Day 17 - Istanbul

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Today it is the train over to the Galata area and to visit the Galata Tower, Taksim Square and the Dolmabahçe Palace. Train over is no problem but finding the funicular up the hill is a mission, took us ages to find and only after asking heaps of people, its hidden on the left side after you get off the tram find a sign that says tunnel and follow that at the first stop over the bridge. The trip costs about 3e each but when you get to the top you have to walk half way down again and then find the tower, easy you say to yourself, don’t be fooled, there are no signs and you cant see the tower as it is hidden behind buildings, the way to find it is turn right out of the train stop, walk about 500 yards down and turn left and you come to a little square with the Tower in the centre. Worth the view from the top but was expensive about 40 lira for the Dolmabahçe Palace for the two of us. Leaving the tower we walked back up tom the start of the main street to Taksim square, its about a 3 k walk and is full of high end shops and is the home of a number of foreign consulates. Taksim square is nothing special but it is important to the Turkish people for political reasons, was good to visit none the less. We easily found the tram down to the palace and a short walk got us there. Again the summer palace was a great white elephant and was built as a summer palace at a time when the Ottoman empire was failing and broke, once it was built it was often left with no one in it but Ataturk did use it as his residence when he was in town. Again very expensive to enter so we did not bother and just wandered the exterior. Being coffee time we had a nice brew at a water side café in the palace grounds. Deciding to head over to the Asian side tonight so Pam can capture the island we headed back to the hotel to change. We caught the ferry to Üsküdar for 3lira each and it is only a 20 min ride and lo we are in Asia. Arriving about 7.30 a short walk to the area where the island is we found a spot for dinner and ate very cheap, again on the water front. I sat and drank coffee watched the sun go down and enjoyed the sights while Pam took the pics she wanted. It got quite cold and we headed back for the ferry and trip back to Europe. Called in at the café next to our hotel for dessert and coffee and off to bed around 11.30pm.

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