Always ready for my next adventure, here are some photos of my summer jaunt in a city I’d dreamed for years of visiting- Istanbul.

 

views of Istanbul from the airplane

I love how the little mosques look below, blended into all the buildings and modernity around them.  That’s the beautiful blue Bosphorus in the background- the strait that separates Istanbul into two continents, Europe and Asia.

 

Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Blue Mosque)

I was in awe at my first glimpses upon this famous site.  Simply stunning.

 

View from the rooftop terrace of the hotel we stayed at our first night.

 

Inside the Blue Mosque.

 

Hagia Sophia Mosque

 

Outside, we snacked on simit, a popular street food that is something like a bagel.  It cost us 1 Turkish Lira, or about 33 cents. It was very yummy – covered in sesame seeds.

 

A lovely view at twilight.

 

A view from the rooftop of our hotel.

 

Inside the Hagia Sophia.

 

Basilica Cistern

An ancient water source that lies beneath the busy city streets of Istanbul.

 

the famous Medusa heads

 

Gulhane Park

This was an accidental find, as I hadn’t heard about it prior to our trip and never noticed it on the map.  We were just walking through the city near our hostel and tried to go down a side street that a police officer quickly motioned us out of.

It happened to be what must have been a private back way or exit of the Topkapı Palace we later realized, but our detour through the bordering park turned out to be a nice respite from the hustle and bustle of the city.

 

While strolling through the park I sneezed and a man walking alone in front of us turned around.

“Çok yaşa,” he said.

“Thank you,” I replied.

We walked a few more steps and he turned around again.

“Do you know what that means?” he said with a heavy accent.

“WelI I assume it means ‘bless you,'” I replied.

I was right, he explained, but it translated differently.  It meant “live long and prosper.”

“Çok yaşa,” he said again.

He wanted to teach us.

“CHOKE YAA-SHAH,” we tried, mimicking him.

He was a kind man who wanted to talk and talk.  He was the first local to reach out to us.

With him we followed his pace, walking very slow, at times altogether stopping while he yakked our ear off.

But it was from him I learned some interesting tidbits about the city I wouldn’t have otherwise known.

He was a fisherman from the Asian side of Istanbul, a native.

He mentioned the haggling in the city that my boyfriend and I (and every foreigner) were constantly bombarded with every few feet down the street, and what made the crazy busyness of the city even more extreme and ultimately stressful.

Every shop you passed by, every restaurant, there was someone at the door, someone on the street who called and motioned to you, trying desperately to coax you inside.

“Where are you from?” they’d yell.

They had their menus displayed on the street and you couldn’t so much as to give quickest glance their way (or not glance at all! simply walking by was enough) without someone pressuring you to come inside.

“We have indoor seating, we have outdoor seating! We have terrace!”

They’d summarize the menu with adept speed, breezing through the entrée choices, talking up the dishes, claiming each one was the best– they were the restaurant of choice.

It reminded me of the same behavior from restaurant workers I had gotten while near the Acropolis in Athens, Greece when I had visited years before.  But in Istanbul it was much more constant and extreme.  Inescapable.

Or it was a compliment.

“I like your bag,” one of them told me.

“I like your hair,” someone else told my companion.

Anything that would spark conversation.  Anything to hook you, eventually lure you inside.

“They even yell at me,” he said.  “Where you from?! where you from?! And I just look at them and say, ‘Istanbul.'”

I found out from him that a huge number of people living in Istanbul were not natives, like himself.  The natives, he insisted, were extremely friendly and outgoing people, quick to offer help if they see someone in need.  Unfortunately, thus had not been our experience so far.  Most of the people we encountered seemed a bit hardened, distant, or otherwise uninterested.  It seemed everyone in the city was just there to make a dime.

He told us many of the people living in Istanbul were Middle Eastern immigrants and that the majority of the women we saw covered up with scarves, many of them their entire face so that literally all that showed was their eyes, were foreigners.

“My wife and children, they dress like you,” he said, pointing at me.  “We do not like all this.”

He walked with us all the way to the water where he was to catch a ferry back to his home across the Bosphorus.

 

Turkish Lira

Ooh la la I’m rich! haha not really, but a great exchange rate made the money stretch much much farther than here in the US.

You could get a good hearty meal out a restaurant for under $5.  Accommodation was around $20 a night.

 

AROUND THE CITY

 

A street vendor selling simit.

 

A mosque’s pretty minaret (tower).  Speakers from the top broadcast out the chanting of the call to prayer five times daily.

 

A vendor selling another popular street food- roasted corn.

 

A display of spices at the Arasta Bazaar near the Blue Mosque.

 

A carpet shop at the Arasta Bazaar.

 

a pretty Istanbul University building

 

Just a show- a Whirling Dervish on stage at a restaurant near the Hagia Sofia and Blue Mosque.

