Istanbul: Bridge Between Worlds

What a dream it was to find ourselves in Istanbul, a city we’d wanted to visit for years. Thanks to being invited for a house sit in southwestern Turkey, we now found ourselves with the opportunity to experience this jewel for a couple days. We arrived in the evening and checked into the friendly and affordable Azre Hotel in the trendy Beyoglu district. Excited to be there, we threw our stuff in our room and ventured out onto the streets in the dark. ​

Just a few minutes' walk took us to the famous İstiklal street. People-watching (a favorite pastime) was top-notch here since this street is some kind of Mecca of Hip. We also drooled at the street stands full of roasted chestnuts. And the plethora of juice/smoothie stands were much appreciated too. We even got a free promo CD by a local DJ workin’ the VitaMix. We wandered up and down the street until we were sleepy, then headed home to nod off for the night.

Istiklal Street, Hub of Cool (free image download because we somehow didn't get a shot of this street!)

We woke up the next morning ready to explore. With only two days to cover a lot of ground, we had to get busy. We decided to devote the mornings to our tried & true Hop-On-Hop-Off bus tour, and the afternoons to a dérive (wandering around aimlessly).

About to cross the Bosphorous

One highlight of the bus ride was crossing the Bosphorus river, which separates Europe and Asia. Half of Istanbul is actually in Asia while the other half is in Europe! The exact moments we crossed from Europe into Asia and back were announced in the audio commentary, allowing us to seize the photo opp.

​[One year later, during the military coup d'état attempt on 15 July 2016, the bridge was symbolically taken over by a group of soldiers.]

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Dolmabahce Palace

​We hopped off the bus at the Dolmabahce Palace to get a glimpse of the largest palace in Turkey (its construction cost about $1.3 billion in today’s USD), which sparks fantasies of 1001 Nights thanks to its huge attached harem.

In reality, we hopped off the bus here off on Day 1 to find it inconveneintly closed (some of our readers might be noticing a theme here), so we circled back around to it on Day 2.

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Outside Dolmabahce Palace

In front of the palace (no pictures allowed inside)

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Istanbul has a huge array of magnificent mosques (around 3,000 in total), which dominate the city's skyline. We got to view the inside of several mosques, including Sultanahment Mosque (also called the Blue Mosque). But of course, the most famous one, Hagia Sofia – which was first a Greek Orthodox church and later an Ottoman mosque and is now a museum – was closed both times we tried to go. 

Hagia Sophia

Sultanahment Mosque and Hagia Sophia are connected by Sultanahmet Square, providing a quite photogenic scene:

Sultanahmet Square

The insides of the mosques that we got to see were consistently beautiful, with impressively intricate artwork, prayerful music, and reverent moods.

Slideshow: Inside Mosques

​In the late afternoons we strolled through the winding alleyways spread out around the neighborhoods near our guesthouse. These narrow streets were packed full of various shops and, quite importantly for us, piles of glorious fresh fruit for sale. The lively alleys made us entertain the idea of spending a longer time in Istanbul, so captivated were we by their charm.

One of many colorful shops

One impactful event on our city tour was our visit to Galata Tower, a medieval stone tower built in 1348, which yielded stunning vistas of the city and the Bosphorous river:

Slideshow: Views from Galata Tower

Torsten outside Süleymaniye Hamam

Our visit to this impressive city would not be complete without a visit to a Hamam or Turkish bathhouse. We are both big spa and sauna fans, so naturally we were excited to be in such a hub of hanmam-related experience. There seemed to be numerous high-end options for people having an upscale tourist experience… These didn’t quite fit our budget. But we managed to find one midrange option that still looked pretty glamorously awesome: Süleymaniye Hamam, offering “couples packages” including scrub-downs and massage.

The hamam is actually part of the complex of the 16th-century Süleymaniye Mosque, the second-largest mosque in Istanbul and one of its best-known sights, so we crossed the street to see the mosque first. As usual our timing was off and we didn't get to go inside (maybe something to work on...), but the outside was impressive in itself:

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Slideshow: Süleymaniye Mosque 

Back to the hamam: The establishment provided us with toga-like outfits and we were then ushered into the bath area, a very warm steamroom-esque room with the sinks to wash with and a huge flat (very) heated stone to lie on. We got pretty hot pretty fast, which I guess means that our muscles were getting relaxed for what was soon to come. When our turn arose, we were whisked away into the treatment room and each assigned someone for the scrub & rub.

Let’s just say that thanks to the warm-up room being more like an extremely-hot-up room and the “scrub down” and “massage” being more like a meat-tenderizer followed by a washing machine spin cycle, Danielle almost fainted. But fortunately, post-massage we were ushered into a delightful tea room and served fresh orange juice before that had a chance to occur!

​Enamored by our whirlwind tour, we gathered our belongings and set out for our flight to Bodrum for the next leg of our house sitting journey. Stay tuned...

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