Once again in London ready for a Gig

I hadn't seen Julia in a while, and taking advantage of the fact that I was invited to a Temple Velocity Gig whose members where friends of Alejo, I invited her to join us and catch up a bit.

We met in Camden Town and after discussing what to do until the time of the gig, we decided to get some chocolate cookies at Sainsbury (they are soooo good) and some Polish fruity liqueur, and then we proceeded up Primrose Hill to get an impressive view of London. After a nice chat in the grass we headed back to Camden and to The Enterprise where the gig would take place. We got there a little late but got to hear a handful of songs that I found myself singing along to. Apparently I already knew the lyrics by heart because of the amount of times I had heard them on Alejo's Spotify account. A groupie without even knowing it. Btw, check them out on all the social and music media from Facebook and Twitter to Soundcloud and of course Spotify, you'll thank me!

Julia and I said hi to Alejo and after the gig we all headed downstairs to have a beer. There I met Pattra, a gorgeous girl from Thailand who had also attended the gig and was Alejo's classmate. From the moment we both ordered "dark as our soul" Guinness we had instant connection, so Julia, Pattra and I engaged in a nice chit chat. After a while Julia had to leave. This would be the last time we would see each other on this trip. We said goodbye with heavy hearts and promised to meet up again somewhere in the world soon, wherever that might be. I was introduced to the band and Lucian, the lead singer of the band, immediately Nicknamed me "Spacepants" (and continues to call me that) because I had a galaxy painted pair of leggings on. The band had to go but we had some time to chat and of course they were all charming and really fun to talk to.

I had originally invited Bassey to the event but he had other obligations, and so we met up with him, we being Alejo, Pattra and myself, at another bar in Camden Town. We had a few more beers and socialized for a bit longer until Alejo had to head home. We chatted a bit longer and Bassey and I agreed to walk Pattra home since she lived close by, I don't remember how the hell we got there but I do remember us telling random people on the street how we were all planning to backpack from Mexico to Colombia soon.We finally got Pattra home, she invited us in for a few minutes to catch our breath, and then Bassey and I headed back to Camdem town, where we went to pick up a friend of his at King's Cross station (yes, that late). Following that, we went back to his place to get some decent sleep.

We all slept in with good reason. It was a lazy day and the only productive thing done (and not by me) was the delicious, huge and spicy lunch prepared by Bassey. After this great meal I packed up. This was my last day at Bassey's place.I would be heading to Alejo's flat to prepare for traveling to Scotland the next day. Once at Alejo's we got ready to head out for Korean food. If it hadn't been Korean food we were talking about I wouldn't have been able to fit any more in me after that awesome lunch at Bassey's. We had a nice dinner in a very "British pub looking" Korean restaurant but that had really good traditional food (great Kimchi).

To help burn off all of the food, we walked down the bank of the Thames river and about like an hour after I had asked Alejo if he had ever see the Tower Bridge open, to which he said,  "no", it did! It happened right as we were walking over it. At least I got the experience and a semi-decent picture, check it out on my Flickr HERE.

         

Special thanks to Temple Velocity for singing the songs I actually knew, without knowing I did. You guys are magicians.

TV's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100006577961578&fref=ts
TV's Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/temple-velocity

Again, The Pictures!

My first 24 hours in Istanbul, Turkey

It was a sleepless flight. The man behind me had a baby that wouldn't stay still, and the girls in front wouldn't stop gossiping and moving around, ending up in me being in a bad mood to start the day. And it didn't improve. At 6 am, having landed and in the airport, having my passport and Visa to enter the country checked, I discovered there was no internet. No matter, I'd get connected once I was at the place I was staying at. I took a bus to downtown that cost 14 Turkish Lira (about $7) and that took around 45 min to get there. Once in Taksim Square, at around 7am, I started asking people for directions to the address I had. Oh surprise, people would freak out at me speaking to them in English and would just leave, and the ones that did stick around long enough had no idea where it was. Until I bumped into this nice lady that took me to a man that spoke English very well and had an iPhone to look up the address. He showed me the map and pointed me in a direction. I did not reach my destination, I felt I was walking to nowhere. By 9am I was tired of carrying my bag in the hot muggy weather and collapsed onto a bench in a park close to Taksim Square again. I took out my tablet and analyzed the address and the offline Google map I had, I kind of figured out at least what the correct direction was and started walking again. I took a picture of the monument in the middle of the square to orient Alejandro when he arrived later in the afternoon, so he didn't have to go through what I did.

