Istanbul, Turkey

So Jaime and I get a lot of travel newsletters on a regular basis.  We see a lot of great deals and creative itineraries, but never have the availability as the best deals are last minute.  Well thanks to having a combined family Christmas this year, we had Thanksgiving available and when round-trip flights to Turkey came up for a mere $500, how could we not go?  The built-in pun also delighted me to no end (not as much for Jaime), and a few phone calls later we booked the tickets!  Lydia did not come with us this time — we are still wary of taking her on extended flights, especially when we would only be in Istanbul for 3.5 days (being last minute, we couldn’t get time off work).

After booking the flights and spreading the news, people came out of the woodwork with a lot of great ideas and advice for what to do and see while we were there.  One recent hire at work is from Istanbul and gave me a full three day itinerary!  We did our best to put together all the must-sees into our own rough list before heading off.

Departure and arrival

We left on Tuesday night, right after work.  Our flights were uneventful, as well as the brief layover in Zurich.  Jaime and I like to use local, usually public, transportation whenever possible, so we mapped out the metro to tram route to our hotel.  It was actually quite easy and we ended up using the tram throughout our trip.  It’s about $1.50 a ride and there’s a stop about a block from our hotel (on purpose) so it’s a great way to see the city or get back quickly after a long day of walking.

We then checked into the Pierre Loti hotel, where we were warmly welcomed and given vouchers for a free drink at the rooftop bar.  The room was a bit small, but it wasn’t really a problem.  The location and views more than made up for it.  We had not yet gotten our orientation, so we didn’t venture too far out for dinner and landed at a place just a few doors down from the hotel.  Afterward, we noticed a fair amount of people going into an open gate at a large tomb across the street from our hotel and decided to see where they were going.  Walking through the tomb with graves on each side at night was pretty surreal, and on the other side we found a hookah and tea place.  We just had some tea, which was quite amazing and very cheap (~$1), and called it a night.

Day 1

For our first full day, we decided to take on as much of Old Town as possible.  Istanbul is essentially made up of three peninsulas and Old Town is the southwestern one we were staying in.  We strolled down to the Basilica Cistern, a 6th century cistern, and the largest of hundreds of them all around the city.  It was forgotten about for centuries, but we are so glad it was rediscovered and cleared out for all to enjoy.  It was an insanely amazing experience.  It’s dimly lit and there is some ambient music playing as you casually walk among the 336 massive marble columns.  At the far end there are two columns with Medusa heads at the base.  Their origins are unknown, but you can see and feel the history of the place as you gaze at them.

Next, we crossed the street and went to the huge Blue Mosque, built in 1616.  It’s an iconic place and is often shown in pictures of Istanbul.  It is still an active mosque, so it closes to tourists during prayer times.  Jaime wore a headscarf she had brought, but once inside, we noticed that the only non-Muslims wearing headscarves were American tourists.  We thought it was a very interesting observation, and a little disrespectful.  On the way out, we actually saw a group of Japanese tourists fake praying and laughing in the corner.  We decided that American tourists get a bad stereotypical rap after that display.

Up next was the nearby Hagia Sophia, built in 536, that has been used by various christian religions and then as a mosque before being converted to a museum in 1931.  It is a massive structure and you can feel the history of it.  The domes are enormous and you can see the influences over time.  There are angels apparently covered up by “restorers”, beautiful golden mosaics, and then large circular Arabic signs seemingly slapped up around the interior.  After seeing an exit from an unknown area, I asked the guard how to get back there, and he pointed us to a staircase on the other side.  This unique ancient walkway took us up to the Upper Gallery with some incredible views of where we had been, along with the best mosaics in the place.  Don’t miss it!

Then we were off to Topkapi Palace, the home of generations of sultans, which was right next door.  The external grounds contained a large church and many walkways, but it was just the tip of the iceberg   Once inside the gates, with two large towers on each side, it opens up into a massive courtyard ringed by buildings filled with huge collections of antiquities, including an armory, ceramics, and a massive 86 carat diamond.   There were kids everywhere, so this must be a popular field trip spot.  Just when we thought we had seen it all, we went down a short path and staircase and it opened up into yet another large area.  This one contained a lot more free standing buildings, including libraries, a circumcision room (don’t ask), and various lounges across two levels (technically two courtyards).  This area also had some amazing views of the river and New City.

