TURKEY, Istanbul

Our first stop in Turkey was Istanbul. Istanbul is known as the gateway between Europe and Asia, and was heaps different to the countries that we had seen so far. Turkey is predominantly a Muslim country, we stood out like the proverbial and felt quite out of place for the first few days.

We stayed right in the old town of Sultanahmet, near the famous Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia. On the shuttle bus from the airport it was cool to see a completely different skyline to that which we had known in France and Italy.


The Blue Mosque

Hagia Sophia

On the first day we thought we would do something easy and visit the famous Grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar is a covered marketplace with around 2500 stalls, selling everything - scarves, jewellery, souvenirs, clothes, food, and plenty of genuine fake designer bags watches, sunnies etc etc. As soon as we set foot inside, we were in over our heads. A sideways glance at anything in someones stall and they considered it sold, following us down the aisle, trying to get us inside. Even if we had wanted to buy something, we were too scared to show any interest, casually browsing was not an option. We spent about 30min in there and never went back, it was mental. Interesting intro to Turkey.

One of the less crowded aisles of the Grand Bazaar.

We also visited the underground cistern. This was built by the Romans before the Ottomans took over. It is basically a massive, underground water storage facility held up by hundreds of columns.


There were thousands of fish in the water.

The next day we went to the Blue Mosque, which is a fully functional place of worship as opposed to a dedicated tourist attraction. The mosque is spectacular, both inside and out.


Blue Mosque
The gardens around the Mosque were a good place to sit and watch people.

The interiors of the Mosques that we visited were vastly different to that of the Italian and French cathedrales that we had seen. Islam forbids the display of living forms within the church, so all the decoration is based around islamic calligraphy and geometric patterns.

Shoes are not allowed inside, and all women must have their heads covered when they enter the Mosque. Can you pick the impostor?


We happened to arrive in Turkey during Ramadan. Good news for us, because after the sun went down, the locals would break their fast and the Hippodrome was packed with people all in a very festive mood. Both sides of the Hippodrome were lined with food stalls selling the best Turkish food. Everything was really good, but our favourite was the gozleme, turkish pancakes filled with meat, cheese or potatoes. We made friends with a young kid who was serving gozleme in his family's stall, but forgot to take a photo of him.

Hippodrome with the Blue Mosque in the background

Crowded Hippodrome. We spent heaps of time here, mostly eating gozleme, turkish delight in all different flavours, kebaps and Angies favourite - Boza. Boza is an 'energy drink' made from corn, milk, sugar and egg (yep, RAW egg - sorry Mum! - A)


We spent the 2 weekend days inside a shitty English pub, paying outrageous prices because it was the only place in town that had the footy prelim finals on. $18 for a pint!!!! No photos but 2 wins from 2 games. Also made an invaluable contact, Jim, from Geelong who would prove priceless to us later on in Fethiye.

Before the Hawks game we went to Topkapi Palace. The palace was home to the sultan in his time of rule. Very impressive complex that included a whole section to house his harem of wives and concubines.

One of the sultan's bedrooms

Patterns like this were either painted directly onto the plaster, or onto ceramic tiles and stuck on.
In the gardens of the palace


The next day we went to one of the newer parts of Istanbul, Beyoglu. Beyoglu was brilliant, so busy, full of locals shopping, much less touristy. We walked up the full length of Istiklal Caddesi, the main pedestrian strip, to Taksim Square and had a great dinner on the strip.

Bustling Istiklal.

There was a funny little tram that ran all the way along.

Heaps of buskers along Istiklal, some of them were pretty good.

At the other end there was an old tower. At the base, there was the unofficial club of street dogs of Istanbul. There were more that I couldnt fit into the photo, pretty funny, they all just congregated there to sleep together.

This man woke us up most mornings, pushing his cart and peddling his wares in Turkish.


Our last day we went to Hagia Sophia. Hagia Sophia was originally a Christian cathedrale. When the Ottomans took Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul, it was transformed into an enormous mosque and the mosaics inside were plastered over. In 1935, Ataturk declared the Mosque a museum and the mosaics were carefully uncovered and sections of the building restored.

The interior was amazing


Hagia Sophia from the outside

I loved the Islamic calligraphy, the symbol at the bottom, from what we could gather, was a symbol specific to Istanbul. We bought a scarf with the symbol on it and got royally ripped off by a wily old man.

Inside Hagia Sophia.

The highlight of Istanbul was the food. As well as street food from the Hippodrome, we went out for world famous kofte, traditional vegies stuffed with meat and potatoes, kebaps, pide (turkish pizza), amazing deserts, turkish delight, baklava, baked rice puddings and heaps more. Had a ball and left us eager to check out the rest of the country.