 On the way I asked a taxi driver if I was going in the right direction and he said I was and that I had to turn on the corner of a certain hotel. I walked about 15 minutes and turned at the hotel that said the exact street I was looking for and after 5 minutes more searching, I found the place. I rang and knocked and no one opened. Great! Stranded in this muggy weather with a sore back and sleep deprived. Now what? Luckily, after about 5 minutes this girl walked out of the building. I asked her if she knew Ati, the person in charge of the building. She said he was out but would be back soon and suggested that I give him a call. I didn't have a phone, so I told her I would opt to wait for him. Very kindly, as German people usually are, she lent me her phone to give him a call. He answered and said he'd be there in 30 minutes. Not wanting to stay on the street, I told the girl I would wait inside in the tiny hallway till he arrived. She locked the door and left so I tossed my stuff on the floor and fell on top for a small nap.
 When Ati arrived, he informed me that there were no more rooms available in this building (where we had originally booked on Airbnb), so I was like 'umm.... now what?'. 'But!' he said, 'you'll be staying in the building next door all to yourselves', so that made up for my shock. The rooms in the new building weren't ready so Ati took me to another of the places they owned and gave me a room to sleep in while they got our place ready and while Alejo got there.
So around 6:30pm after I had rested up a bit we went to the new building and Alejandro showed up around 8 pm. I finally had a decent night of sleep, so the next day we were ready to start exploring Istanbul.



We started our day walking towards a large building which ended up being the entrance to the Grand Bazaar, which was closed since it was Sunday. We got a map at the book section right outside of the Bazaar as it started to pour buckets! We waited until it was only a drizzle to continue. Everything being wet, we just started to walk in no direction in particular, and disappointed that we had kind of walked in vain, we went into this place to sit down and rest. We hit the Jackpot! This would become the place we'd visit 4 times in the week we spent in Istanbul. It was a wonderful space to chill, have uncountable amounts of çay (Turkish tea, pronounced chai) and smoke mint/rose and other flavored Nargiles. No alcohol was sold which just made it a much more mystic and  entrancing environment to relax. You could stay there for hours (and we did) and not notice how time went by.


After our very long break, we walked and looked around the Mollafenari Mahallesi which is a cemetery, and then headed for the magnificent Blue Mosque which I won't even bother to describe. You can just look at the pictures by clicking the link at the end of this post. Here is one to give you a taste: 

 After going  through the mosque we sat down to listen to the afternoon prayers that the Imans sing through huge speaker. Just listen to it for yourself

After this break we decided to do one more mosque to the very south of Fatih called the Little Ayasofya Mosque. It was little indeed compared to the Blue Mosque we had just seen but it was just as beautiful and enchanting for its intimacy and ducks running around. It had a gorgeous little graveyard and little restaurants in the courtyard.

After this we were basically pooped, so we headed back to our place in Taksim for a good 

night sleep after a lot of walking to get ready for a new exciting adventure: The Asian side of Istanbul.

PICTURES!!! https://www.flickr.com/photos/128323769@N04/sets/72157648945914657/

From the first picture (SAM_0346) up to picture SAM_0516  make reference to this post

From Colombia to the world... passing through Fort Lauderdale

Before this trip there was a lot of planning going on with flights and budget and so on, but I won't bore you with that. Later on on this blog there will be a section on how the hell I planned everything.
Traveling in itself started the 1st of September from Bogota, Colombia, where my dear friends Yani (from Argentina) and Edna (from Yopal, Colombia), went with me to the airport to say their farewells. Having many Colombian friends even in different parts of the world, I am fortunate to have someone who is always so kind to give me a place to crash in Fort Lauderdale. This is the third time Carlos has taken me in, and again I'm very thankful (please come visit me so I don't feel so guilty). The evening I arrived we went for wonderful Mexican Mole, I had missed it so much. Then went to BestBuy to get myself a camera, a US$100 Samsung with WiFi. It seemed good at the beginning, didn't impress me so much later on. It kinda just focuses when it wants to. Whats the point of having a 12x zoom if it only focuses when it's at its maximum zoom or no zoom at all? Anyway, I don't recommend it much. Back to Fort Lauderdale, I was only there till the evening of the 2nd of Sep, so during the day I walked around and bought myself a big caramel chocolate apple and then headed back to Carlos' place. Time to repack.
That afternoon Carlos was sweet enough to drive me back to the airport and say our farewells, not to mention he had given me this little guidebook of Turkey that saved my life every once in a while. Thank you again Carlos for tacking me in again and for always spoiling me with yummy food!

Travels of Serendipity and Sunshine

Me and my luck. Let's start with that. I must admit I have been the luckiest person on this trip, and those who met me along the way know that. More detail will come along and you'll understand what I mean. Before you go on reading everything else, let me warn you that I was followed around by two things, the first most people considered it great (I was kinda tired of it so I didn't so much) and the second was picture bad luck: Sun and Restoration. Everywhere I went the sun followed, until the last days that that 'luck' started to run out. But the restoration and building was ridiculous. Everywhere I went they were restoring something, and of course, in front of beautiful buildings I wanted to take pictures of. So you might see a lot of machinery in the pictures, terribly sorry for that but at least the pictures are nice and bright. So in my goals of this trip I had three main ones. Backpack as much as I could in Europe, spend time with the fella I was dating (who was living in London a few months) and go to an Ed Sheeran concert. The most likely was the least achieved but with that I've learned one very important thing on this trip: Things happen for a reason. This is really true, don't believe me? Just read and you'll see...

Looking out at Loch Lomond, Scotland