The travels of Tim and Megan: Istanbul, Turkey

Fans,

Thursday

Another early start to catch another plane, this time we were up at 5.30am to fly from Athens to Istanbul. Unimpressed, but we were fine once we got some food at the airport! We were delighted that our New Zealand passports were finally good for something, as we appear to be the only nationality that is not required to buy a visa upon arrival in Turkey. The very loud American ladies from our flight were most upset that they had to buy a visa. Outrageous.

Our up and down run of hotel quality continued, as we were initially told that we could not check in to our room, and later told that we could check in but that there was no water at all in the hotel. It took them the entire day to fix the water issue...no apologies from the hotel staff.
We found a small restaurant / cafe near our hotel and had lunch there. The food was amazing and the service was excellent too.

We then set off for the Grand Bazaar, an enormous indoor market place in the centre of the Old Town. Megan had a very unfortunate experience as we arrived at the Grand Bazaar. It appears that there are public toilets in the world in much much worse states than those encountered in Vietnam and Thailand. Megan is still traumatised!

Anyway a few deep breaths and a litre of hand sanitizer later, we began exploring the Grand Bazaar. There were definite parallels to the markets we had visited in Asia, with very persistent salesmen jumping out at us from all angles, starting their prices way too high, only to quickly drop them upon realising we had played this game before.

Some of the salesmen were fairly orthodox in their approach, trying to impress us with the impeccable quality of their products ("real silk" and "genuine Louis Vuitton" etc), while others went for the less subtle approach, such as "I need a customer" and "Let me help you spend your money". But the clear winner was a guy selling Turkish rugs that jumped out at us, took one look at Tim and said "Wow, I have the exact size carpet for you!" We're still not sure what that means, but we think we may have turned down the opportunity at a magic carpet big enough to keep Tim in the air...

We ended up purchasing some hand painted ceramic bowls, another fridge magnet to add to Megan's growing collection and we stopped in at a cafe for a Turkish tea and Red Bull (Tim being the less adventurous).

Aside from the toilet experience, we found Istanbul to be surprisingly clean, tidy and easy to get around. Most people we encountered were very friendly and the service was generally excellent. The weather was also pleasant - sunny and warm days but quite chilly in the evenings.

We rounded off our first day in Istanbul with drinks at a small bar near our hotel (which had a Turkish version of Blind Date on TV), more drinks at the popular but pricey Sultan Pub and a fantastic dinner at a restaurant called Pasha.

Friday

First stop on a big day of exploring was the Blue Mosque, Istanbul's biggest tourist attraction. The mosque, in the centre of the Old Town, is known as the Blue Mosque for the blue tiles adorning the walls of its interior. It was built between 1609 and 1616, during the rule of the Sultan Ahmed I. The walls and ceilings are all beautifully decorated and the mosque is still in use today.

Right next to the Blue Mosque is the Hippodrome of Constantinople, which was once a horse-racing track that was the sporting and social home of Constantinople. It is now home to several important monuments, including the Obelisk of Tutmitus III (originally constructed in 1490 BC) and the Walled Obelisk (10th century AD). At the far end of the Hippodrome is the Basilica Cistern, the largest of several hundred ancient cisterns that still lie underground beneath Istanbul. The Basilica Cistern was built during the reign of emperor Justinian I in the 6th century.

Our next stop was at the Haghia Sophia museum. The Haghia Sophia was originally a patriarchal basilica and later converted to a mosque. The current building was originally constructed as a church between 532 and 537 AD on the orders of the Emperor Justinian, and was the third Church of the Holy Wisdom to occupy the site (the previous two had both been destroyed by riots). It was the religious focal point of the Eastern Orthodox Church for nearly 1000 years. In 1453, Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and Sultan Mehmed II ordered the building to be converted into a mosque.

Now the building is a sort of museum, still decorated as a mosque, that contains mosaics, sculptures and beautifully painted ceilings. The main attraction inside appeared to be the mosaic of the Virgin and Child on the ceiling of the apse, which was inaugurated on 29 March 867.

We also visited the Topkapi Palace, which was the official and primary residence in Istanbul of the Ottoman Sultans, from 1465 to 1853. The palace was a setting for state occasions and royal entertainments and is now a major tourist attraction. We checked out the Sultan's audience room, the library, the Harem mosque and the Imperial Treasury. Unfortunately, we did not see the actual harem. The grounds in the palace were beautiful and we were particularly impressed with the main entrance to the grounds, which looks a lot like a castle!

After exploring the palace grounds, we caught the tram out to the city walls, which used to surround the Old Town of Istanbul. On our way back in to town, we stopped by the aquaduct. All of this walking and exploring had made us hungry, so we got second lunch to keep us from wasting away. Surprisingly, Tim had a kebab. We also visited the finest lolly shop in all of Turkey, where we stocked up on Turkish Delight and chocolates. Once back in the centre of town, we returned to the Grand Bazaar, where Megan bought a scarf and some ceramic bowls and Tim bought a football scarf. We managed to escape the further attempted rip-offs and we retired to the hotel for a rest before dinner.

We had a couple of drinks at the Topkapi Palace Restaurant & Cafe which, incidentally, is not really that close to the Topkapi Palace at all. We were ushered inside by the very persuasive and rather humorous guy on the door. We were then further amused by his antics of trying to woo more customers in, as we sat with our drinks and looked out to the street. It was a nice place with a good atmosphere, although it clearly shared CDs with the "80s Bar" next door. Unfortunately the hummus we ordered was more like thick gluggy porridge (disappointing), but we got a free beer out of our visit, so can't complain.

Further down the lively back street was the Mosaik Cafe where we had dinner. Here, just as the previous night at Pasha, the service was excellent, the food was delicious and the atmosphere superb. We were given complimentary hummus and Turkish bread, which was fantastic, although we were getting a little full by this stage!

Saturday

On Saturday we enjoyed a rare sleep-in before taking the tram across the bridge to check out what Istanbul has to offer north of the "Golden Horn". The north side of the water is a newer part of the city and is fantastic for shopping, eating and drinking. We hopped off the tram in the Galata (or Galatasaray) region and checked out the Galata Tower. However, they were charging 10 Turkish lira to get an elevator to the top and we were crowded out by 150,000 Japanese tourists, so we decided not to go up the tower.

We wandered along Istanbul's main pedestrianised shopping street, Istiklal Avenue, checking out the hundreds and hundreds of shops. We were fairly restrained, but Tim bought some chocolate and Megan some Turkish Delight. At the end of the street is Taksim Square, a big square with a monument in the middle commemorating Turkey becoming a republic.

We caught a taxi from Taksim Square further north towards the Bosphorus Bridge, the huge suspension bridge that connects the north-western section of Istanbul (which is in Europe) to the eastern section of Istanbul (which is in Asia)...which as we are sure you all know, makes Istanbul the only city in the world that spans two continents. We eventually made our way to the bridge and took some fine snaps before grabbing some lunch in a nearby cafe.

Our return taxi back to Taksim Square was a lot slower than the first, as the region had been invaded by thousands of Besiktas football fans on their way to a home game (Turkish fans are amongst the loudest and most passionate football fans in the world...as Chelsea discovered when they visited Fenerbahce in Istanbul a few days after we left).

Another leisurely stroll down Istiklal Avenue and a coffee / hot chocolate filled in the afternoon nicely before we went to a couple of bars for some drinks. There is a little narrow street running off a fish market street that has about 30-40 bars / restaurants. It was packed but we managed to find a spot in one of them for a beer and then moved on to another for dinner, before taking the tram back to the Old Town.