Turki - YAY!
Fun fact: Did you know that Turkey officially changed its name with the UN from Turkey to Türkiye (pronounced: tur-key-yay)? Also, Istanbul is the largest city in Europe. There are more people in that Turkish city that the entire country of Greece.
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Well, we arrived in Istanbul after about 26 hours of traveling from St. Louis to NYC to Amsterdam. So, needless to say we were tired. The flights all went decently well. They had free alcohol on the plane and plenty of free food. The duffle bags we are carrying with us as carry-ons are pretty cumbersome though.
After a crazy taxi ride, with the driver smoking and stopping at a gas station for a soda on the way and driving quickly through narrow, hilly, cobblestone streets, we decided to just put our things down at the bed and breakfast and go for a walk around the old town.
Istanbul basically has three "sides"... old town Europe, across the river/modern Europe (Karakoy), and then the Asia side (We got to add two continents to our travel list from this city alone!). Crossing water is required to access all three - we went by car, train, and boat to all three. Our Hotel/BnB (Stanpoli - pictured below) was in old town, the original Constantinople.
Culture / General observations
- There are stray dogs and cats everywhere. But no bugs! No flies or Mosquitos. The climate is so dry...hot in the sunshine but cool in the shade. Very pleasant. Except, we had to walk around in long pants to be more "covered" which was annoying.
- The "call to prayer", which is like a chant sung in Arabic, is broadcast on speakers from every mosque tower 5x per day. So you hear it reverberating around the entire city at sunrise, a few times in the afternoon, sunset, and then nighttime.
- Everything was so cheap! We bought a pile of snacks from the grocery store like small packages of cookies and chocolates all for about $1 total. Bottles of water ranged in price from 0.5 to 5 lyra (17 lyra to the dollar). Even our fanciest meal with drinks and dessert in the peak of the tourist area was only about $15 per person. We tried to use our credit card for most things so that we didn't have to pay extra ATM fees, but it was so silly to pull out the credit card for a 6 lyra or 50 cent bill. The locals sorta scoffed at us.
- Rooftops galore! This is a city of rooftops. It was so lovely to eat most of our meals or drink drinks overlooking the whole city from a rooftop. Even one Burger King that we saw on the Asia side had 4 stories and rooftop seating.
- The shop and restaurant vendors were so aggressive all over the old town. It wasn't so bad in the other parts of the city. But, you just couldn't walk by stores without them harassing you and trying to get you to come inside their store. The accounting system is sorta shady too. The taxi drivers for example would quote you a certain price even though the meter would read half that, just because we were clearly tourists.
Adam particularly liked an interaction with a corner store guy who asked if I was Adam's friend. We held up our rings to say we were married. Then he said "oh, married! when come the babies?" Adam said hopefully soon. Then he said "Should have 10 babies! good looking couple!" - The tourist areas of the Asia side and Karakoy side were filled with people with colored hair and wearing shorts, looking modern. And the streets were wide with more modern stores. But, if you went down any side streets or if you stayed on the old town side, we mostly saw either fully covered women or no women at all. Sometimes you'd walk down a few streets off the main tourist areas and notice the gender ratio was only men. It was a little uncanny. I was clutching on to Adam's hand in those neighborhoods. Seems that most wives in conservative/local areas stay home while the men are out and about. We never once saw a female waitress, they were all men. We only saw about 10% of the whole city, though, so we can't be sure of what is actually normal throughout.
Sites we saw
Over the next few days, we toured around the top tourist attractions in Istanbul. We averaged around 25K steps, or about 10 miles, of walking per day. We got a "museum pass" which got you into pretty much all the museums and palaces in Istanbul for $32 each. We saw some things in passing like the Galata tower, twirling dervish dancers, and the Egyptian obelisk, but the following are the big sites we enjoyed touring.
Mosques - We went into 4 or 5 mosques. They all look very similar inside and out. Same architectural design with many domes and two large towers with speakers hung on them.
To enter any mosque is free, but women must be fully covered with long pants and a head covering. Men supposedly need long pants as well. However, while the guards would not permit entry to any woman without a head covering, they would say "ok" to any man wearing shorts. Head scarfs were sold for $1 at the entrance of the most famous mosques.
Shoes are removed at the entrance and placed into cubbies. The floor inside is covered with carpet. There are really low chandeliers throughout and many domes in the ceiling. Once inside, and especially during prayer time, there are different sections for men and women. The front of the mosque is reserved for men. Women cannot enter the front area. In every mosque, the area where women can pray is generally a small section on the side in the way back.