I had read about a Harem within the palace grounds, but after already spending hours walking around, we thought we must have seen it and not noticed.  The only thing that gave us pause was that it was supposed to be a separate admission price for it, so I stopped and asked someone who directed us to a small door we somehow overlooked with a booth in front to buy your ticket.  Through the unassuming entrance, it suddenly took you back through time.  Outside among the open spaces, it felt more like various museums, but in the Harem, you were completely submersed in a labyrinth of lounge rooms, plazas, kitchens, and so on.  You could feel the history and imagine living there and wandering from building to building.  It ended up being our favorite part of the palace.

Being Thanksgiving back in the states, we were on a hunt to find some turkey to eat.  It wasn’t as easy as we hoped, but we found it at an English pub.  It certainly wasn’t an authentic Turkish meal, but it was a fun departure and a check mark on my bucket list.  After a brief visit to the New Mosque near the Golden Horn (waterway), we got lost for a bit before finally finding the famous Spice Market.  It’s a covered bazaar full of shops selling various spices, sweets, and trinkets.  The spices were piled high along tables, walls, or in large bags, and you paid for everything by the kilo.  We narrowed it down to just two spices but now that they are nearly gone as I write this, I wish we had gotten more!  We left the market and headed south towards the Grand Bazaar.  We didn’t intend on doing much shopping there this day, but it was on our way back to the hotel, so we quickly walked through one corner of it and made a mental note of some things we wanted to pick up later.  We made a quick stop at the hotel before walking down the street looking for where to eat that night. After checking out a few menus, we saw a place with a large “Happy Thanksgiving Day” sign in their window and decided to give them our business.  Little did we know this place is a famous 1960s Hippie Trail place called the Pudding Shop (so of course we had to have some pudding).

Day 2

Today we decided to see the New City and take some kind of boat ride but we didn’t know what yet.  We had pamphlets for several Bosphorus River cruises, but they were all $40-60 and we figured we could do better haggling at the port.  We walked straight north from our hotel to the port and were surprised to find not a single person trying to sell river cruises.  I stopped into an information booth to see how we could get over to Asia (on the east side) and back to New City (in the north) and found a locals-boat that cost only $1.50 for each leg of the trip!  The Asian part of Istanbul is not very eventful (we landed in Uskudar).  It seems mostly residential, and while there were plenty of people around, there wasn’t much to do.  There were about a dozen men shining shoes near the port, and I decided to get a fresh shine, mostly for the experience.  After strolling along the river for a bit, we were about to head back when Jaime spotted a sign for a $5 Bosphorus tour, our kind of deal!  The tour was about an hour long and took us past a series of palaces and the expansive 15th century Rumeli Fortress where I’d like to visit next time.  On the way back to Uskudar, we found out that most of the other passengers were on an excursion from one of the two large cruise ships in port.  I can’t imagine how much more they paid for the exact same trip!

After our tour, we took another $1.50 ferry to Kabatas in the New City area.  We headed to Taksim Square and after walking up a few hundred stairs and asking a few locals, we finally found it.  The square is a large open area with a memorial statue in the middle.  We stopped for our first delicious doner sandwich, which is chicken carved off a large spinning spike, similar to how you see gyros made, before heading down the famous pedestrian-only Istiklal Street.  It was a nice long casual stroll, although a bit drizzly, and we stopped for dessert at a cafe recommended by a coworker called Saray Muhallebicisi.  About 2/3rds the way down the main drag, we stopped at  the medieval stone Galata Tower, built in 1348.  At the top, we had stunning views of all three Istanbul peninsulas and were greeted by rainbows.  Definitely worth the slight wait to get up there.  There’s also a fancy restaurant up there which we may have to do next time.

Having successfully conquered New City, we finished the walk down the hill and started our way across the bridge back to Old Town.  Our hotel had recommended a restaurant literally under the bridge, and while we didn’t end up going to that particular place, we thought it was a cool idea and went down the steps to see what it was all about.  There were about 20 restaurants on both sides of the bridge and they all had a guy standing outside trying to convince you to each at their place.  We dodged a few of them and went with a funny English guy.  Not so surprisingly, they attempted to upsell us from the $30 fish we saw outside to a $140 fish inside.  They didn’t know who they were dealing with and we held our ground and afterward had a very nice dinner with great views of the river and coastline, which gets better at night.

