Before we get to the travel post, I’d like to ask for your thoughts and prayers for one of our dearest friends. Mike was riding his bike to meet a friend last Sunday when his heart suddenly stopped. Fortunately, a young man and two nurses happened by and he received immediate CPR. He’s been in the cardiac ICU all week. On Monday, the odds were very poor, but each day he’s made progress, and everyone is now optimistic that there can be a full recovery. It’s still too early to be sure, and there is by-pass/valve replacement surgery yet to come. We’ve spent part of each day at the hospital with Karen, Keri, and Jim. We would all definitely appreicate your prayers.

Our first day in Istanbul, we visited the Arasta Bazaar adjacent to the Blue Mosque. According to Turkey Travel Planner, an arasta is a series of shops built near a mosque whose shops provide income for the upkeep of the mosque. It’s an open air bazaar, and my favorite of the three we visited. The quality of the goods and the prices were both better than those in the Grand Bazaar. If I had had the opportunity, I would have returned to make some more purchases. As it was, I bought a few gifts and two scarves for myself.

We visited both the Spice Market and the Grand Bazaar on the same day. If we had to do it over again, we’d do them on separate days. It was truly overload, and we visited two mosques as well that day.

The Spice Market is the smaller of the two, and the streets surrounding it are filled with shops as well. I had a hard time telling where the Spice Market began and ended.

There’s candy:

Olives:

Spices:

Tea:

Tracy later had some Turkish Apple Tea, and loved it. I really enjoyed the Turkish tea and loved the tiny tulip glasses in which they served it. 

On our last morning in Istanbul I purchased two lovely tulip glasses to bring home.

Then there was Turkish Delight:

They were giving out samples of the Turkish Delight at the Spice Market, but I held off buying any since I’d read in several books that the very best Turkish Delight came from Haci Bekir, a store near the Spice Market. 

We bought two boxes, pistachio and hazelnut. Rachel and Juan agreed it was the best Turkish Delight they’d tasted. Delish!

The Grand Bazaar was overwhelming. The bazaar was originally built by Mehmet the Conqueror in 1461, but grew and grew. Some guide books say there are as many as 4,000 shops all under one roof (actually many roofs linked together).

I did purchase some scarves, all of which I gave to friends.

You can shop, eat, and drink in the Grand Bazaar.

I doubt I’ll ever get an opportunity to return to Istanbul, but if I did, I would buy some Turkish red pepper flakes and some sumac in the Spice Market, some small dishes with Iznik tile designs and a pillow cover at the Arasta Bazaar, and just one thing as a keepsake from the Grand Bazaar.

We did a lot of reading and planning for our days in Istanbul. Shortly before we left, Real Simple had a column about best travel tips. One of them was to create a spreadsheet with a list of the places you wanted to visit, the fees, the address, and the hours it was open. We made one, and it really helped us plan our days. Fortunately many of the top sites in Sultanahmet are very close to one another.

Visiting the Aya Sofya was top on our list. 

Built as a Byzantine church by Emperor Justinian in 537, it was converted to a mosque in 1453 by Mehmet the Conqueror, and turned into a museum by Ataturk in 1935. Walking into the Aya Sofya, you are first struck by its immensity. How was it possible to construct such a place in 537? The light in the Aya Sofya is so dim that capturing good photos without a tripod was nearly impossible.

The Byzantine church was noted for it’s beautiful mosaics which were plastered over when it became a mosque. Fortunately, many have been partially recovered.

After lunch, we visited the Basilica Cistern, the largest surviving cistern built by the Byzantines in 532. There are 336 columns, many of which the Byzantines salvaged from ruined temples. The water was delivered from a series of aqueducts from a reservoir near the Black Sea. (More amazing feats of construction!)

Two of the most interesting columns feature Medusa as a base. There are a variety of myths and stories around these, but one holds that the face was placed sideways to negate the effect of the gaze.

Our next stop was the Blue Mosque, seen here from the plaza separating it from the Aya Sofya.

Like all the mosques we visited, the Blue Mosque is a functioning mosque. Tourists enter by a separate door. You must remove your shoes, and your head, knees, and shoulders must be covered. 

The Blue Mosque was built by Sutan Ahmet 1 who hoped that it would rival or surpass the beauty of the Aya Sofya. The mosque is named for the fabulous blue Iznik tiles that adorn the interior. 

From the Blue Mosque, we walked to the Hippodrome. The views of the Blue Mosque from here were wonderful.

The Hippodrome is even older than the Aya Sofya. Built in 203 and renovated in the 320’s, it was used as a venue for chariot racing and sporting events. It’s also been the site of protests, massacres, and the downfall of several sultans.

Sarah and Matt gave me an Olloclip for my iPhone before we left. I didn’t have an opportunity to play with it very often, but I love this fisheye view of the Hippodrome.

We also visited a bazaar and had a fabulous meal at Hayat’s with Rachel and Juan, but I’ll save those for another day.

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!