Tour 2009 - Churches, Mosques & Bath Houses Oh My! - Istanbul Day 1

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Istanbul - Day 1

The flight over was pretty smooth, small delay in Calgary, and small children sitting behind us kicking our chairs for 8 hours... other than that...The movies were good so they kept me from strangling them. We got into Istanbul at 1pm, I was dead tired... Little bit of a panic episode, while they tried to find our bikes... turns out they were just
"slow" to unload them... but it was about 20min or so after everyone else got their bags, that we got our bikes. I don't think I remember seeing Barry so stressed!

Anyway, after an hour an half trying to put the bikes together, I was getting antsy and I’m now sooo tired, my eyes are rolling to the back of my head. We still don't know if we have to cycle the 20km into town, or if we can take the train. It's raining pretty heavy and I'm now getting really grumpy. Turns out we can take the train, but we have to ride about 2 km to the station - doesn't seem too bad, but in the pouring rain - NOT fun. Anyway, the process was pretty painless - they let us take our bikes on and only cost us 3TYL (less that $3) to get to the old city.

The train ride was an experience itself... the cars were older, and shall we call them, "rustic” The train just cruised along the track at high speeds to the point I think we were airborne a few times! One of the car doors did not close, good thing no one was sitting or standing near it or surely they would have fallen out! Safety is not really a priority in these parts 😊

We were headed for Sultanahmet, this district is kind of a tourist mecca, high concentration of historical sites in the area, including the Blue Mosque, and Aya Sophia, the 4th largest domed basilica in the world, dating back to the mid 500's. It also has a large concentration of hotels, so Barry was SURE we could get one here. Did I mention that we didn’t have a place to stay yet? Barry doesn't make reservations if you recall in some of my previous blogs... So were now getting into the danger zone, as dragon lady was close to the surface. Barry left me at a cafe, where I calmed myself down with a beer... it's now at least four hours after we landed, and I’m almost delirious with lack of sleep, I'm soaking wet and damn well getting cranky, and we still don’t have a hotel.

Barry reports back some time later and tells me that most of the hotels are full; I guess its not low season like we initially thought! So good thing I had had the beer, I now progressed to a full meal and Barry carried on in hos hotel search. After about another hour, we had some success... Things are not cheap here by any means. 95 euro/night for a fairly nice room. At this point, I didn't care if it was 200 euros... so we took it and within 20 min. I had showered and was asleep. Barry, true to form, went out for the night...

I awoke at 6am; the "call to prayer" from all the Mosques in the area are made at sunrise... I guess we have to get used to getting woke early! It's actually kind of neat, hearing all the simultaneous calls from all the Mosques in the city; the sound is actually kind of soothing. Apparently, there are 5 calls to prayer each day in the Islamic faith. One at sunrise, noon, afternoon, sunset, and evening. According to the book I’m reading, you don't have to actually go to the mosque to pray, but are expected to on Fridays - similar to the Christian Sunday where you are expected to go to church. I suppose I'll learn more about Islam as we tour the Mosques. The one thing I will say that is quite interesting, is that Islam is closer to the Christian faith than I initially thought... even recognizing Jesus as one of the prophets of God... Just not the Son of God. Leaves me to wonder over and over why, why, why we have so much conflict in this world over religion, when the fundamental beliefs are the same... it's mindboggling actually.

We had breakfast at the hotel and set off for the day. It was raining when we left the hotel, so good day to do museums and the like. We headed off for Aya Sophia, the 4th largest Basilica in the world, which has over the years been used as a Christian church, mosque, and now a museum. Because it was Monday - it was closed... damn. So we opted instead, to do the city tour on the bus, just to get acquainted. Wow this city is big. It spans 2 continents, Europe and Asia and there is just so much history here, it will be impossible to see it all in 4 days. I think I will be sending stuff home from here as well, the shopping is incredible....

After our morning tour, we stopped for lunch, and afterwards at a dessert/coffee place. Unfortunately, everything here has nuts, or had traces of nuts, and I'm going to have to be extra careful from here on in to ensure that I don't have any allergy attacks... I had one today, even though I had taken Reactine (good thing I did - It could have been alot worse) so spent the remainder of the afternoon back at the hotel recovering.

We did manage to take the train to the Spice Market (Egyptian Bazar) before I had to turn back.. We’ll have to make another trip for sure... So we will have a nice dinner tonight, and do the major sightseeing in
the morning.

Until then!

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