:40 AM, which is a wee bit early to my taste. Thankfully, as I quickly discovered, İstanbul is 24/7 city. The upper level is full with shops and cafés. So I patiently wait, drinking tea and having a very early breakfast, until the metro starts its service at 6 AM.

A second metro brings me « downtown » (if such a concept applies to İstanbul). I walk the empty streets alone (which in retrospect might not have been the smartest idea), and cross one of the vast city parks, the Gülhane Park. This bring me to the road that run along the Bosphorus strait. And now it all sinks in: it’s my first sight of Asia! And it just simply couldn’t have been better. By now, it was 7 AM, and the sun was slowly rising over the hills on the opposite side of the Strait, illuminating the sea and the waking city in reds and golds. Now, I’m not a morning person, and I hate sunrise most of the time. But this… this is Majesty. I feel so lucky to be right here, right now, walking along the coast. This is one of these moments that you know will be imprinted in your memory until your last breath. It’s up here with the view over Canyonlands NP.

Pursuing my way to the south, I then enter the touristic center proper, and find myself in front of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. They are facing each other, some hundred meters appart, separated by a beautiful place/garden. I realize that my luck is not over, as it’s still too early for tourists to queue for visit. I have these two magnificent pieces of art and architecture for me alone (and some other fellow early birds). Two wonders facing each other, without the mass of people to spoil the view. Just time to take a coffee, and the crowds arrive. I was right to make the best of it earlier!

At 9 AM, I check in the hostel. Which by the way, is 5 min walk away, bang in the touristic center. Quite how you can find a bed for 10 € a night so close to the most visited monuments in a multi-thousand kilometers radius is a mystery to me, but yes, please, I’ll take it. My bed is free, so they let me crash early.

I slept until 2 PM, went out for lunch nearby, walk a bit, and came back to rest some more until 6 PM. I was exhausted. After an interesting chat with Reisan the Iranian, I go back in the city, to loose myself in the Grand Bazaar, and some more random walking.

İstanbul is full of stray dogs and cats. They generally ignore people, and people ignore them at worst, and at best feed them. One of these cats entered the hostel this evening. I’m not sure he should be here (I learned later that it was absolutely normal in Turkey). He’s cute and all, but a bit to playful for me tonight.