My brother Jonathan and I went on a trip around eastern Europe in 2004. We took a cheap flight to Prague and from there used InterRail tickets to travel to Istanbul via Rome and Athens. It was not a conventional route at all. The upside of which was that we saw a lot of unusual stuff and covered a lot of ground. The downside was that we lost a lot of time to travel on the train. At a few points -- mainly from Thessaloniki to Istanbul -- the train was actually slower than the coach. Still, we did manage to take some sleeper trains, cutting down on both lost time and the need for hostels.

Istanbul was probably the best and most fun part of the trip. We spent about 3 days there and saw a decent amount of the sites. Best of all, we made some friends on the train and we mostly stuck together throughout. That was fun.

Istanbul is a great city, full of interesting sites. But it was the experience for us. We had a good time because we were lucky enough to meet good people to spend it with! Some of the things I most remember about Istanbul: markets, stray cats and dogs, markets beautiful buildings, markets,dervishes, donner kebabs, markets, anti-NATO political fly-posters, the Bosphorus straits, and did I mention markets?