Last Day in Istanbul (12/5)

Traveling is never easy; travel days are never fun. Rain and 7 degrees celsius didn't help either, to make the best of things. Last night we checked the forecast for the weather so we knew if we should even bother attempting Topkapi Palace. We knew it would be awful out so...no alarms! We slept in and had breakfast at the last second before they closed the buffet, cleaned up the room a bit, packed up our bags and left them with the front desk for a little while so we could do one last bit of exploring.

Some light food for lunch and another stop at the baklava place - both very good choices. We got even more baklava this time so we could smuggle it back to Israel and enjoy the treats for a long time.

We had to be ready to depart from the hotel at 12:45 because the shuttle was picking us up to go to the airport. Our flight was not for a few hours but we had to follow instructions and go. Many of the same people on the shuttle ride to the hotel were also going back on the same flight, it seemed. The shuttle dropped us off at the airport and we got through security and ticketing and went to the gate. They changed the gate on us so we had to switch locations, just like our first flight out there. But the flight also became delayed. The good news is that I was able to do a lot more reading than I would have!

We boarded the plane, had our own row again, just like on the way going to Turkey, landed in Tel Aviv, left the airport, waited for a sherut (shared cab) to fill up going to Jerusalem, and made it back home by about 9:30pm. Not too bad for a day of traveling.

Now it's time to finish all that baklava!