We were a bit tired when our train arrived into
Istanbul. While we did get quite a bit
of sleep on the train, getting woken up a couple of times to get our passport
stamped meant for a pretty disjointed sleep.
Still it was a lot better than taking a bus. We made it up to our hostel without too much
trouble, had some breakfast and a shower then headed out to check out the
sights.
We were staying in Sultanahmet, while very touristy is a
great location as most of the big sights are within walking distance. There is so much to see in Istanbul, we soon
realised that our 3 days in the city wasn’t really long enough to see
everything. First stop was Hagia Sophia,
built as an orthodox basilica in 360 (although the current building dates back
to the 500’s), converted to a mosque in 1453 it then became a museum in
1931. All in all it is a very impressive
building, with a massive dome, numerous mosaics and other decorations. From Hagia Sophia we walked across the square
to another very impressive building the Blue Mosque. The mosque is still used regularly for
prayers, however they allow tourists to wander through part of the mosque in
between prayer time. While impressed
with both buildings we decided that the Blue Mosque had the better exterior and
Hagia Sophia the best interior. Our final stop of the day was the Basillica
Cistern, the largest of several ancient cisterns below Istanbul. The cistern was built back in the 6th
century. It’s a great place to escape the heat (although not the crowds) on a
hot day in Istanbul.
Sultanahmet has numerous roof top bars and restaurants…after
a bit of trial and error we managed to find the bar with the best view of the
Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, have a look at the evening photos we took.
The next day our main aim was to get to Tokapi Palace before
the crowds…which we sort of managed.
Tokapi Palace was the main residence of the Ottoman Sultans for around
400 years. It is another of the must see
sights in Istanbul and definitely worth the effort. The highlight for us was the harem…the main
living quarters of the sultans and his family.
The rooms are decorated with traditional tiles and other ornate
decorations. Also located in the palace
is the imperial treasury….a collection of very fancy jewellery and other
objects (such as a jewel encrusted tea set).
As we left we almost had to fight our way through the crowds coming in,
definitely glad we got there early. The
afternoon was spent having a wander through the grand bazaar before our cooking
class that evening.
Chris has proven to be the better travel planner, basically
I have no patience to read through guidebooks until I actually get to our
destination. This is not ideal as on a tight time frame you need to work out
how long to spend at each destination and maybe also organise some activities
in advance. So Chris has done most of
the organising on this trip and I help out occasionally by booking a hostel.
However this time I actually organised something....a Turkish cooking class in
Istanbul. The class was run by a local
lady in her very nice apartment in the suburb of Taksim. It was good to get out of touristy
Sultanahmet and see how the locals live.
The cooking class was good, although a bit strange at times. The food was great and I’m looking forward to
making it at home but the other people taking the course were all a bit
weird. There was the middle aged
American lady who spoke fluent Turkish having spent some time here while at
uni, (the cooking teacher was convinced that the American lady was a spy) the
American lady’s teenage nephew, and a Canadian travel writer. After the cooking was done more guests turned
up for dinner, the extra guests were all friends of the other people in the
course, so we had the American lady’s husband (a university academic) and their
family friend an Austrian lady who lived in London (she reminded us of Cruella
de Vil from 101 Dalmatians) and the travel writers gay partner (a yoga
instructor). All in all it was a very
strange dinner party.
Our final day in Istanbul was spent checking out the Spice
Market (buying yet another scarf and lots of very yummy Turkish delight) and a
ferry trip on the Bosphorous. To our
surprise we even spotted a couple of dolphins in the water.
