Pictures from this part of the trip can be found in Gallery.
We got up early to beat Ankara rush hour traffic, and were out of Mark's apartment by 7:30am to start our 5-hour drive to Istanbul. Traffic out of the city wasn't too bad, but navigation turned out to be a bit confusing. It was a really oppressive and gray day, and Ken had developed a major head cold. On the descent from Ankara to the coast, Ken was unable to pop his ears, so it was a really painful ride.
About half-way to Istanbul, we took a bathroom break and tanked up the car. Mark checked his email and we realized that we had left Ankara a day late. We were supposed to drive to Istanbul on Tuesday. He had an email from the hotel asking if we were still coming. Fortunately, they were willing to save our rooms for us.
From the Asia side, you enter the Istanbul metro area almost an hour before the bridge over to Europe. This city is huge! Traffic wasn't too bad until we got into the old city, where it was very slow. We had no problems getting to the vicinity of the hotel (Naz Wooden House Inn), but the last few blocks were difficult. Mark's Garmin GPS kept sending us in circles around the vicinity of the hotel. It turned out that we had to turn left against a no-left-turn sign to get to the hotel. The roads are about 1 lane wide, and everyone seems to drive both directions on them. If two people meet in the middle, someone backs up.
Things were a little confused when we got there, too, because we had anticipated parking at or near the hotel, but there wasn't any parking available. The desk person personally guided us a few blocks down the road to a pay lot.
After getting to the hotel, we ate our picnic lunch in the hotel room and got settled in. Then, we headed out to see a few sights. We started at the Istanbul Mosaic Museum, just a few blocks from the hotel. Although we weren't going to save any money, we decided to buy a multi-day museum pass. (Later, it turned out to be useful because it got us past some long lines.) The museum was really neat. Besides seeing actual Byzantine mosaics (in-situ in some cases), there were also a lot of archaelogical notes about the process of restoring the mosiacs.
After finishing up at the museum, we headed to the Basilica Cistern and wandered around there for a while. It's actually pretty incredible, basically a big underground space held up by hundreds of stone pillars and sealed with waterproof mortar. Originally, there were many such cisterns in the old city, used as part of the public water supply in the Byzantine era.
After leaving the cistern, we wandered around and eventually decided to go to another museum on our pass (a technology museum), but it turned out to be closed because it was too late in the afternoon. So, we walked back to our hotel along the Kennedy road (outside the old city wall) and saw cruise ships and lots of rush-hour traffic.
Back at the hotel, we asked the desk person for suggestions about a restaurant to eat at, and he suggested a place called Doy Doy just down the street. Doy Doy turned out to be a bit of a neighborhood secret. It was 5 or 6 floors tall with an open patio on the top level. The patio overlooked the Blue Mosque on one side and the waterfront on the other. The Blue Mosque was gorgeous at sunset.
This was our first introduction to Adana Kebap (a sort of spicy meatball kebab). Ken also tried ayran, a popular Turkish drink that's basically a mixture of yogurt and water. It was ok with the kebab, but not good enough that he ordered it any other times on the trip.
After dinner, we wandered up to the square near the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia and took some pictures before going back to the hotel for the night.
The hotel was cute, but it took some getting used to that we couldn't drink the water and we couldn't flush toilet paper down the toilet. Like every place we stayed after leaving Ankara, we used bottled water exclusively (drinking, brushing teeth, etc.) and we typically had to put toilet paper in a little garbage can next to the toilet.
On Thursday, we got up and had breakfast at the hotel right when it opened at 8:00am. It was a pretty good Turkish breafast — lots of fruit, yogurt, breads, etc. After refilling our water from the water coolers the hotel provides, we headed out for the day.
Mark went to move the car to a free location provided by a sister hotel (basically street parking t at the hotel reserved), and the rest of us went straight to the Hagia Sophia. Later, Mark met us inside. We were really glad we had the museum pass, because we got to skip most of the line in. It probably saved us a 30-40 minute wait from the looks of the line.
After finishing up at Hagia Sophia, we headed out to the square and eventually decided to get lunch at a cafeteria-style place nearby called the Pudding Shop. (Apparently, this place was quite the stop-over for hippies on the eastern route during the 1960s.) The food was decent, but the process was confusing and we didn't really understand the prices, so we ended up ordering a lot more than we should have.
After lunch, we headed over to Gulhane Park to visit the Istanbul Archaology Museums, and spent the afternoon there. This complex of museums was huge, and we probably could have spent more time there. However, we were tired, and there wasn't much in the way of places to stop and rest (and of course no drinking fountains), so we eventually gave up and went to the cafe outside to have a coke and rest our feet.
Our next goal was to go to the Blue Mosque, but it was still closed for afternoon services. So, we visited the Mausoleum of the Sultans first, and then headed to the Blue Mosque right after it re-opened. Interestingly, we came out with two different impressions of the Blue Mosque. Ken thought it was light and airy, delicate and beautiful. Julie thought it was hot, stuffy and oppressive. Guess which one of us was wearing a head covering?
For dinner, we went to a seafood place out of the Rick Steves' book called Giritli. This place offers a prix fixe menu that includes wine, appetizers, main course, dessert, and coffee or tea. This was our introduction to meze, Turkish-style appetizers. We would later learn that at most places, each person picks a few and then you share them around the table. At Giritli, they brought 16 meze to our table for us to share, everything from eggplant to yogurt to seaweed to nuts. The meze were really good, and so were the courses afterwards, including grilled octopus. By the time we got to the main course (a choice of whole fish) we were almost full, and we didn't eat much of it. We were there for hours — afterwards, it was basically bedtime.
