Our final Turkish bus journey was a 4.5 hour easy trip down empty motorways. All was great until we got dropped off just before the Enseler Metro. The others who got off there disappeared into the transit vans to the city; whereas we wanted to go to the actual metro station. The footpath we followed ended up in an underground delivery bay – with no clue how to proceed. But a Turkish gentleman us looking totally lost and he kindly walked and pointed us back on course (up a hidden flight of stairs and around the corner). It was very kind of him. The number of times someone who doesn’t speak our language but will go out of their way to help us in such circumstances restores a little bit of the faith in humanity.
We were staying in the Beyoğlu area and our hotel was down a maze of streets, with no footpaths and quite a bit of dodging traffic and cats to get there. By the end we were experts at avoiding traffic while navigating the hill.
Our 1st day we joined a food tour with “Culinary Backstreets” I deliberately choose one based around a local neighbourhood, rather than one simply going through the tourist areas. We were in the Kurtulus neighbourhood and had a fantastic day with our guide and one other participant, who was from Greece but lived all over the world. It was really interesting getting a simultaneous Greek and a Turkish perspective on food and life. We ate fresh bread, mezze, offal, lamb, beer, fruit, coffee and on and on. Well worthwhile.
We spent a day dodging frequent downpours. But we managed to visit the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia without too many lines.
The underground Basilica Cistern was a wonderful surprise as I hadn’t added it to our plans but afterwards found it was one of the top tourist sites in Istanbul. It must be how Andrew experiences our travel – never knowing what he is going to see but enjoying it immensely when he gets taken to all the various places.
We are generally capable travellers and know not to fall for certain scams – but one lunchtime we ended up feeling like absolute amateurs. In our defence, the rain was bucketing down and we were hungry, but we chose a kebab seller who charged us over the top prices because we didn’t ask for the menu with prices on. In our defence a lady who wasn’t Turkish, but was from somewhere nearby, got her bill just before us screamed at the waiter and threatened to call the police because their practices were so bad. It was not a good experience.
That grim experience aside, we had so many wonderful food experiences in Istanbul. We sampled the famous pastry shops Hafiz Mustafa https://en.hafizmustafa.com/ and Karaköy Güllüoğlu https://www.karakoygulluoglu.com/en/menu for lots of outstanding baklava…mmmm We turned up early and got a table at Çiya Sofrası – which turns up on worlds 50 best restaurants. The random dishes we pointed at turned out to be 100% delicious, and very inexpensive.
And we took a few trips on the ferries, to go to the Asia side of the city and also to go up and down the Bosphorous as Andrew wanted to make sure he had seen as much as possible
And to finish, it would be impossible to not mention the cats. Everywhere. Every day.
As always, vicariously enjoying your travel!
Alison xx