Advertisement
Published: October 5th 2015
Edit Blog Post
The Suleymaniye Mosque
View while having drinks on the Galata bridge So yes, we really do owe this trip to Dan Brown and his book, Inferno. It was through it and his descriptions that we knew we had to visit Isanbul. It is the only city in the world that spans two continents, Europe and Asia. Not to mention its amazing history spanning the Byzantine, Ottoman, and Roman empires that are all still seen today. Speaking of today, Istanbul is home to more than 20 million people....it's immense!
We started out the trip with a stressful, rainy drive to JFK and found our 12:30am flight was delayed. Matt and I are early birds so must admit we were both falling asleep in the waiting area! We took off about 1.5 hours late on Ukranian Air, which I now call the International Spirit Airlines. We got an amazing deal on these tickets ($500 RT) but oh do you get what you pay for!!!! The tightest seats I've ever experienced. We were in the middle of a 4 seat row and you are literally fully touching shoulder-to-shoulder and leg-to-leg with who you're sitting next to. No crossing your legs at all or flexibility in position. I'm so proud of Matt and I because
we did much better than I thought and although the sleep was terrible, we survived. Landed in Kiev at 5:30p their time and had a quick two hour layover before catching the flight to Istanbul. Arrival was a breeze and thanks to the Trip Advisor blogs, I found a company called All Day Wifi that rents hotspots with unlimited data. Much better than messing around with the Sim card fiasco we've dealt with in Thailand. Also added in airport transportation, so they gave us our equipment and took us to our hotel in this nice spacious van! This All Day Wifi thing has been amazing all day and we love it, you're never without connection! We got to the hotel close to midnight and again are so happy! We're in an old renovated "French" Apartment building and the room is spacious and posh! We're in the Beyoglu Neighborhood which is trendy and close to Istiklal Caddesi Street....it's literally Times Square! 24 hours and full of life. Which...because we hadn't eaten much and were all screwed up time wise, we found most fortunate after checking in! We were hungry and began wandering that direction thanks to Yelp! We found a place
called Ficcan that was delightful and ate outside. Our waiter was from Paris and was so excited to talk to us?!?! He has been in Istanbul for 24 days and is going back home to Paris because he misses it too much. We said Paris was our favorite city and he was like a French Chipmunk talking about how wonderful it was. He was speaking much too fast to understand, but he was cute! We had Turkish Ravioli made with meat and topped with yogurt sauce which was so good, along with stuffed grape leaves and a puff pastry filled with mushrooms and cheese. We've seen several mentions of not calling Turkish food, "Greek Food" so I promise to not call any food we eat here by a name I don't actually see ;-) I woke up at 8am and darn it....I wanted to keep sleeping but knew that was a big mistake so got up and started getting around. The hubs was suffering asking for "10 more minutes" a few times, LOL but he finally made it. Our hotel has a nice breakfast area on the top floor, so it was our first semi-aerial view of the city. We
ate breakfast and then began our 2.5 mile walk to the old city, stopping at the Bosphorous to see all of the fisherman before crossing the bridge, which is a little city in of itself with restaurants serving fresh fish and bars. Today was about Dan Brown and the major sites of Istanbul so we went to Hagia Sofia first. Hagia Sofia is remarkable! Built in 537, it's been a church for 3 different religions: Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Muslim before becoming a museum. Today it looks predominately Muslim with 2 small sections of Christian iconography visible as they were all covered up or removed when it became Muslim. That's because the Muslim's believe only God can create life, so if you paint a picture of a person/animal you are "creating life." This is why all mosques only have calligraphy in them. The minarets were added when it became muslim and it remained the world's largest cathedral for more than 1000 years until the cathedral in Seville was built in 1520. It's truly remarkable and the kind of place you wish a museum pass would allow you to come back several times vs. once because you just want to
be there, soaking it up! After Hagia we were hungry for lunch so yelped to find the closest highly rated lunch spot. Got to it, sat down and found they had like 6 things on their menu all of which didn't sound great. Maybe to a total tourist who has NEVER experienced mediterranean food before??? Sorry to say we left and just began walking before this guy on a busy street told us their restaurant had a terrace. SOLD! And what a view it was!! The Blue Mosque was in full view and I will say lunch was amazing! We got to be up there for an afternoon call to prayer which is mesmerizing, and we just want to sit and close our eyes every time we hear it. After lunch we went to the Blue Mosque which is a fully functional mosque and closed to visitors at the prayer times 5x daily. I was so proud of myself for dressing appropriately and bringing my scarf that would cover my head....until...I was deemed "too shapely" and given a skirt to wear over my tights!!! Well, I tried I guess!!! LOL Our next stop was the Basilica Cistern...the place where Dan
Brown's Inferno comes to a head! We have to say, descending down into the 6th century water supply for the city was just like entering into the book. What an amazing place!! We couldn't get enough and even sat to have some fresh squeezed pomegranate juice and water for awhile before we left. It was late afternoon and I thought since it was day 1, we should start to make our way back and just take it easy. We did, but ended up stopping on the Galata bridge and had a couple of drinks to watch the sun start to set. It's truly beautiful on the Golden Horn. We then started the hike back to the hotel area (did I mention it's a mountain we have to climb?) and ended up back on Isitiklal Caddesi wandering the shops. Here's where I have to break down and admit that I had to buy shoes 😞 Day one of walking in what I thought were great shoes were starting to rub and give me blisters in several places. A severe side effect of this city, and in fact as Matt was getting me a bandaid halfway up our "mountain," a woman approached
and asked in German if she could have one showing up her "ouch" spot. We grabbed a quick Doner sandwich (see pic of meat) and then grabbed dinner at a restaurant we passed the first night that looked nice. We ate outside under the trees and had fried cheese with hot pepper jelly, scorpion fish done ceviche style with a bright lemon flavor, and lamb chops. Back at hotel we spent the evening with the windows from their rooftop area open, looking at pics and enjoying the beautiful nighttime views. A few first observations:*NYC sells hotdogs in carts, Istanbul sells corn on the cob for appx. $0.75 & roasted chestnuts*For 20 million people, the city is very clean and it's fun to see the clash between old and new, traditional and modern.*Selfie sticks are all the craze here as in they are sold EVERYWHERE and I bet $100 we're going to take one in the eye before this trip is over! So annoying they are (yes, I realize I have one used on extreme rare occasions for ONE picture! and I didn't bring it 😊 They are literally $1.50!!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.041s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0195s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb
Tom Lyle
non-member comment
Istanbul
Interesting, cute scarf Erin, puff the magic dragon..... Enjoy your new experiences . Dad?