The Hagia Sofia was absolutely stunning. The outside was nice but the inside was amazing. Pictures will do it better justice than my descriptions will. That goes for everything we saw this trip - Istanbul is BEAUTIFUL!
The Spice Bazaar was our next stop. We walked down by the Bosphorus to get there; yet another gorgeous sight. There were seagulls everywhere, which made me super homesick for the summer. In the bazaar, we found one shop with an older owner who took a liking toward us and gave us a lot of free samples. Turkish delight was surprisingly better than I expected. Gooey kind of like a stale gumdrop, but with really delicious nutty flavors. I got a small bag of dried pineapple and papaya slices (delicious) and a couple little gifts. The smells, colors and sounds of the whole place were overwhelming, but I loved it. I doubt I could’ve spent any more time in the bazaar than we did though.
Around the Sultahnamet square, back near the Hagia Sofia, we’d been heckled and catcalled a bunch by the super creepy Turkish men, but one guy actually was selling fairly inexpensive tickets to a sunset boat tour that night. We took him up on his offer, but only after he took us to the company’s official stand so we knew we weren’t being scammed. A little while later, after showering back at the hostel, we met up again at the booth to walk toward the ship. It was a small ferry boat full of tourists but that was to be expected. Unfortunately it was a cloudy and chilly night so we didn’t get to see much of any sunset and it wasn’t light for long, but we did see a lot of cool old buildings lit up for the nighttime! We traveled up the Golden Horn, then turned back around at the second bridge and went up around Beyoglu toward Kabatas, then turned again and headed back to the terminal along the Asian side. The whole journey took about 2 hours, which was just enough.
We went to dinner afterwards at an “original Turkish” restaurant (made for tourists) called Capadoccia. We sat on couches in this lavishly decorated area and shared a lamb dish in broth served on a hot plate - SO good.
After we finished, we headed back to the hostel totally exhausted and fell asleep quickly
Sunday morning, we woke up bright and early and indulged in the yummy free breakfast they provided. Traditional Turkish breakfast includes hard boiled eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, bread and cheese, but the hostel also added fresh sliced fruit. I filled my plate with eggs, cheese, apples, amaaaazing juicy orange slices, and green grapes. We ate quickly and took the above-ground tram to the grounds of Dolmabahce Palace. We got a guided tour of the facilities, which included many of the palace’s grand rooms and most of the harem. We weren’t allowed to take any photos inside so I’m just going to steal a couple from Google images for you guys to see. The whole palace was awesome though! Very European, which took me by surprise a little bit, but apparently it was designed because they wanted to have a European palace.
(The above photos are mine, and the ones below are Google’s.)
We had a little bit of extra time after we finished, so we went to the Palace Collections Museum a little ways down the road. We were the only people in the place, but it was only one big room, and we hadn’t heard about it until that day, so I wasn’t too shocked. It had a ton of cool artifacts that had once been in the palace, from children’s writing practice books, to clothing, to kitchenware.
We grabbed the tram back toward Sultanahmet and headed to the rooftop terrace restaurant of the Armada Hotel, a recommendation I’d found online. It wasn’t as overpriced as we’d thought it would be, and since it was 2:30 already, we were the only ones eating up there - it turned out to be the best lunch (and arguably the best meal!) we had he whole trip. The 360 view was stunning, and the seafood dish we both ordered was just as amazing. It had tuna, squid, shrimp and a lot of lemon - deeelish. I had chocolate fondue for dessert too, which didn’t hurt.
After we’d finished eating and had filled up on the free water (a surprisingly hard thing to come by), we went to the Blue Mosque. Carol had already been before I got here, but she was willing to go again with me. Sort of the opposite of the Hagia Sofia, it was more beautiful on the outside than on the inside, but still great of course! It was really cool to go inside a mosque, just as an overall experience. I’d been in one before with NCCS on a field trip in 8th grade but I didn’t even remember doing that until going into the Blue Mosque. I have a funny picture somewhere of Caroline and I in our head covers… I’ll find that for you.
