Layton's Location: Istanbul & Munich

Jordan and I took a little vacation to Istanbul and Munich at the end of September. We spent three days gallivanting around Istanbul and then headed to Munich to meet up with Kelly and Robby for Oktoberfest. We saw a lot of history and drank a lot of beer. I guess you could say it was the perfect vacation! Here are some pictures of our journey...

ISTANBUL

We stayed at the Avicenna Hotel that was perfectly located in the Sultanhamet area of Istanbul. We were within walking distance to all of the big site seeing spots.


View from our room.

We took a guided tour of the blue mosque which was beautiful! The next three pictures are all of the blue mosque.

You really only had to cover your shoulders but as I walked through the security line and whipped out my scarf, the Turkish security guard felt the need to wrap me up like a hot tortilla! I felt legit!

No shoes allowed!

We took a 2 hour boat tour and were sandwiched between Europe and Asia the whole time.

We also had a guided tour of the Istanbul hippodrome. The hippodrome was used for chariot races and gladiator battles during the 3rd and 4th centuries. This monument was put in the middle of the hippodrome in 390AD, however, it is not a Roman or Turkish artifact. This monument was actually built in Egypt in 1490 BC!!! That means it is roughly 3,500 years old! It's a solid block of granite and is in extremely good shape!

This man made this...

This treat is like something I've never tasted before. Jordan and I were wondering around the city when we noticed the man in the picture above making this taffy like sucker. We had no idea what it was but couldn't resist the pretty colors. Once we dug in to it it tasted just like melted gummy bears!!! Delicious! Later on in our trip we noticed that this taffy gummy bear sucker was an illegal operation. We started observing police officers rolling by on their segweys looking for the taffy men. When the taffy men saw police come they would pick up their trays and run out of site. Instead of illegally selling watches and purses, they were in the hot taffy sucker business!

MUNICH - Bring on the beer!

Welcome to the Hippodrom! This was our first stop for Oktoberfest!

The German band that played very festive music that made you want to wave your stein high in the air to the beat!

Our waitress, Stephi, had no issues carrying ten liters of beer all at once! I honestly don't know how she did it. Jordan and I had bruises on our hands from drinking out of these steins...that's how heavy just one liter of beer was!

Robby and Jordan made friends with some German biker dudes.

This is pretty much the only site we saw that didn't involve beer. I honestly couldn't tell you what its name is or any history behind it. We just stood there waiting for the tiny dancing people to dance at the top of the hour but we missed it!