Istanbul: Part 1

Istanbul is the most fascinating city I’ve ever visited. I spent eleven weeks in Europe following college graduation and was lucky enough to visit many wonderful cities, but Istanbul is the most colorful, vibrant, frenetic, crowded, historic place I’ve ever been. We loved it!

The first day we walked over ten miles, starting at Rachel and Juan’s apartment and walking to Taskim Square, now the site of the ongoing protests. The pedestrian mall, İstiklâl Caddesi, begins at Taskim Square.

From there we walked past the Galata Tower . . .

(I had hoped to return to the Galata Tower and get some panoramic photos of Istanbul, but the timing for good photos was never right.)

. . . and along the streets of shops to the shore of the Golden Horn. The Galata Bridge stretches across the Golden Horn from Beyoğlu to Sultanahmet, the area of many of the significant monuments and museums.

The bridge is crowded with fishermen all day long, and even at night. We came out of a restaurant around midnight in Sultanahment, and there were still many fishermen casting their rods at that late hour.

You can buy fish at many open air shops to cook at home,

0r already cooked from a street vendor.

Ferries are constantly moving up and down the Golden Horn (as well as the Bosphorus). Here you can see Topkapi Palace in the distance.

We ate a late lunch at a cafe under the Galata Bridge. We chose the fish to be grilled. It was excellent and beautifully presented, but very overpriced. 

After walking across the Galata Bridge, we walked north along the Bosphorus, a channel that connects the Sea of Marmara with the Black Sea. The Bosphorus is an incredibly busy waterway. We learned later that freighters wanting to travel the length of the waterway may only go from north to south during one 12 hour period, and then from south to north during the next 12 hour period. Otherwise the smaller boats and ferries transporting workers and tourists from the European side of Istanbul to the Asian side would be overwhelmed by the huge freighters.

One of the places I wanted to visit was the Istanbul Modern Museum. It reportedly has a fabulous view of the Bosphorus from its cafe, but every day we were there that fabulous view was blocked by the largest cruise ships I’ve ever seen. It took a panorama with my iPhone to get the whole ship in one photo. I was too tired to enjoy an art museum by that time of the day, so we passed it by and sadly, never returned.

We walked alongside the Dolmabahçe Palace, another place we never found time to visit.

We stopped for a cold drink and then headed back to Rachel and Juan’s. Had I know how long and steep a climb we’d have to make, I might have insisted on a taxi. The advantage of walking was that by the time the first day ended, we had a good sense of how Istanbul was laid out, and had seen quite a bit of it!