Hagia Sofia - Considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture, this is a famous historical church that was built in the mid 500s as the Christian cathedral of Constantinople. In 1453 after the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire, it was converted to a mosque. There are still at least two remaining orthodox style paintings on the walls in two corners but the rest are destroyed or covered by islamic lettering and designs.
Topkapi Palace - Built by a Sultan shortly after the conquest of Constantinople, this palace was meant to house his whole Harem, slaves, etc. The tile work was so impressive. All of the tiles were hand painted and just covered all of the walls and floors. It was so ornate.
Grand Bazaar - A large building with about 4,000 shops attracting between 250 and 400K visitors daily! Most of the shops sell the same tourist things though - lamps/rugs, wallets, clothing, baklava/spices/turkish delight. There were these types of shopping centers throughout Istanbul that mimicked this bazaar. They were called things like the "spice bazaar" and "artisan bazaar". In the very back of the bazaar outside was a books section. Adam loved this courtyard area and ended up buying three books - surprise, surprise. He just couldn't stop himself because the books were less than a dollar each.
In the less touristy and more local area of shops, it was crazy to see all the women's clothing stores. They were all displaying mannequins with variations of dresses and pant suits with completely covered arms and legs. Different colors and sequins but all fully covered designs!
Museums - The mosaic museum contained the remains of flooring of the old byzantine palace - images of hunters, farmers, and animals. Super impressive. The archaeological museum's main exhibit was sarcophagi from a burial chamber in ancient Sidon. Very intricate marble work all around them.
Island Trip - We spent one day going to the biggest of the princes' islands "Büyükada". These islands are just off the Asian side of Istanbul. The ferry there takes about 1 hour. Almost no motorized vehicles besides those for construction are allowed on the islands - so people get around via horse, bike, or golf carts. We rented two bikes for the whole day for $9 each. The little town on one end was somewhat crowded but when we circumnavigated the island, about 6-7 miles total, it was really empty on the other sides. Occasionally there would be a café where you could stop for fruits or drinks or a beach area, but mostly empty. There were so many large hills! The island had really pretty colorful buildings and lots of flowers. The climate was still dry though. So there were a lot of pine trees and dry grass like Colorado - just with island culture and rocky beaches!
Turkish food
We really enjoyed Turkish food! There were plenty of kababs, yogurts, tomatoes and cucumbers. The donner sandwiches and a type of pizza were served in a lot of cheap areas for just over $1. Our favorite dishes were probably from this old ottoman restaurant in old town. They had this smashed and smoked eggplant dish and a clay pot chicken dish that were just filled with flavors we had never tasted before. So many unique spices but so appetizing! The seafood is also spectacular. We had grilled sea bass and calamari.
Our hotel had free traditional Turkish breakfast on the rooftop every morning. It consisted of a plate of three different types of chesses, a sliced meat like spam, bread, butter/jam, two kinds of olives, tomatoes and cucumbers, an egg pancake, and two kinds of pastries like poppy seed muffins and rolled fried cheese and spinach.
We also loved the unique drinks like the "sherbert" which is a spiced pomegranate juice. Because a lot of restaurants especially in the conservative areas do not serve alcohol, they had fun frozen fruit drinks, flavored milk drinks, Turkish coffee, and Turkish hot tea drinks for people to enjoy. I wish we had more of those fun type of drinks available at bars in America as well.
Well, our trip in Istanbul ended on a sad note. While eating at a really fancy Iranian restaurant on the third day, Clare commented that the chicken on her kabob tasted really weird. Since she thought it was just different Iranian flavors she ate a few pieces but then spit some out and said that it just tasted horrible and maybe not even cooked. A few hours later, sure enough, she came down with pretty severe food poisoning symptoms. She was resolved to just endure the violent vomiting symptoms in our hotel room, but then her hands, arms, and legs started going numb. Her fingers and hands started seizing up and curling inward toward her body. We thought this could have something to do with severe dehydration. She could not open her hands. At 1am, we took a taxi to the international hospital emergency room. But by the time we got there, Clare's hands were unclamped. So, instead of going in, we sat outside on a bench for 2 hours. We had the piece of mind that we could just walk into the hospital if needed but just stayed outside to see if the worst was behind us. Sure enough, she felt better and we headed back to the hotel. Clare slept for the next day and gently drank bits of water, juice, and tea. She was still on the mend when we took our plane ride to Thessaloniki, Greece 48 hours later. But, the worst was definitely over within the first 24 hours.