I got my bags back on a roll heading out there and I'm ready to go looking real good

in my passport photo.

Amateur Traveler episode 579.

Today the Amateur Traveler talks about mosques and palaces, ancient walls,

rooftop bars, and a building that was the largest building in the world

for a thousand years as we go to Istanbul, Turkey. Welcome to the amateur traveler. I'm your host Chris Christensen. In what may be the

worst timing we have ever had on this show, we're about to do a show on one of my favorite cities in the world, which is Istanbul.

And I learned just today that Turkey has cut off visas for U.S. travelers.

Now I'm hoping that will only be a temporary thing and they'll

sort that all out so we're still doing a show in Istanbul and I hope we can all

get there someday. I'd like to welcome to the show Christopher Mitchell from traveling Mitch.com who has come to

talk to us about Istanbul in Turkey.

Christopher welcome to the show.

Thanks very much.

Happy to be on here. I love the show for a long time so honored to show. Thanks very much. Happy to be on here.

I love the show for a long time.

So, honor to be here.

Well, and we're going to talk about some of the concerns of going to Istanbul in a bit, but first, why

should somebody go to Istanbul?

For me, it's just hard to whittle it down to a few reasons because it's truly one of the world's great cities and having lived there for three years I can say I left and I still had things on my to-do list and that's pretty special when you think about a city like that right?

Obviously the big cell is probably the history there.

Sometimes you go to a city and you think oh this reminds oh, this reminds me of that, but the truth is Istanbul

...