Our first job was to walk up to the tram stop and buy an Istanbulkart. Something similar to London’s Oyster card system that you can top up, and allows travel on all forms of public transport at a reduced rate. The machines have an English option, but it still took a bit of working out. A local guy stood behind, helped us out and we managed to load it up with 20tl. We bought one card between us which worked fine.
We took the tram back to Sultanahmet Square and walked to the Basilica Cistern. It looks nothing from above, just an oblong concrete building with a ticket office inside. Once through the security scanner we descended the 50 odd steps under ground.
It is the largest of the ancient underground water cisterns found across Istanbul. Most of the columns in the cistern appear to have been recycled from the ruins of other buildings, and among them are two carvings of Medusa’s head used as column bases, as well as a column with tear shaped engravings. It is reported that the crying pillar (as it’s known) was built in memory of the 100’s of slaves who lost their lives during the construction. Amazing to think how old the place was.
By the time we were back at ground level, our stomachs were rumbling so went to find somewhere for lunch. There’s no shortage of eateries around the old town, so doing our best not to fall into any tourist traps, we wandered up one of the cobbled side streets and found a place selling pizza. It was delicious too!!
Refreshed, we walked up to Topkapi Palace, just as the call for prayer started between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia. It was brilliant to listen to. One muezzin would sing out part of the prayer and then the second muezzin would respond from the other minaret. Fantastic.
Apparently, Topkapi Palace is the largest royal residence in Istanbul and it served as the main residence to the Ottoman Sultans for almost 400 years. The grounds are massive, but our favourite part, and the most impressive, were the Harem Apartments – a place with more than 400 rooms for the Sultan’s many concubines, wives, children, and extended family members. It’s well worth paying the extra entrance fee for.
There’s so much going on and so much to see I think Istanbul is going to be our favourite city so far!
When we woke up the next morning we realised we were getting low on milk. Although there’s a bigger out of town supermarket chain called MMM, the food shops in the city seem to be small corner shops and there are loads of them. Think Arkwright, Open All Hours but smaller and without Ronnie Barker lol. We went hunting and found a bottle resembling milk in the fridge. It wasn’t until we tasted it later that we found out Ayran isn’t milk at all!! It’s a yoghurt based drink flavoured with salt - yuk!!! It was disgusting lol. It’s allegedly Turkeys National drink!
It was still persisting it down when we got up. But the intrepid explorers that we are lol, we got togged up and walked up the road to the tram stop. We’ve nick named the road “nutty street” because the traffic is sheer madness. The traffic lights on the side streets are usually ignored and if they’re on red and somebody stops all hell breaks out with horns blowing until it starts moving again. Two lanes squeeze into one, even though it’s clearly a single lane and we’re sure they think the zebra crossings are just for decoration. How there are no accidents is beyond us but it all seems to work?!!
At the tram stop, we loaded some more Turkish Lira onto the Istanbulkart card and took the tram 2 stops up to the Grand Bazaar. Wikipedia says ... The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul is one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world, with 61 covered streets and over 4,000 shops which attract between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors daily. In 2014, it was listed No.1 among the world's most-visited tourist attractions with 91,250,000 annual visitors ... I was excited to see it, and to be able to walk around out of the wind and rain was a bonus. If I’m honest, I think I was expecting something better. Maybe that’s what happens when your expectations are too high. Maybe we were hungry, who knows?
We eventually found a place that looked nice and wasn’t full of men smoking. We thought at first, as there were no menus available, it was a coffee shop. So after a bit of deliberation, and them not selling lattes, we ordered 2 Turkish tea’s. I love tea, proper English tea with milk, so Turkish tea with no milk was a bit out of my comfort zone. But, believe it or not, it was nice, really nice, so nice in fact I’m going to have some more.
The lady who welcomed us as we walked through the door, bought over some little cakes and with a smile said, “a treat”. The Turkish people are so hospitable.
Getting braver by the minute we asked if we could have some food. She took me into the kitchen and showed me the 2 options available. Soup or doner and rice. Needing more than soup we ordered the doner. Hmmm, I did try it but ended up giving it to Andy. He didn’t complain!!
She kept bringing out more stuff to go with it, yogurt dip, a basket of bread and a bottle of water. Then if that wasn’t enough, she’d been experimenting, trying to make a latte and came out laughing as she wanted us to try it. All that for £7.50!!
On the way to the Süleymaniye Mosque we thought we’d stumbled across the “rainbow stairs” but later found out they were on the Asian side of Istanbul.
Leaving the grounds of the Süleymaniye Mosque behind we stumbled upon the Spice Bazaar. What a find. So much nicer than the Grand Bazaar. One of the guys said, "Hello sir, how can I help you spend your money?" lol. We ended up buying a box of Turkish Delight and some dried pineapple - yummy!
Thursday 20th December. 5 more days until Christmas Day, and although they don’t really celebrate it like we do back home we couldn’t not put the Christmas tree up. With a bit of ingenuity, a key ring, an electricians tie and an elasticated camping washing line complete with hooks on each end, we managed to hang it up out the way.
Spaghetti Bolognaise made and lunch eaten we made our way to Hagia Sophia.
