A Final Frolic in Istanbul

It’s always so sad to leave Tanzania… so to ease the transition back to the real world we decided to take a few day jaunt in Istanbul. We landed at about noon and headed to baggage claim only to find that there were hardly any bags that came out, and ours was definitely not two of them. We went to the baggage office and left with not a lot of optimism that we would get the bags back, let alone get them before we left Turkey. That’ll make you think twice about what to put in your carryon! 

But the show must go on and we found our driver who brought us to the hotel. We stayed right near Gatala tower, which is in the historic city but a little far from where Hagia Sophia is. The airport is about an hour away from the old city, which was surprising. Also the weather was not great- and the forecast said rain nonstop basically til we left. So we were a little nervous about what was to come. 

A few observations about Turkey- 

1. Everyone smokes! Literally cigarette smoking everywhere. I think the Turkish would laugh at a smoking section.
2. People getting plastic surgery and hair transplant surgery about- we saw at least 15 hair transplant patients and 6 nose jobs, and a couple eye lifts. People just walk around in their bandages, going about their tourist activities. One guy from Michigan actually wore a sweatband advertising his surgeon. Based on our Google searches, the surgeries here are less than half the cost of the US, UK, and Australia. 
3. Really can’t sound out anything here. We finally on the way out of town learned out to say thank you enough that we were only laughed at a little bit. 
4. Cats are EVERYWHERE! At first it’s a little unsettling, but again Google educated us a little bit- they have been there since Ottoman times- cats are revered in Islam. They also help keep mice and rats away. And they are treated by the community as communal pets so people feed them and care for them, and sometimes even vaccinate them. After learning all that we warmed up to them. It’s also cute to see resident cats in our hotel, shops, etc. LA Health dept would def not approve though. 
5. People in Istanbul seem to stay up very late and sleep in. The energy in the streets late at night is electric and when I went out for a coffee this morning on my way out of town at 9am it was a ghost town. 
6. There are so many shops! Whoever said retail is dead has not been to Istanbul. The city is endless and the shops are too. It’s hard to imagine how these shops all stay in business. We heard many phrases that seemed to tread the line between pickup lines and trying to get us to come into their shops- everyone stands outside in the street to solicit customers to their shop or restaurant. Also because the city is mostly Muslim, there are a lot of shops that close during prayer times. 
7. The city is built on so many hills! It reminded me a lot of Rome with narrow cobblestone streets, but the incline was significant. Because we were staying near Galata tower in Karacöy, we had to walk down this major hill just to get to the tram. It seemed to get shorter as the days went on :)

My wad of cash- the atm only gives out the equivalent of $2 bills

Cats of Istanbul 

So after settling into our hotel we hit the streets. Our first stop was to buy umbrellas and we used them every day. We headed down the hill to the tram which took us across the bridge to Sultanahmet. This is the most touristy area of the city. Liz had downloaded a walking tour so we started on that and really enjoyed the history of Istanbul- first named Byzantium as a Roman colony, then Nova Roma when the capital was moved from Rome, then Constantinople to honor Constantine as he converted the Romans to Christianity. 

The base of this column talks about how they brought this obelisk from Egypt to erect it in the hippodrome

We walked around the hippodrome which was a Roman town square and then wandered into the Blue Mosque. Wow that place was amazing, and so impressive, the mosaic tile and the size of the place was crazy. Mosques generally have an outer courtyard that is surrounded by a colonnade and then you go into the actual sanctuary. The inside areas are carpeted and you need to take off your shoes and have your head covered to enter. We saw some people washing their feet at a washing building outside of the mosque. The blue mosque was built where a royal palace existed in Roman times, so it is newer than Hagia Sophia. Also, the minorets, or the skinny towers around the mosque, are where speakers are mounted and the prayers are sung through those speakers, so you can hear them throughout the city at prayer time. 

After leaving the blue mosque we decided to check out the food scene and ended up getting a mezze spread that was simply epic. We loved everything and realized over the next few days we were going to try to eat alll the food.  We brought home some of our meal as takeaway because we were so full, but headed back to the hotel. 

The second day was just as cold and rainy as the first but we didn’t let that stop us. We started on the rooftop of our hotel which was beautiful and overlooking the Bosphorus. I originally thought this was a river but it’s not. Istanbul is situated at the intersection of a few different bodies of water. It was a Roman settlement because of its strategic location between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, and the historic part of the city was jutting out into this water so it would have been very hard to attack the city without people knowing about it. 

Once we left the hotel we headed over to the bazaars- the Egyptian spice bazaar is much smaller and we started there. So many vendors, many of which selling tea, but the tea was actually loose leaf tea, so you could tell what was in it. Liz bought a bunch of tea and we also tasted and bought some Turkish delight which is a sweet gelatinous treat with lots of different flavor options. I love pistachio everything here! The grand bazaar was completely overwhelming. You could absolutely get lost in there and there were hundreds if not thousands of stalls. We went shopping and bought some fun stuff, I bought a leather jacket, Liz bought a pretty embroidered top, and some other gifts. I also bought a beautiful dress I saw in a window right outside of the Grand Bazaar. The gold jewelry there was also just beautiful. I realized that I have a particular taste for jewelry in the $2000 plus range. 

From the bazaar we headed to one of the coolest spots of the trip- the Basilica Cistern. This is an underground water storage facility that was used to provide clean water to the city. The water was 7-9 meters deep and they kept fish in the water to make sure it wasn’t poisoned. This was such a cool space because to build it they used columns from other Roman structures. So it was adaptive reuse of sorts. It was cool to see all the different column capitals. You don’t notice at first. The venue now contains some dramatically lit art as well. There are two column capitals that are used as bases in the cistern that are faces of Medusa. They are rumored to be placed upside down or sideways so that the workers building the cistern don’t turn to stone. 

