Touristing in Turkey

There are a lot of tourists in Turkey. We occasionally see Americans here, but most of the tourists tend to be German or Spanish or Russian. Amazingly, a majority of the foreign visitors to the country don't even stop by Istanbul, but rather head straight for the beaches along the Aegean, Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. Sultanahmet does get ridiculously crowded, though - Here's a picture of the throngs of tourists near the Blue Mosque:




Because we're studying, we prefer to call ourselves ogrenci, or students. Every time we go anywhere, there are so many things to take pictures of that we all bring our own cameras. We have to embrace the tourist inside us - so much so that when we take pictures we all say "tourists!" Everyone has their own: there's Kristina with the giant camera that dwarfs anyone else (which she got after negotiating the price in customs from $1800 to $30), Emily with her video camera, Zoe with the slightly larger version of my camera, and everyone else with their varying compact cameras. Here they all are:


And some pictures of us touristing:

At the Blue Mosque:


Emily on her video camera at Yedikule
Walking (that's what we do best) by the Dolmabahce Palace:


At a lot of the places we're going we find groups of Turkish kids, all of whom scream out the only only english they know in a fast blur: "hellowhatisyournamemynameis ____". And all of them want to have pictures taken:

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll try to add something tomorrow too.