Eid al-Adha in Turkey and Cyprus!

Ohhhhh goodness. I'm trying to muster up the motivation to write this post, but there is so much to say! Our vacation was so incredible, I wish you I could share it with you in movie form or something. But I guess my mundane words will have to suffice, so please bear with me!
I ended up staying overnight at Alyssa's apartment so that the morning taxi to the airport would be a piece of cake. That evening we went out with Noor, Hayder, and Senan since they were dying to see us and didn't want to have to wait another 10 days before we got back to Amman. We just walked around "Walk-a-lot" Street (Wakalat), had a hookah, and got some schwarma.
The next morning, Chris, Alyssa, and I met up at our waiting moumayaz taxi to get to the airport; it was so awesome seeing so many CIEE folk on their way to Beirut, Cairo, some places in Europe... At our gate there were probably 8 others going to Istanbul.
Okay, because this is taking so long for me to get to, I'm going to abandon this post and just list the basic activities that we did, towns we went to, etc, and not put in too much detail. That way, you'll have something to ask me about in person! :-P
Istanbul: Stayed there for three nights in the Istanbul Sydney Hostel (don't ask me why there's the reference to Australia, I forgot to ask them!), which was right behind the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. We dashed there from the airport via metro and tram, and the first night Alyssa and I went to the Turkish Baths while Chris was busy with a phone interview--during our vacation, can you believe Delloit?? Next day was a bunch of bazaar scouting and walking through the streets: we had a reservation with a place to do a Turkish cooking class, but not enough people signed up, so it was canceled. Ended up being okay because we definitely took every minute that day checking out the beautiful souks and artwork around us. That night we went to Taksim square for dinner (avoiding big gatherings of police!! *reference to the news from a few weeks ago...) and checked out the nightlife. The following day we did the tourist thing: went to the Tokapi Palace and its Harem, then to the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.

We hopped the tram to the old city wall, and it was slightly creepy: there was no one around except for a few random lone dudes, so after some photos we hightailed it home in time for dinner at a cute nearby restaurant. Let me tell you that the Turks definitely have mastered the hookah way better than the Arabs!
We had an early morning to catch the ferry across the Marmara to Bursa, which cut out some major bus hours around the bay. Took the bus to Troy, which was slightly disappointing (in fact, "anticlimactic" was our word of that day!!):

From Troy we headed 5 hours to Izmir, which I believe is the third largest city in Turkey. It's all modern since it had been destroyed by Greeks at some point in history, so we didn't plan to see much of the city beyond what we saw that night we lodged there.

The next morning we set out for Ephesus, which is supposed to be some of the most complete remnants of a Roman town on the Mediterranean. It was a lot of fun--FULL of tourists--and they even had a silly little show every ten minutes with a "Caesar" and "Cleopatra", a bit of dancing and a very well-choreographed gladiator fight (I'm pretty sure Cleopatra never got anywhere close to Turkey, but what do I know?). Took a lot of fun photos among the ruins there.

From there we went to Pamukkale, which is a site of a large mountain of calcium from the natural hot springs there. We had a nice lunch and then trekked around this hill:

Loooong bus ride to Goreme in Cappadocia that night, and stayed that a Backpacker's hostel that was actually built into the funky rocks that are characteristic of the area. The following day, we went to Derinkuyu to one of the ancient underground cities, previously used by Christians to hide from the armies of Islam and Rome. The tunnels were small and cramped, but the stone was so soft, and the cities so intricate (some of the tunnels were miles long, and connected neighboring cities).
We came back to Goreme to have lunch, and then went to hike through the Rose Canyon, among the fairy chimneys, where you could see rooms and tunnels built into the rock. We wanted to do a balloon ride, but it was extremely expensive per person.  After that we went back to the hostel to chill for a bit before we went to our "Turkish Night", set up through the hostel, which included a ride to and from the restaurant, a whirling dervish show, folk dances, a bonfire, a belly dancer, a full meal, and unlimited alcohol. Needless to say it was a fun time! Headed back to the hostel for a quick sleep before an early morning bus to Alanya, where we had planned to catch the ferry to Kyrenia in Cyprus. We encountered some problems though with scheduling, so we had to make our way along the coast to Tasucu instead. The three additional folks in our group took a plane from Antalya because their flight back to Amman was a day before ours so they had to really rush to get to Cyprus, but we took a bus to Tasucu and spent the evening in a cute little hostel, where our balcony looked over the 20ft to the water :)
The next morning we took a leisurely breakfast and hopped the ferry to Kyrenia. We arrived around 2pm, and had time to go visit the town's old fort, splurge on a nice fish dinner around the port, and sit around a very lovely hookah before catching a taxi which would take us across the border into Larnaca in Greek Cyprus. The taxi only took about an hour and a half or so, and crossing the border was fine and easy. We got into Larnaca, had an obligatory cup of tea with the owner of the hotel, and then went to peruse the shops and restaurants along the beachfront. We settled at a cafe to have a drink, and then went back to the hotel to rearrange our bags for the flight the next day (we got so many souvenirs--correction, it was mostly Alyssa's!!--that was needed another suitcase, and had to make sure the fragile ceramics would make it through the traveling alright!
Next morning we went to the beach, just for a half hour or so to put our feet in the Mediterranean, and then found a breakfast where the first thing we asked for was BACON.
Went to the airport and caught our flight no problem; it was funny how, when going through security, the official looking at my passport asked "You were in the occupied territories?" (referring to Turkish Cyprus). But besides than and a few comments from the taxi driver, we didn't hear much about the tension there.
We went straight from the airport to Alyssa's apartment to rearrange our bags once again to reclaim our things, but not before staging a photo in front of the building looking depressed and exhausted after the trip (depressed at having to return to boring old Amman!!). If this Internet was not being stupid, I'd post it!!
Overall it was a great trip, but not without its glitches. From what we heard, everyone had their fair share of travel frustrations; that's just what happens when a) we're young students that people like to take advantage of, b) there's plenty of language barriers, c) the intention of going and "winging" it only works to a certain degree before it starts hindering!!
Sorry about the very rushed and not very detailed account; it's now two weeks after our return, so I really just wanted to get SOMETHING up. Hope to share pictures with those of you I'll see back home in three weeks!!