The next day, we were at breakfast at 8:00am sharp again, in preparation to head to Topkapi Palace for the morning. We wanted to beat the crowds as much as possible. The palace is pretty spectacular. We started with the harem and then saw the rest of the grounds throughout the morning.
In the afternoon, we decided to head to St. Chora church, which was far enough away to require a cab ride. We picked up a cab in the vicinity of the big square near the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, and ended up getting ripped off. Instead of 20-25 TL, it cost us more than 70 TL (about $40) to get there. (The cabbie took a more-or-less direct route, so we theorize that his meter was deliberately mis-calibrated.) Besides being expensive, the ride was scary, with the cabbie rushing down narrow crowded streets and honking at people (including kids playing in the street) without really worrying about whether they'd get out of his way.
St. Chora was interesting, with lots of old mosaics, but overall we were a little underwhelmed given the expensive cost of the cab ride there. (Later, Mark said that the audio guide, which we hadn't purchased, added a lot.)
Once finishing up at the church, we accidentally exited before using the bathroom. Since they wouldn't let us back in, we had to buy some water across the street to use their bathroom. Then, we decided to do one of Rick Steves' neighborhood walks, and walked along the old city wall most of the way back to the waterfront. Eventually, we found the Chuch of St. George, the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church. After having seen the seat of the Catholic church in Rome, it was rather low-key, but the interior of the church was pretty in the late-afternoon light and it was interesting to look at the iconography.
After leaving St. George's, we continued walking through the working-class neighborhoods in the area, stopping here and there to get a snack or something to drink. Once, a little boy asked Ken his name, but ran away before getting the answer. (School-age children in Turkey all learn some simple questions in English, like "What is your name?")
Eventually, we decided to take a cab back to the square, and we picked one up on the main road near the waterfront. Mark negotiated a 20 TL fare, which worked out nicely for us because traffic was bad by this time and it took a while to get back. (Julie was hot and uncomfortable in the middle of the back seat — cabs in Turkey are compact cars and the drivers rarely run the air conditioning.)
For dinner, we ate at a restaurant recommended by Rick Steves near the square, which we had walked by at least 5-6 times before. After dinner, we wandered around the Blue Mosque again, got some ice cream, and saw lots of barking dogs. (One would start barking and then others would materialize out of nowwhere to see what was going on.) We also almost got run over by a nutty cab driver who wasn't paying attention.
After getting back to the hotel, it was laundry time. Rather than doing our own laundry, we dropped off a bag at the front desk for 15 TL per kilo. We washed mainly underwear and socks.
In the morning, we left the hotel and headed to the main square to catch a tram down to the waterfront. When we got there, we checked the schedule for a cruise on the Bosphorus, and bought tickets for the 2:00pm public ferry for a few TL each (very cheap compared to some of the stuff being hawked on the street or in our hotel). Then, we walked to the Egyptian Market and the Grand Bazaar, and wandered around inside until we got tired of it (it was hot and stuffy).
After leaving, we wandered some more in the neighborhoods and eventually stopped at a sultan's cemetery and mausoleum that was open to the public. By this time, we were hungry, so we started looking for a Mexican place Mark had eaten at the last time he was in Istanbul. We never found it (closed?), but we eventually ended up at a little place back near the square, across from where we had gotten on the tram in the morning.
Since we still had plenty of time before the ferry left, we decided to walk down to the water rather than taking the tram. At the waterfront, we walked on the bridge over the Golden Horn, which was quite an experience. The public sidewalk on the bridge runs on two levels. Down at water level, there are dozens of restaunts and shops, each with its own annoying hawker standing outside trying to convince you to come into his place. We began to think of any walk near a restaurant as running a gauntlet.
On the far side of the bridge, we saw evidence of some sort of protest, and Mark had already heard that protests were ongoing in the city. So, rather than staying around to check, we hustled back over the bridge and waited for our ferry.
The Bosphorus cruise turned out to be very nice. We had heard that it could be crowded (and later we saw another ferry that was standing-room only), but ours was only moderately full and we were able to sit for the entire time. We found seats at the stern that had a good view of just about everything, and the wind was cool and comfortable.
After finishing up the cruise, we headed over to the train station just to see if it was possible to take the train somewhere that Mark had heard of. The train schedule didn't work out, but we did find a neat little train museum inside the train station.
Instead of heading back to the hotel along the tram route, we decided to walk up the Kennedy road again. However, this time, we walked on the sea side rather than along the old city wall. It turned out to be an eventful walk. It was obvious that something bad was going on with the protests, and we saw big clouds of black and then white smoke (tear gas?) from the city across the water.
Further on down the road, we saw lots of people fishing and swimming off the rocks, and some people who looked like they lived on the rocks (or at least spent most of their days there). At one point, a guy in a wetsuit passed us, carrying what appeared to be a loaded harpoon gun! We decided not to take a picture... he looked a little intent on something.
Toward the end of the walk, we ran into a pair of Russian girls who asked us in reasonably good English how to get back to Topkapi Palace (probably a 20-30 minute walk from where they found us). Our conversation with these girls showed us how much Istanbul was affecting us: in touristy areas of Istanbul (and to a lesser extent the rest of Turkey) almost everyone you run into on the street who wants to speak to you is trying to sell something. They're counting on tourists (like Ken's mom) who are too polite to ignore someone, or feel bad about it when they do. The best strategy is to just walk by as if they don't exist — without even making eye contact — because if you even look at them, they keep walking with you and don't leave you alone. Anyway, we were so used to ignoring people that we almost walked by the girls when they tried to ask for help.
For dinner, we went to a place Mark found the last time he was in Istanbul, a restaurant called Matbah. Matbah serves traditional Ottoman cuisine, using what they claim are historically accurate recipes taken from palace cookbooks and the like. It was good food, good wine, and a nice way to end our last night in Istanbul.