From there, we went straight to the Cemberlitas Hammam, one of the Turkish baths that’s most welcoming to tourists. We changed into our bikinis, received a scrub mitt and a thin towel and were told to lay down on this big marble slab in the middle of the circular steam room with our towels and wait until an attendant called us. The slab was huge - I’m talking maybe 20 women laying on this thing, probably 90% of them topless, young and old. Very interesting… When it was our turn to be scrubbed, we each moved in front of an attendant woman and were lathered down in soap and exfoliated - it felt so nice and like the Moroccan bath you could literally see the dead skin coming off. Nasty. We stayed in the sauna for a little while longer, then sat on couches in the lounge in big comfy towels and drank Turkish apple tea. I wish there were spas like this in the US - who needs an expensive massage??
We started overheating at one point and decided to go back to the hostel to shower and change. When we were done there, we walked to another place I had Googled, called the Mesale Cafe, which was situated behind the Arasta Bazaar. It had a Whirling Dervish guy who danced on stage with the Turkish 4-man band. Not entirely authentic, but it was a cool place with low tables and lots of nargile smokers and Turkish old men playing backgammon. Reminded me of my dad and grandpa. We had lamb sis (shish) kebab and ate so much we thought we were going to explode. Then we had chocolate ice cream, so I guess we weren’t close enough to explosion mode.
(Apple tea!)
Again, after dinner, we went right back to the hostel and passed out.
We woke up early on Monday morning - yes I skipped your class for this, I sincerely apologize (a little…) - to go to Topkapi Palace in Sultahnamet. The grounds were beautiful, and we arrived early enough to get in with a very short line. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in any of the palace rooms that housed the artifacts and relics, but we saw the Imperial Council Hall, the arms and weaponry room, a room full of old watches and clocks, a room full of clothing and jewelry (how someone saved a sultan’s clothes from the 16th century is totally beyond me), religious relics (which really made me think - they claim they have Moses’s staff?), the beautiful gardens and balconies overlooking the Bosphorus, and the circumcision room. For some reason that is one of the most visited rooms in the whole palace.
I ducked out of the palace early to go to the Grand Bazaar because Carol didn’t want to go there again since she’d already been. I took the tram from Topkapi and easily found my way into the bazaar. Getting out of it was a different story, but it wasn’t terrible. Inside, there were so many knockoffs of purses, shoes and jackets, and a bunch of trinket shops. I made the mistake of stopping in a jewelry store, instead of a cheaper trinket shop, with semi-nice jewelry, but I found two really cute things for my sister Sarah and me. I didn’t have much time or money to spend so I got out of there as fast as I could after that one store. It took a little while to find my way back to the tram track but I made it in time to meet Carol back at the Eminonu tram stop at 1:30.
We took the ferry from Eminonu to Kadikoy on the Asian side of Istanbul to try to get lunch and wander. It was a lot harder than we expected to find a lunch spot and we eventually just sat down somewhere totally random and had mediocre salads because we were so starved. We didn’t really see any cool shops, but I did lose my favorite black sweater somewhere along the walk (TRAGEDY!) and ended up finding something similar and warm enough to get me through.
When we felt like we were done wandering, we hopped back on the ferry, which was yet another thing there that reminded me of home, and headed back to Sultanahmet. We got to our hostel around 5, took advantage of the wifi for a little bit, and left for the airport at 5:45.
Good thing we left obnoxiously early, as I usually insist on doing and don’t usually need to do, because there were a ton of complications. First, the first tram we tried to get on was so packed that the 20 seconds of time that the doors are open wasn’t nearly enough. We managed to shove our way onto the next tram that showed up, and stood in a cramped corner while the stop-and-start jerkiness of the tram lasted for half an hour. During that time, the whole car reeked of BO and a fight broke out between two guys right next to us. So that was exciting. But mostly terrifying. We made it to the train station eventually, where we switched to the roomier train that would take us to the airport. We got to Ataturk around 7, and headed straight for the check-in counter. Of course, as I’d predicted with my overpreparedness, something was bound to screw me up. They told me that since I hadn’t made my original flight (I had missed my flight to Istanbul and had to rebook another), nor had I been able to cancel or change it since my phone bill would’ve run sky high, I was put on the No Show list and removed from the return flight. I of course argued this since I had paid for both legs, so this was ridiculous… Eventually they gave me a seat on the flight, and I ended up in 7C, so I’m not sure how it took them so long to figure it out. I really do like Turkish Airlines though! I just wish their website would’ve been more accessible when I needed it. That took a while to sort out, and dinner took another while to find and eat, so we made it to the gate just in time to join the last 10 people in the line. Cutting it close!
Overall, my trip to Istanbul was one of the best I've ever had. Such a cool city.
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