MY FAVORITE CITY IN THE WORLD - Istanbul, Turkey

So first, a little bit of context. My dad had some work in Israel, and he invited me to join him there. And of course, I stopped everything that I was doing and made plans to meet him. Now the Middle East has always fascinated me, and in particular Turkey, because it's the meeting point of three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Which means that throughout history, it's funneled the best ideas humanity has come up with from continent to continent. And Constantinople, or Istanbul as it's known now, has been one of the most creative and innovative cities throughout time. So I told my dad I'm going to Istanbul, and he better meet me there. That was probably the craziest taxi driver I've ever been in. It was supposed to take us an hour to get from Tel Aviv to the airport, and he got me here in 33 minutes. That was crazy. So I was in Istanbul. The question was, now what? That is possibly the greatest view that I've ever experienced. So before we go any further, you need to know the layout of Istanbul. And Istanbul is actually split into three main districts, and those are Eminönü, which is the old city. This is where you'll find most of the mosques, the palace. It's a little bit more conservative part of the city. Then there's Karaköy, which is the European side of the city, and you'll find tons of hip new restaurants, live music bars, stuff like that. And then there's Kadıköy, which is sort of more of the up-and-coming part of the city, and that is the Asian side. And since I wanted to get an idea of what the city looked like, I decided to start with a Bosphorus boat tour. So one of the main stops on the Bosphorus tour is the Yoroz Castle. Okay, so I had to jump through some barbed wire fence. Definitely not supposed to be in here. Sort of just walking around the castle. We'll see where this path goes. I don't really know if it's going anywhere, but it looks interesting. And this is a great example of what I was talking about earlier, about how Istanbul is a melting pot of cultures. And this ancient castle changed hands dozens of times over the centuries between the Byzantines, between the Genoese, and between the Ottomans. Well, there was a guard post, so I'm just taking a photo of that couple with a selfie stick. How was that? I'm a pro. Everything that you hoped and dreamed? Yeah. Now that I had met my dad, the first stop on our list was to see the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque. These places are engineering marvels, and the Hagia Sophia in particular was at one point the largest building in the world, and is said to have changed the history of architecture forever. We had to check it out. Okay, well they took my microphone and tripod, kind of arbitrarily. I'm not really sure why they did that. But we are now inside the Hagia Sophia. So after the mosques, we were hungry to test our haggling skills, and no better place to do that than the Grand Bazaar, one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world. Over 400,000 people visit here daily. They sell almost everything in the Grand Bazaar, from chess and backgammon sets, to spices and Turkish delight. Now for those of you who don't know, when you search Turkish delight on Google, its definition is a gelatinous sweet confection traditionally made of syrup and cornflour, dusted with icing sugar. When it really should just be two words, ******* delicious. Okay, so I hope you guys enjoyed that video. I'll be putting out videos soon about what surprised me about Turkey, and what you shouldn't do well in Turkey, so definitely look out for those. Other than that, hope you guys have a great day, and I'll see you later.