December 30

Alex and I woke up early and went on a run.  The most notable occurrence was when we happened upon some skyscrapers being finished.  We were turning around on our out and back and I decided the construction site would be a nice place to do some low-key walking around/recovery movement.  I ambled past the guard at the gate with no protestations.  I was admiring the buildings and saw a guard making his rounds.  Then another one.  And another one.  All on regular rounds rotation, one after the other.  And there were construction workers all over the place.  As I turned around to leave, I notice that almost everyone behind me had stopped working and the men in the guard shack were glaring intently at me, as if I were some sort of criminal.  It was pretty unnerving.  I thought that I was in some sort of James Bond villain world, where all of the henchmen were working on the lastest scheme for world domination.  It was wild.

This was our last full day so we had to finish up everything we hadn't done yet.  We toured Topkapi Palace, which was absolutely enormous.  That seems to be a trend with the people in the past who occupied present-day Istanbul - make things huge.  Well, it seems to have worked, since I now know about the old cultures.  

After the palace, we walked back through Taksim for another chocolate covered waffle.  We also ran into a protest of some sort and an art installation.  We spent some time at the art exhibit and headed back to the hostel.  Our airport shuttle was set to leave at 3 a.m.

It was a pretty uneventful day and yet an excellent way to close out our time in Turkey.