Istanbul, Not Constantinople

Let's get back to it, shall we?  I last left you as we were heading out of the Swiss Alps to Istanbul.

And boy was this a change from our 2 prior locations!  Istanbul is a city of nearly 14 million people.  For a little perspective, the Netherlands has a population size of roughly 17 million - and it's the most densely population country in Europe!  Istanbul felt huge and busy and so different from anywhere else we've traveled before.  It was our first time visiting a primarily Muslim country, but the transition from cathedral to mosque was an easy one to make since they are so beautiful. 

During our stay, we were struck by the hospitality of the Turkish people.  Upon first arriving at our hotel, we were offered a drink before even checking in.  At restaurants there were multiple occasions where we didn't order coffee/tea or dessert after the meal, but then they brought it out to us anyways. 

Below are some photos of the street and neighborhood that our hotel was located in.  We stayed at the Hotel Seraglio in Sultanahmet, old town Istanbul.

It was a very nice area.  Our first day, we arrived in mid-afternoon and actually landed at an airport located on the Asian side of Istanbul.  The city is split in two, with the European side (where we spent most of our time) in the west and the Asian side to the east across the Bosphorus Strait.

Our first tourist stop of the day was at the Basilica Cistern.  This cistern, located underground, is the largest of many cisterns in Istanbul.  This one was built in the 6th century and was used to house water for the city.  The place was really cool and kind of creepy.

Medusa head at the base of a column.

Has anyone read the Dan Brown book Inferno? The cistern features rather prominently in that book.

Our second activity was checking out the Spice Bazaar.  This was our first real introduction to the sales tactics of pretty much every shop owner in the city.  They are pretty intense and will try lots of strategies to get you to stop and look at their merchandise.  Often they will try to guess what country you're from, and the best one was when they guessed Holland. I suppose they were half right.

It was very busy!

I ate way too much of this stuff.

First, but not last baklava of the trip.

The market spills out into all of the surrounding streets as well.

After a somewhat tiring experience walking through the market, we stopped next for some traditional Turkish coffee and apple tea.  You guys, this tea is amazing.  It's very sweet and flavorful and I couldn't get enough of it.

Todd said that he ate this particular cup. It's thick stuff.

We finished out the night with our least favorite dinner of our time in Istanbul, so I won't share the photos.  Our hotel was located near the Blue Mosque, one of the largest in the city.  And it looks pretty amazing at night.

The next morning, we were awoken at 6am to the call to prayer.  The call to prayer takes place 5 times a day between sunrise and sunset.  Loudspeakers that are installed on the minarets of the mosques throughout the city blast the call to prayer out, and there is no way to avoid hearing it. The first few times we heard it, I felt like it had an eerie quality, but once you get used to it I think it's rather beautiful.  Todd shot this video of the mosques calling back and forth to each other.

The first item on our list for the next day was the Grand Bazaar. If we thought the Spice Bazaar was huge, we hadn't seen nothing yet. This place is all covered and has 61 streets and over 3,000 shops. The construction started in 1455, making it one of the oldest covered markets in the world.  I loved it.

The place sells just about anything you can imagine.  I bought a scarf here and Todd had a chance to try his bargaining skills.  We read somewhere that offering half is a good place to start when it comes to haggling, Todd might have been slightly nicer than that, but I think we still got a good deal.  During our trip, we also purchased a chess set and some artwork, each of those at a smaller market.

Following the craziness that is the bazaar, we had lunch and then headed to the Topkapi Palace.  Construction started on the palace in 1459.  Unfortunately, the traffic flow was poorly managed, which made it hard to get into individual rooms and such, but it was cool to think about the history of 400 years of Sultans calling the place home.

This was located in the harem, home to the Sultan's ladies.

Our last sight of the day was going inside the Blue Mosque.  Entering a mosque is a unique experience, since they do allow in tourists, but we still need to follow a couple of rules out of respect.  Everyone must take off their shoes and women need to cover their heads.  A regular scarf worked well for that purpose, and the entire interior is covered in lush carpet, so your feet are comfy.  The interior of the mosque was just as impressive as the exterior. It was covered in wall to wall tiling and mosaics, mostly in blue.

Pretty awe-inspiring.  There were some worshippers there who had most of the space while they allowed tourists into a designated area for photography.

That night, we enjoyed one of our favorite meals of the trip at Cooking Alaturk.  It actually is owned by a Dutch women along with a Turkish man, so it made us feel at home once we heard her accent.  The food was incredible.