There was an episode of Amazing Race in Istanbul where they had a wacky ice cream-serving guy do a whole funny performance.  We nearly forgot about it when we saw an ice cream guy of our own near the hotel and had to do it.  He was very entertaining and had us laughing the whole time as he spun the ice cream and tricked us into taking an empty cone or no cone at all several times.  After a quick stop at the hotel, we went wandering into the night.  Istanbul is a great city for wandering at all hours.  There’s so much character to the city at every turn.  We did some people watching from a hookah bar in a random alley, then went to a bar named Cozy’s where we got slightly intoxicated.  Afterward, we went on the hunt for late night doners and luckily found a place that really hit the spot.

Day 3

Our last day in Istanbul was kind of a hodgepodge of miscellaneous things we wanted to do/see.  We started off by going to a textile area of the city that we saw on the tram ride into town to indulge in Jaime’s recent addiction to fabrics.  There were easily 100 different shops with various fabrics and widely different prices.  Some places had a square meter for $3 while others had similar fabrics for $60.  Jaime ended up with two nice ones, one of which we paid for by the kilo (which turns out to be quite a large amount of fabric!).

Our next stop was the old City Walls of Constantinople, started in the 4th century and built and rebuilt over time.  Strangely, the walls were not really listed as an attraction in many places, and were only included on one of the many maps that we had of the city.  We couldn’t find any information about tours or historically significant areas, so we just took the tram to a nearby stop and made our own tour!  The walls were very impressive and you could see them stretch off into the distance in both directions.  It was in various stages of disrepair, where the part north of the tram line seemed more modern and up-kept (Jaime’s favorite section) and the part we visited south was crumbling and cracked (my favorite).  There were a couple of paths along the walls, and one that went through a small gate.  It is a very underrated destination and we had a great time, at least until we were being followed by what we hoped was just a plainclothes policeman seemingly making sure we weren’t going to climb on them.  Once we spotted him, we headed back to the tram for our next destination.

After a bit of a walk from the next tram stop, we made it to the Valens Aqueduct, a 4th century two-level Roman aqueduct.  The surviving section is over 3,000 feet long (only a bit short of its original length), and there is six lane busy road that travels directly through it.  This was another destination that wasn’t on many maps and wasn’t really set up for tourism, so you could only really admire it and move on.  We went to lunch at a nearby place that sold both doners and something I kept seeing and wanting that looked kind of like a canoe made out of pizza (both yummy!).

We continued our walk with the Grand Bazaar in our sights.  This time we spent a lot of time there and did nearly half of our Christmas shopping!  We had anticipated doing this and brought a completely empty suitcase with us, which ironically Swiss Air claimed was too heavy for a carry-on and made us check it on the way there.  The bazaar is one of the oldest in the world and covers a whopping 61 streets with over 3,000 shops.  With this many shops, there is obviously a lot of repetitive things for sale, but that’s mostly a good thing because there’s no way you could see it all!  This bazaar in particular is known for having aggressive shopkeepers, but we didn’t really encounter that at all.  Maybe they are more intimidating in the peak seasons.

We dropped off all of our purchases at the hotel and looked up good restaurants near us.  We found one called Sofa but didn’t have high hopes of finding the actual address, so we just set out towards an area that seemed to have a lot of highly rated restaurants on the map. This area was south of the Blue Mosque and we’re glad we picked this area because we hadn’t seen this part of town before.  It was full of tourist shops, hostels, hotels, and of course restaurants.  Just our luck, right when we exited a sort of outdoor mall, the first place we saw was Sofa, so we had to try it.  It had a great ambiance and the food was delicious.  We highly recommend dining at Sofa.

That officially ended our quick trip to Istanbul.  We had such a great time and can’t wait to go back to experience more of the city and other parts of Turkey.  Our return flight left at 5am, and I didn’t want to risk sleeping through the alarm, so I stayed up all night while Jaime slept a bit.  Our flights were uneventful and we got back Sunday evening just in time to return to the real world while only missing a single business day!