East meets West in Istanbul

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K- Inexcusably, despite having lived in London for many years neither Mark or I had ever managed to visit the Tower of London, an omission that we finally rectified on our recent stopover in the UK. I enjoyed it a lot – the history is palpable and of course the Crown Jewels spectacular. We also managed a pub lunch at the Blackfriar, a historic pub close to Fleet Street and an old work haunt.I miss a lot about England but pubs are high up the list!



We also took the time to visit Arundel castle on the South coast with my brother and his family. It was a particularly wet Bank Holiday Monday, which was a shame as events such as jousting were cancelled but we still enjoyed climbing the ramparts and looking around the grand interior. The castle is still lived in by the Duke of Norfolk – how the other half live indeed.



Both visits reminded us, as if we really needed reminding, that we come from a beautiful and historical country and we have future plans to spend more time traveling around the UK rather than around the rest of the world!



Our next stop on this particular world trip however was Istanbul, Turkey. We had read a lot about the East meets West culture of the city and were excited to see what this meant in practice. Unfortunately I arrived in Istanbul with a head cold that curtailed my activities for the first couple of days. Even so we had a look around the famous Blue Mosque and Mark went to the Grand Bazaar as I didn’t have the energy for haggling and hassle. I stayed in bed with a box of Turkish delight instead!



There are many large mosques dominating the City scape in the Old Town and the exteriors of both the Old Mosque and the Hagia Sofia were very impressive. The blue mosque interior didn’t live up to its reputation for me though – it was very beautiful but I think I was expecting blue mosaic tiles rather than the large ones so it didn’t wow me as much as I had expected. Mark and I are also very aware though that after 11 months of traveling and seeing so many amazing sights that we can be disappointed by things that if we saw on a stand-alone basis would impress us. For this reason we are becoming pickier about what we visit (especially if there are hefty entrance fees or large queues attached!).



The highlight of Istanbul for us was the Bosporus. The weather was beautifully sunny and we enjoyed a couple of boat trips on the sparkling river admiring the fort and the many beautiful riverside homes. We also walked for miles around the city, went up the Galata tower for the view and then parked ourselves on chairs on the banks of the Bosporus enjoying many cups of tea and the odd piece of delicious baklava.



Another highlight was watching the rival fans of the local Galatassari and Fenerbache football clubs who were playing their derby game. They were pretty focused and emotions were running high with flares being thrown after Fenerbache scored. This is in the street where we were eating dinner not at the ground! As an aside, the meal in question had worst service I have ever experienced anywhere – so rude - do not go to Ciya Sofrasi if you are ever in Istanbul!



We enjoyed Istanbul but it didn’t become a favorite city. It lacked the pavement café culture that we hope to enjoy elsewhere in Europe and we think we may have seen too much of Asia and the Middle East to really be wowed by the East meets West phenomena – despite walking all over the city we did not find the glamour and pizazz we were perhaps expecting. Basically we had over built our expectations.



The trip did however raise the worry that our plan to hop around European cities was going to be a bit like gorging on a box of chocolate, or indeed turkish delight. Were we really going to appreciate all the beautiful cities, museums, palaces and monuments if we just went back-to-back city hopping? Probably not. So a quick re-think and instead of heading for Bucharest we took a quick flight down to Athens. Yes, I am aware that Athens is a major European city but I am also fairly sure that the Acropolis is going to live up to expectations! And we will follow up our visit to Ancient Greece exploring the countryside and seaside areas of the Peloponnese and maybe even an Island or two, thereby breaking up the city hopping a little.

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Photos

The old & the new
London's newest skyscraper the "Shard" behind Tower of London

Arundel Castle
Near Brighton, South Coast, UK

Hagia Sofia
Once the biggest church in the world, then a mosque, now a museum