Happy New Year 2014!

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A trip to Istanbul

In the beginning of December M. and I have visited Istanbul, Turkey for the second time. Since our first visit only lasted an afternoon we were very excited to see some more of this huge city.
If you are interested in my first-time experience a few years ago, you are welcome to check out this post published as a part of our Egyptian adventure: A day in Istanbul.

This time we were lucky to get our hands on some very affordable return flight tickets from Ljubljana to Istanbul. As was the case last year on a trip to Lisbon, Portugal, we went as a group of 7 travel friends.

Unfortunately being a pretty large group usually has some disadvantages. For instance choosing a date that was OK for all of us proved to be quite a challenge. Also going for a period longer than 5 days was out of the question.
Everything worked out just fine in the end and we were all happy we went.

At first I was a bit sceptical about visiting the Turkish capital in December but everything turned out just perfect:

• no tourist crowds at all,
• it was not too cold (temperatures never fell under 8 degrees Celsius) and
• we were also lucky enough to make it through without some serious rain or snow.

Also the air was really clear for most of the time, allowing me to snap a few really nice photos.

Since this was another of our budget trips, we stayed in a centrally located hostel. Bahaus Hostel proved to be clean, pretty affordable and there was breakfast included in the price. But then again, it is nothing to write home about.

During our stay we have visited a few tourist attractions and also tried to sample some local past time activities. We were lucky enough to make contact with a local who showed us some really genuine places we would have never found by ourselves. Thanks again Burcu for making our stay even more enjoyable!

I will try to point out at least a few of these places. Hopefully this will help many travellers to this beautiful destination enjoy it even more.

Stay tuned for my next posts.

Clicking on any one of above photos will reveal them all in a much more flattering resolution.

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