My time in Istanbul was so short and completely flew by – but I think I packed a lot into just a few days and I have absolutely no regrets.

First of all, that dog that I hung out with for like half an hour? We actually ended up hanging out for like five hours. She followed me around everywhere. She waited outside of places while we were eating. She came back to the hostel with me AGAIN, and waited outside of it for at least an hour before realizing I really wasn’t coming out again. And whenever she saw us again, she would run over to us, and she’d jump on me to say hi, and then throw herself on her back for a belly rub. We called her Mandy, and my only solace in leaving her is that she is clearly well fed and hopefully happy.

Besides hanging out with Mandy, the rest of our evening was pretty uneventful. I watched Blade Runner for the first time with Kiwi Guy, and I have SO MANY QUESTIONS. What does the unicorn represent? Why is there so much origami in this future world? Why are their pupils purple? Was he or was he not a robot? Why exactly did he need to kill the robots again? 80’s movies are so…80’s movies.

I slept in (again) my last day in Istanbul. Me and Kiwi Guy had accomplished all of the touristy things that we wanted to do, so it was just a day to walk around, explore, and hang out, which are usually my favorite days in cities. We shopped at the Grand Bazaar, we ate some kebabs for lunch, had chocolate cake at a cafe (because sometimes you just want chocolate cake even though you should probably be having baklava), and ended up back at the hostel, drinking with an American kid and this lovely older Romanian gentleman that works at the hostel. I shared my Turkish delights (honestly, at this point I was just trying to get rid of them because they’re HEAVY).

When it was dinner time, I went out wandering with the American and Kiwi to find some dinner, and at a small bazaar near our hostel we started talking to a Turkish guy and his Taiwanese girlfriend (his English was perfect, but she couldn’t understand much). We invited them to join us for dinner, and the group of us wandered some more until we came across a little place that they had stopped at the other day. I learned how to say “thank you” in Turkish and Mandarin (both of which I’ve forgotten) and ate soup. Life is good sometimes.

Probably the most important part of last night was watching the classic cinematic masterpiece, “Babe,” with Kiwi Guy. Although actually, it wasn’t bad. It was…pretty good. Much better than I expected considering it was one of my favorite childhood movies involving lots of talking animals. Like, the puppets were made by Jim Henson, so they’re pretty damn good, and it’s really impressive to watch all the things they could get real animals to do. Plus, it’s a cute story with a LOT of social undertones. (In case you were wondering, another favorite childhood movie of mine also involving lots of talking animals was called “Two Bits and Pepper.” It was not a good one. It is a stupid story about two little girls and their talking horses and they get kidnapped by two evil dudes played by the same actor and all makes no sense and I don’t know why my parents let me watch such sludge.)

The most interesting turn of events thus far has been that Kiwi Guy has decided to accompany me to Italy for a bit. He bought a last minute flight yesterday, flew out with me today, and we had quite the adventure getting from the airport to the hotel we’re staying at, because buses in Bologna are confusing. As it turns out, a lot of Italians DON’T in fact speak English, but they have also been trying really hard when we asked for directions, and it leads to some very silly, broken, and friendly almost-conversations.

Tomorrow, we are going to attempt to find our way to one of the towns of Cinque Terra, which is a place I’ve decided I need to hit after multiple conversations with people raving about it. It literally means “five lands” and is basically five little towns on the coast that you can hike between. We may get lost, it may take us all day, but we probably won’t die, and that’s all that really matters when you’re traveling.