It was built in 532-537 for the Emperor Justinian I. A former Greek Orthodox Christian cathedral, later an Ottoman imperial mosque and now a museum. A supreme masterpiece of Byzantine architecture and it was the first building to use pendentives to support a central dome (no, I don’t know what they are either), and its huge. It’s said that the Statue of Liberty can do star jumps inside!! It’s in need of a lot of TLC (along with quite a few other historical buildings), but it was great to imagine what it must have looked like back in the day. The few mosaics that we saw were stunning and use of marble decoration was like nothing I’d seen before. Towards the middle of the floor, were some inconspicuous marble circles. The sign said, “Place of the Coronation ceremony of the Eastern Roman Emperors”. That’s older than my mind can comprehend!! In the courtyard were some huge pots that used to hold lamp oil. Outside were the tombs of Sultan Mustafa 1 and Sultan Ibrahim and their family members.
Once outside the grounds we were back in Sultanahmet Square. It really is beautiful with a huge fountain and palm trees. We stopped at a cafe for some more Turkish tea and Baklava. Andy opted for some sort of rugby ball shaped meat balls.
Afterwards, we found a cart selling books and maps and bought a road map of Turkey for our up coming adventure into Asia. The guy selling it wanted to know where we were from (as everyone does) and asked where we were going. He seemed quite pleased that we were planning on going to the places he suggested. Then, laughing, he asked if we wanted to buy a carpet lol. If we had 10 Turkish Lira for every time we’d been asked that!! He was joking of course, just making fun of the 150 carpet sellers in Istanbul haha.
We walked along the Hippodrome following Google Maps to our next destination. We didn’t know it used to be a Hippodrome at first until we read one of the many information obelisks dotted about. Lonely Planet says ... The Byzantine emperors loved nothing more than an afternoon at the chariot races, and this rectangular arena alongside Sultanahmet Park was their venue of choice. In its heyday, it was decorated by obelisks and statues, some of which remain in place today. Re-landscaped in more recent years, it is one of the city's most popular meeting places and promenades ... The Obelisk of Theodosius (Egyptian) and the Walled Obelisk are just two of them. At the other end stands the German fountain.
Nobody knew it existed until the town hall had been knocked down in 2010. It’s now used as an art gallery and free to enter. It had beautiful clear water in the bottom just like the Basilica Cistern should of had and I can’t recommend it enough. Stunning.
The winter Solstice finally arrived so we can look forward to lighter nights from now on, albeit a few minutes a day. What did we do to celebrate? Absolutely nothing lol. Just chilled out and ate food. Well, apart from nipping over to the ferry terminal opposite and having coffee in McDonalds. We’ve been hunting for WiFi and although it’s available we can’t seem to login. Everywhere needs you to register by entering everything apart from the colour of your knickers, so we gave up and did a recce at the metro station instead.
We were up and out earlier than we had been lately. Caught the metro (M1a) from the station not far from where we’re staying. We wanted to visit another place that had been recommended to us.
On our way up to the Eyüp Sultan Mosque we couldn’t stop laughing. For some reason we found it hilarious to say things like, Eyüp, I think we’re nearly there and Eyüp, mind where you’re walking or Eyüp, I think we’ve found it!! Maybe it’s our northern sense of humour?? It makes walking up and down hills and cobbled streets much more pleasurable when you’re laughing 😁😁😁
The area around the Mosque was definitely a bit more upmarket to what we’ve been used to. We might just be “Mosqued” out though by the time we’ve finished haha, but it’s different than dragging Andy inside yet another Cathedral 😉
Shoes back on, we walked across the courtyard, shoes off (again) and into the mosque itself. It was beautiful, and for a change, no renovation work was going on.
Not far from the Mosque is the Eyüp Gondola Station which takes you, for a small fee, to the top of one of the hills for another view over the city.
From there we caught the bus to Chora Church. It took some finding, probably because it was in disguise. Another place being renovated, and this time covered up on the outside as well. We deliberated on paying the entrance fee but so glad we did. There wasn’t a huge amount to see but the mosaics that were there, were stunning. I love mosaics but still can’t get my head around the skill of making beautiful pictures out of them and then making them fit the wall space.
Women were struggling with bags full of shopping walking up the hills and a gaggle of young girls wearing headscarves, were chatting 10 to the dozen in Turkish. As we neared the waterfront, there were more shops than houses, guys selling all kinds of fish and muscles from makeshift stalls, huge brass kettles were dotted about just in case anyone felt thirsty.
Sunday, AKA Christmas Eve’s Eve. Nobody in Turkey seemed to be bothered that it’s nearly Christmas apart from a couple of stall holders selling tacky tinsel and some of the high end shops displaying the odd decorated tree. Sunday, and all the shops were open and in full swing, including the bakers, selling freshly baked bread.
We decided the cupboards were getting bare and so was the fridge, so after putting some washing in the washing machine, we took the metro 10 stops to the nearest MMM supermarket. Public transport here is really cheap and not worth the hassle of negotiating all the impatient drivers.
We’ve found shopping for food is a bit easier than in Bulgaria, as everything is written in the letters we understand. With the aid of Google translate we can find most basic things. Loaded up with a ruck sack and two shopping bags full of goodies, we caught the metro back again. Christmas Eve sorted.