 

Some shop window dessert beauties.

 

famous dessert – Turkish Delight

 

Istanbul is full of large dogs roaming the streets.  They all have a big tag in their ears.  These wild dogs are taken in and spayed/neutered and given medical treatment as needed.  They rely on finding food in the streets/garbage and the kindness of some of the locals who also put out water bowls on the streets.

Here are some dogs lounging on the grass in the heat of the day between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia.

 

Many of the dogs are disinterested in you and ignore your baby voice (haha) but this dog was particularly sweet and loved being pet.

 

This big black dog befriended us when we were walking down the street.

 

He was a happy guy who joined us on our walk, trotting along beside us.  When we stopped at shops along the way to glance at the wares outside he stopped too, and when we continued there he was again tagging along.

We were walking on the sidewalk when all of sudden he ran forward, barking and raising his lips at a man coming up the sidewalk from the other direction, as if he was going to attack.  The man’s eyes turned wild with fear and he bucked up, as if he were a cat, poofing up to appear bigger and waved his arms and yelled.  The dog growled and barked at him menacingly until the man dodged away.  The dog then quickly forgot his anger and returned back to us, calm as ever and continued to follow us down the road.

We stopped at the entrance to a shop with the dog still beside us and heard strange calls coming from the inside.  The shop owner appeared and we realized he was trying to scare off the dog.

“You like him?” he asked.

“Oh yeah,” we told him.  “He doesn’t bother us any.” And we pet the dog to show him how much we liked his company.

“Good,” the shop owner replied, “he’s old.”

After we left the shop a little ways down the road he left us.  Another street dog had come into view and then another and another, a whole little gang of them running and barking at each other, having fun.  I was hoping he’d follow us all over the city and be our little protector, but he ran off to join the gang.

 

There were street cats too.  This adorable mangy old kitty made my heart melt.

 

We hopped around a lot for accommodation.  This is a view from one of our hotel balconies over a more residential part of the city and out over the Bosphorus.

 

I took this video one night while sitting on our hotel balcony.  This is the call to prayer (ezan) that you hear multiple times throughout the day and into evening from the many mosques.  It is loud and during the day while walking through the streets adds to the chaotic ambience of the city.  At times you can hear more than one crying out, overlapping each other with their zealous chants, like in the video below.

 

View across the Bosphorus of the Beyoglu neighborhood of Istanbul- you can see the Galata Tower.

 

Galata Tower

 

Taksim square, in the more modern Beyoglu neighborhood of Istanbul.

 

As a beer lover (particularly of IPAs!) I was excited to try Turkish beer.  Turns out there is only ONE beer brewed in Turkey: Efes.  There is a regular pilsner, a dark, a light, and this extra.  (Made me realized how spoiled I am in Asheville, which is FULL of micro-breweries!)

 

I personally did not care for it.

Good thing the food made up for the beer.

Turkish food is DELICIOUS! And I had no trouble finding many options as a vegan.

 

This restaurant didn’t have anything vegan on their menu, but they whipped up this special dish on the spot, just for us.  It was delicious!

We each had this dish, plus 2 hot teas, a big basket of homemade bread and a dipping “salsa.”  Our total bill came to 22TL – which is just over $7.

 

One of our favorites– gözleme.  It is like a thin savory pancake that is cooked over a griddle and stuffed with veggies like mashed potato, spinach, mushrooms, herbs, etc.  This one was a mix of spinach and potato.

 

Another popular street food- roasted chestnuts.

 

We ate some from this street vendor outside of the Hagia Sohpia.

 

Walking through the streets we spotted this street vendor selling fresh pressed grapefruit juice.  I had to get some! It cost 1TL (about 33 American cents).  After I bought a cup I motioned to my camera and asked if I could take his picture.

 

All in all, my journey to Istanbul and my time spent there was quite an adventure.  One I’m thankful for being able to experience- but I’m also thankful to be back home safe and sound.

I spent nearly two weeks there (from end of May to early June) and I’m grateful that during that time things were peaceful.

There had been a bombing just a week before I went and another a mere two days after I returned.  Hearing about that (it happened at a place where I had literally been walking just a week prior) plus the latest suicide bombing in the airport that left 36 dead less than a month after my return seemed surreal.  I had just been in that airport.  Not once, not twice, but four times.  (I visited another country during my Istanbul trip – that you’ll see in a future blog).

I feel very fortunate.  News of these events made me feel very sad.  My heart goes out to the victims’ families.

So why, do you ask, did I go somewhere that’s currently so unstable? Look for a future blog post about my decision in going and more of my firsthand experiences there.

 

In the meantime, I’d LOVE to hear from you in the comments below.

Have you ever been to Istanbul? Tell me about your experiences there!