Started with lentil soup followed by these goodies, lamb and beef wrapped in grape leaves.

Of course there was more apple tea after the meal.

After dinner, with energy to spare, we headed to the Mesale Cafe, which is an outdoor cafe we went to about every night.  We loved going to this place because the atmosphere was super relaxed.  They serve delicious looking food although we never ate there.  They don't serve alcohol, but their main jam is tea and hookah. There were many an apple tea consumed here, although Todd did prefer just the normal Turkish tea.  One night, we even tried the hookah. Here's some nice smoking shots of Todd with the apple shisha.

The hookah is called nargile, which means water pipe.  There were lots of experts in shisha smoking at this establishment, which made for excellent people watching.  They always had a live band playing traditional music at night.  And every night a whirling dervish put on a show. The dude could twirl (and did so with his eyes closed for 6 minutes straight, we timed it).

The next day was NYE and we started at the Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia).  The Hagia Sophia was originially built in 537 as a Christian basilica by the Byzantine emperor Justinian.  It served as a church for the next nearly 1000 years before it was converted into a mosque in 1453 under Ottoman rule.  The history of the place is incredible.  And the history is visible everywhere you look since there are Christian mosaics alongside Islamic scripture.

The structure was converted to a museum in the 1930s, so we didn't need to cover our heads and such.  I loved this place.  The juxtaposition of the Christian and Islamic elements is fascinating.  I find it so interesting to picture a functioning mosque that was filled with many Christian images.

After the Hagia Sofia, we headed to the "new" town part of Istanbul, which is much more modern and has lots of museums and shopping.  It was here that we had our favorite lunch at Antiochia.

The bread was so good and you got to load it withs lots of other goodness.  I would go back in a heartbeat.

We then spent a good chunk of time walking up the Istiklal Caddesi, a major shopping street.  It ends at Taksim Square, a place famous for lots of good and also not so good events over the years.

Afterwards, we checked out the Istanbul Modern. It was a small musem but it held an interesting collection of contemporary art.  We then headed back to our hotel for a snack and a nap, since our NYE adventure began at 8:30 that night and we wouldn't eat dinner until 10pm.  

For NYE, we took a dinner cruise on the Bosphorus Strait.  We figured the cruise was a good way to get away from lots of crowds and to have a good plan for the entire night. We were partially right.  The cruise was packed.  They smashed us in like sardines during the dinner portion, but luckily there was lots of extra space to spread out in after dinner on the upper deck.  

Our view of each other during dinner.

Throughout the night there were supposed to be four different types of dance performances.  We got to see two...

Traditional Turkish dance.

Belly dancer.

We didn't get to see the last two performances though because our cruise-mates had gotten quite drunk by this point in the night and basically the dance floor turned into a throbbing dance party.  The party was made complete by the Turkish club music which everyone was singing along too. It was quite the scene - fun to watch and annoying at the same time, but we made the most of it.  They even provided us with party hats and masks, which looked awesome.

These were delivered to us by Santa, who is apparently a part of NYE in Turkey since we saw him in multiple places.

As we got closer to midnight, Todd and I made our way up to the deck to celebrate the new year in the fresh air.  The views were really beautiful and made the whole experience worth it.

At midnight, we listened to the countdown in Turkish, and then enjoyed the various fireworks that sprung up around the city.  It was a lovely way to ring in the new year.

The next day called for more museums and mosques.  We started with the impressive collection at the Istanbul Archaeological Museums.

Alexander Sarcophagus from the 4th c. BC.

Our mosque of the day was the Suleymaniye Mosque, the largest in the city.  It was large and in charge. Once again, just so beautiful and exotic to these western eyes.

Todd liked this mosque the best.  We then hit up the Grand Bazaar one more time before getting coffee and tea at a hip spot hear the markets.  It's called Fes Cafe and it had a great vibe.

And alas, we've come to our final day in Istanbul.  We only had the morning since we flew out in the afternoon, but we managed to get to the Chora Church.  This small little museum is quite far off of the beaten path, but it's known for its impressive mosaics.  And impress they did.  It seemed as though every inch of this church turned mosque turned museum was covered in extremely detailed mosaics.

After a lunch of pide (which is a long skinny Turkish pizza)...

It was time to hit the road and head to the airport.  What a trip!  We are seriously blessed to be able to have one more big trip like this before we leave Europe in a few months.  And I couldn't have spent it with a better person.  

If you've made it to the end of this monster post - bravo committed reader (thanks Mom)!