Finally, after a week of waiting, we pulled the precious footage off of our Sony HC9 and I was able to put this little diddy together. Don’t miss the Skype call at the end.

The Conrad Hotel on Victory Day

Apparently, today was a national holiday in Turkey; Victory Day to be precise. It’s a celebration of the Turkish victory over the Greeks at the Battle of Dumlupınar, the last battle fought in the Turkish War of Independence.

Although we did notice the increase in the number of flags around the city in the days prior, we might have overlooked it entirely if the sound of helicopters hadn’t caught Brian’s attention. We went out on the terrace just in time to catch 9 helicopters and the start of a parade of naval vessels down the phosphorus strait. The parade was lead by a naval destroyer, followed by four submarines, four smaller cruisers, four bigger cruisers, and then a host of miscellaneous military boats.

Enjoy the photos from the day!

A Turkish submarine on The Bosphorus

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Totally thought she was taller.

A few months back, my laptop decided that I no longer had the correct brand of power adapter and therefore it was no longer going to charge my battery. It will happily turn on when plugged in, but unless it’s sure my power adapter is a Dell (and it is), its going to guard access to my battery closer than a farmer guards his twin daughters. The only logical reason for this is that Dell brand power must be the electronic equivalent of sipping Cristal while generic brand power exists only to be chugged liberally by frat-laptops. Whatever the case may be, I decided to give replacing it a chance, so I had my family ship me the spare I’d left at home back in April. Yesterday, a man who only spoke Turkish came to our door and had Rob sign for a white slip of paper, also entirely in Turkish, that seemed to say that my package was somewhere within the city limits.

Here’s where the fun begins! Today, my boss had to meet with a customer for about an hour, so I figured I’d run out and pick it while he was gone. I dashed down to the bus stop and hopped on a Metro bus towards what I hopped was the right address. I was a little off, and needing to be quick, I hailed a cab who drove in what can only be described as large figure eights towards my destination, finally dropping me off at the cargo processing center. Once inside I showed the slip to a number of security guards who directed me to a long dingy looking hallway with 9 different numbered windows and a general atmosphere like a combination DMV/Hospital. I could detail each of the 6 separate lines I stood in and the 5 different documents I shuffled between windows, but it would take as long as the experience itself. In short, it was explained to me that any package with a declared value of over 100 Euros had to be picked up at this location so that a 10% customs tax could be assessed. Unfortunately my package had been declared as 105 Euros ($150 USD), so not only was it not delivered to my doorstep, I would have to pay 23 TL if I ever wanted to see my box again. Explaining that the contents of the box were barely worth 23 TL didn’t seem to matter much to them, and when I asked to speak to a customs agent I was just told: “You don’t need to talk to him”.  In the end I conceded defeat and paid the 23 TL customs fee and attempted to collect my package, only to be sent back to the first window to pay a 2 TL ‘service fee’ for the assessment of the customs fee!

Finally, two hours after leaving work, I walked out of the cargo office one package heavier and a total of 46 TL ($30 USD) lighter. Luckily my boss had a good sense of humor about it and didn’t mind me vanishing from the office for a good chunk of the day. The lesson learned here is that bureaucracy is alive and well at the PTT (Turkish Post Telegraph and Telephone) and you should always declare the value of your package under 100 Euros if you want to avoid a similar fate.

Join us again for Volume II, if and when the package that Brian had shipped out here over a month ago ever arrives!

Istanbul has some pretty varied districts, some home to a whole host of entertaining/hip stencils.  This is by far the most prevalent we’ve seen graffiti yet on this trip.  Maybe we’ll even see the jet join this collection one of these days…

More ahead…

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I’ve been arguing with Brian all day about this one, so I’m going to post this up for you all to decide yourselves. Exactly how many of Jen’s heads fit over my butt? Included: the original, Brian’s version (7 faces), and mine (4 faces).

This is the original

I was pretty sure I had seen the sign for a local neighborhood restaurant somewhere before…

I am not sure that I’ll be able to stop obsessing over our view.  Hopefully this should help explain why.  Here’s a panorama of our rooftop view at sunset.

Check it out on flickr and enjoy the full size view (16224×3228).

Rob’s friend Serene (who is the awesomest person of life) came all the way out from LA to spend a week with us in Istanbul.  After I got my lip piercing the other day, Serene made a deal with Rob, our new friend Bengu and I that if we all got tattooed she would pay for them.  Naturally I was all over that, Bengu was in and Rob couldn’t say no at that point. We managed to get into a well known tattoo shop here called Inkstanbul Artcore and we got tattooed by the very talented (and hot) Danny Garcia.

Check out part one leading up to the big moment!

PS.  On behalf of Rob, we apologize to our mothers for doing this.  We’re VERY VERY sorry, we love you very much.

This city is beautiful.