Advertisement
Published: June 13th 2007
Edit Blog Post
After spending one last afternoon and night in Lisbon, Lindsay and I hesitantly said farewell to Portugal and hello to our summer trip. We left on an Alitalia flight through Milan and got into Istanbul at 1:00 in the morning. We don’t usually like to arrive in a new place when most normal people have already been sleeping for 2 hours, but it was a good deal, and we made arrangements with our hostel to get picked up by a driver, which made the whole thing a lot easier.
We stayed at the Antique Hostel, which turned out to be a good choice because it was located in the main tourist district, right near some of the biggest sights in Istanbul including the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and the Topkapi palace. The room we stayed in wasn’t particularly exciting, but the hostel also had a roof terrace with a view of the Marmara Sea and the room rate included a nice simple Turkish breakfast with cucumber and tomato slices, olives, watermelon, an egg, lots of bread and jam, honey, and cheese. The Turkish guys running the hostel were nice too, one guy announced “Ladies & Gentlemen!” every time Lindsay
and I walked through the lobby area. We also met some fun people who we shared a beer with on the roof on our last night there.
The first day we spent a lot of time walking around. We went to the Grand Bazaar and did some window shopping and bought a few tiles and scarves. We also found Turkish Delight, our new favorite dessert. There was a whole range of flavors, colors, and textures, some with pistachio or hazelnuts and others just plain chewy. Our favorite when we were there was plain rose flavored. We’re still working on the big bag we got.
Later the first day, we visited the Suleymaniye Mosque. I was wearing shorts that day, so I had to borrow a long cloth to use as a skirt to follow the dress code of the mosque and also to add to the entertainment value for the other tourists that were there who were smart enough to wear pants that day. The mosques we saw in Istanbul were pretty impressive. They were all large, and some of them (like the Blue Mosque) were massive. The amount of details on the tiles and painting on the
domes of the mosques was something either of us hadn’t seen before.
At the end of the day we walked across the Galata Bridge to the Asia side of Istanbul. There were people fishing off every available space on the bridge and restaurants below the car deck. It sounds kind of like a bad location to put a restaurant, but they turned out to have great views of Istanbul.
On our second day we visited the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and the Basilica Cistern. I really liked Hagia Sophia (not surprising considering it’s being considered for the 7 wonders of the world contest next month (7/7/07)) The building was originally constructed as a cathedral in the 530s and then it was a mosque after the Ottoman’s took over in the 1400s and a museum since 1937. The place was huge and there was an interesting mix of Islamic and Christian symbols inside. The Basilica Cistern was fairly small, but an interesting well with symmetrically placed columns from the 500s that was rediscovered when some people started catching fish out of holes in their basement floors.
On our last day we visited Topkapi palace, the former residence of
the sultans in Istanbul. They were definitely living large with 100s of rooms, ornate decorations on every possible surface, huge kitchens and fine china imported from China, and of course Turkish rugs. One of the most interesting parts of the palace was the Harem, where they had room for eunuch servants, several wives, and concubines. The social structure built around the sultans seemed pretty complex.
We finished up the day by walking across the Bosphorus to the Asia side of Istanbul and we checked out the shopping districts there. It was pretty lively and there were several bands playing music on the street.
Overall, we liked Istanbul. It was an exciting city with things going on at all times. We had to fight off the people selling rugs or trying to get you into your restaurant, but most of them were pretty funny. Some of my favorites were, “Hey, my turn!”, “I think you dropped something,” “We’re the second best,” “We’re on page 154 of that guidebook you’re holding,” and the classic “where are you from?” (I started saying Turkey after the first few guys).
- Jason
*** Make sure to click on "2" to get
to the rest of the pictures. We also added 4 new videos from Lisbon and Istanbul. They're on Youtube at:
Youtube Videos
Advertisement
Tot: 0.061s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.025s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb