Guest Post by: Bridget Staroscik O’Reilly
We were in Istanbul and the chance to visit a Turkish bath seemed too intriguing to miss. Of course we had to see the main sites in the city first, and a Turkish bath tends to take a while. None of this would have been an issue except that we only had seven hours total in Istanbul before the ship was due to leave. There we were ten women, girls really, alone in Istanbul as the sun was beginning to set and no clue on how to get to the boat that was more than willing to leave us if we didn’t arrive on time.
When we had gotten to the Turkish bath our group had contained 10 or so men, but their bathing experience went much quicker than ours so when we came out they were long gone. There weren’t laws or anything about women wandering alone in Istanbul, but we were told it wasn’t a good idea. Because of this, our first thought was to find a taxi, but there wasn’t even one in sight. Not to mention the fact that we would have needed at least four taxies to get all of us back to the ship. Even if we did find one taxi, how would we choose who got to go and who had to stay? I looked up at the slowly setting sun and I caught sight of something. Up above the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, I saw the Minaret that was the answer to our prayers.
I had seen that Minaret before during a nighttime adventure. The night before a friend and I were bored so we had taken a quick walk down the gangway and past the dock towards the bridge. We had walked across the bridge and I had marveled at the men who were fishing from this bridge in the middle of the night. When we were about halfway across the bridge I looked up and saw an incredibly beautiful mosque. Its Minarets climbed towards the sky and I wanted to finish my journey across the bridge to see the Mosque up close. Unfortunately it was raining and the two guys I was walking with started whining about getting wet.
Girls… No response beyond the panicked babbling. Girls… I said again. Then finally GIRLS!!!! At that point they looked over at me. I know how to get us out of here. Some looked relieved and some looked skeptical. The rest just looked resigned. After all the ship was going to leave us in Istanbul in a little over an hour and we probably had fifty bucks between us. This was definitely not an ideal situation. Neither was depending on me at this point since this was my first trip to Istanbul, but we were rapidly running out of options.
Continue Bridget's adventure @ Just Don't Lose Sight of the Minaret, Istanbul, Turkey
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Guest Post by: Bridget Staroscik O’Reilly @ Kickmeimdown