We happened upon an amazing coffee shop called ViVana Kahvesi- which we were told is the Turkish Starbucks. Dear Lord the sweets they had were EPIC. I got something called a creamy Damascus, which was like a pistachio cookie sandwich with creme on the inside and then they covered it with milk chocolate. Wow. It was so freaking good. The Turkish love their sweet stuff. 

Number one on my list was to see Hagia Sophia, because I had studied it in architecture school and it has such a long history. So we got a guided tour to make sure I could ask all my questions. Not sure I would do that again actually, but it was very cool to see.  The first church built on the site was built in 360AD as a Christian church by Constantine. It burned down and the there was another church built there in the 6th Century and that one was demolished in riots because the people who lived there were unhappy with the government. Then the third church built was Hagia Sophia. It was built by emperor Justinian and also was built in an epic 5 years using volunteer labor. The reason it was able to be built so quickly was because it, like the cistern, used columns and materials from other Roman buildings like the temple of Artemis from Ephesus, so you can call this another sort of adaptive reuse as well. It was used as a Christian church until the Middle Ages when the Ottoman Turks converted it to a mosque, covered the mosaic floor with carpet, and removed or covered any of the Christian iconography. Then in 1932 it was converted to a museum, the floor was uncovered, it was heavily restored by some folks from NY who uncovered a few beautiful gold mosaics from the 12th century, and it was opened to the public. Unfortunately in 2020 during covid it was converted back to a mosque which was a controversial move by the president (insert more shady business here) and so now the ground floor is only open for prayer. We were able to tour the upstairs gallery which was still cool but it’s a shame, because there aren’t even a lot of people who pray here (it is rumored that they are politicians), and there are so many other mosques including the blue mosque right next door. Also there was huge scaffolding covering the dome, and it will be there for at least 10 years! There was a huge earthquake in Istanbul in 1999 that did some damage to the structure but they are doing more cosmetic upgrades too. Side note, I definitely would not want to be in Istanbul for a 7.8 magnitude earthquake! 

After Hagia Sophia our guide convinced us to go look at his “cousins” carpet showroom. It was totally a sales pitch and we didn’t bite, but it was really cool to see how the carpets are made and the different materials used to make them. Apparently the silk thread is the strongest. The carpet I bought in Singapore was about 1/3 the cost of the rugs they were selling here, but very pretty. 

From there we went to the Seven Hills restaurant rooftop for a sunset photo and of course it started to rain. So we headed back to the hotel to drop off our stuff before our Turkish bath. Ağa Hamami was fairly close to our hotel and dates back to the 1400s. We walked into a basement and checked in, they have us Turkish towels and sent us into the main steam room and told us to lie on the hot marble for 10 minutes. This felt like forever but I did find a spout with cold water that made me not die. Then these women took us into another room with two marble tables where they did a full body scrub (think Korean spa-lite) and then a lather massage where they rubbed soap suds all over. They also washed our hair and then sent us upstairs for the oil massage and facial. Our skin felt amazing after! It was fun to think about women hundreds of years ago doing the same thing- the baths here were where women found wives for their sons, found out all the gossip, and socialized. On our way home we stopped at a Turkish fast food restaurant for a döner box which was sliced beef, French fries, pickles, lettuce and lots of mayo. Just delicious, I would pick that over McDonald’s any day. 

Our third day we decided to do a boat tour of the Bosphorus, which is the water around the top of Istanbul. We took the boat a little ways up towards the Black Sea and looked at all the architecture along the coast. Istanbul is actually in 2 continents- Europe and Asia, so our boat stopped on the Asian side for a quick visit. Didn’t seem much different than the European side except maybe less dense. 

Our afternoon was spent getting our steps in- we started by getting lunch at a recommended place by my friend Arman’s cousin- called Mülholluf. It was exceptional and we tried so hard to not be full but to no avail. The highlight was “hot hummus” which was served with breaded and friend prosciutto chips. Heaven. From there we walked all the way to Çirağa Palace which was about an hour walk. It was Valentine’s Day and so many people out, it was so crowded! We passed by Galataport which is a new waterfront development with lots of restaurants and shopping (actually lots of American stores) and it was also hopping. 

The Çiruğen Palace is right along the waterfront and it now a hotel that has a more modern building along with the historic palace. It was recommended to us for sunset and didn’t disappoint. We got coffee and dessert which was $62, did I mention this was a bougie hotel? It has another amazing history. It was originally built by an Ottoman Sultan and lived in by several sultans after that. In 1910 there was a crazy fire due to faulty wiring and it burned to the ground. It was in ruins, and only the exterior walls remained until the early 80s, when it was completely restored and turned into a luxury hotel. After our coffee we explored into the restored palace and it was breathtaking. In our 3 day old clothing we felt very out of place as there were a few dressed up valentines couples visiting for dinner. Another very cool restoration project though. 

The palace was our last adventure together, and we took the tram back to our hotel where (huzzah) we found our luggage! Thank god we got that back, would’ve really sucked if we didn’t. Liz’s flight was early this morning and then I woke up, bought all the pastries I could, and took the train to the airport, another fun adventure. I’m looking forward to being home but this was another amazing adventure I am so happy to have experienced, and especially with Liz, the best traveling companion a girl could ask for!