“Istanbul is in the news again,” my friend texted me yesterday.

I couldn’t believe it — the airport shut down, tanks and soldiers in the streets of Istanbul– chaos ensuing as the military attempted a coup against the government.

Thank goodness I’m not there, was all I could think.

Maybe you’re wondering why I went to Istanbul in the first place.

In this post I reveal why I went, if I recommend going, and if I would ever go back.

My trip wasn’t all roses.

You’ll also hear about some of my not so savory experiences there (including being groped on a tram and the worst hotel experience of my life.)

 

Why did I go?

In all honesty, I found a really good deal on a plane ticket.  And I love traveling.

Istanbul had a special spot in my imagination that was shrouded in an air of mysticism and the unknown that I found incredibly alluring – it sounded so exotic, so different than anywhere I had ever been before, almost like it could only exist in a dream.

I felt drawn to its mystery in my mind.  Its rich history fascinated me and I longed to gaze on the architecture, visit the mosques, be a dot among the sea of bodies in an authentic bazaar and lose myself in a whole new world entirely.

I found the ticket randomly one evening while browsing the internet and nearly jumped for joy.  Istanbul was a city I’d been wanting to visit for years, so without much hesitation I bought 2 plane tickets, one for myself and my BF.

It wasn’t until I starting telling friends I was going that I became aware of the potential dangers inherent to traveling to Turkey right now.  I hate to admit it, but I’m often out of touch with current events, horribly out of touch, so I actually had no idea of the violence that had been disrupting the country and putting a huge huge damper its multi-million dollar tourism industry.

A ha.

Now the abnormally inexpensive plane ticket price made sense.  It was an incentive to get foreigners to continue to travel there.  And because of my ignorance, it worked like a charm.

Now I didn’t have to go.  The plane ticket was non refundable or transferable, but I could cut my losses and just plan an alternative trip. (i.e. be smart?)

But I’m naturally a bit of a risk-taker, perhaps at times to my detriment- and I really really wanted to go.

The months leading up to my departure date I researched frequently online about the safety, weighing my chances, both on the US government’s official Department of Travel website and various news articles and all the posted comments.

I rationalized with myself.  Something could happen anywhere.  Even right outside my own home.  Terrorist attacks had happened in Paris in 2015, Brussels just earlier this year, and even right here in our own country that we thought was untouchable, when the suicide attacks of 9/11 devastated America in 2001.  (And this list is in no way finite.)

It was true, the US government had a travel warning against traveling to Turkey, but soon after they followed with an alert against all travel to anywhere in Europe.

And it was because they too could not guarantee that anything could happen anywhere at anytime without warning.

But I didn’t want terrorists or whoever else to ruin it for me before I could even get there.  If I did, they were winning.  I didn’t want to let them keep me from living my life and control me by fear.

I tried to focus more on the comments I read online that were made by people who had recently visited Istanbul and Turkey and said they felt as safe as anywhere else while they were there– that going there was no different than going to any other big city and that in fact the time to go was NOW since there are no more lines or huge crowds outside of the popular tourist spots because of the dramatic decline in foreign visitors in light of the country’s current events.

I would go I decided, and I would heed the government’s warnings of avoiding political demonstrations and big crowds as well as I could.  Their advice of avoiding popular tourist destinations there would be impossible because of course that was partly the focus of my trip–the famous mosques, the Grand Bazaar, etc., but I told myself I would be extra vigilant.

I planned on dressing very conservatively and I packed as light as possible, with just a small backpack and a couple changes of clothes with the intention of buying a few more items while I was there after I saw how the locals dressed in the hopes of better fitting in.

While there it was true, I didn’t feel any less safe than I have in any other big city.  In fact, I felt safer in Istanbul than I had on other trips I’ve taken over the years, including visits to Florence, Italy, Athens, Greece and even New Orleans, USA.

Upon arriving, we took the metro from the airport and then a tram to the famous historic Sultanahmet neighborhood where we had a hotel room booked.

To get there we had to walk through the Hippodrome right by the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, a historic landmark and popular tourist spot where there used to be chariot races in Byzantine times over a thousand years ago– and also where the January suicide bombing had taken place and 13 foreigners had been killed.

There a police officer stood with a machine gun strapped ominously over his body.  This was one of the times I felt most uncomfortable.

 

Though thankfully nothing happened during my stay, less than 48 hours after my return to the US I got a text message from one of my best friends.

“I’m glad you’re back, this report says bombs went off in Istanbul,” she said.

She included a link to a news article that reported there had just been a bombing in the city and that 11 people had been killed, so many more injured.

And I couldn’t believe it. I had been at that exact spot less than a week before.  It felt surreal.  Eerie.  Downright frightening.

I remember it distinctly. My boyfriend and I had just gotten back from a quick jaunt to Amsterdam and we had hours to kill before we could check into our hotel.  So we wandered and wandered, round the university district, outside the Grand Bazaar, just exploring the streets– and stopped and sat on a bench to take a rest, look at our map, cool down and eat an orange.

I feel I got “lucky.” If you believe in that sort of thing– and I suppose I don’t either really, but thankfully, to put it another way- it just wasn’t my time.

Being back in the States and reflecting on my trip in light of that latest bombing really put things in perspective.  I felt like I had been gambling.  And certain things just aren’t worth the gamble.

 

Would I recommend going to Istanbul right now?

No.

I feel I took a chance in going there.  Of course, you take a chance in going anywhere, even right outside your own home, but the cold hard reality is that the risk of something happening was still greater in Istanbul than other cities I could have chosen to visit– given the trend of a long string of violent events that have unfolded within just the last year.

A bombing had happened just a week before we arrived.  Then the one 2 days after we got back to the US and then the tragic airport attack that killed 41 just 3 weeks after being back in the US.

Now, in light of the failed military coup attempt against the government just yesterday, it seems like a no brainer that Turkey (or at least Istanbul or the capital, Ankara) simply isn’t the best place to be a tourist these days.

 

Would I go back?

No.

Even if the times were different and it was “safe,” I would not go back to Istanbul.

Why?

Istanbul was strreessssssful.

Now I know I’m not a big city person necessarily.  At least I could never live in one, only visit, but Istanbul seemed particularly stressful.

 

Walking the streets and through traffic was like playing Russian roulette.  People blared their horns constantly, sped, and seemed to pay little regard for pedestrians.  Here there was no “right of way.” If you were in the way you’d get run over, simple as that.  Crossing streets and intersections definitely kept us on our toes.

 

Many people stared blatantly at us while we were on the metro and trams.  I felt more comfortable when we didn’t speak too loudly to each other and better when we didn’t speak at all—that way it wasn’t so blaringly apparent that we were American.  We were foreigners, obviously, but without speaking English so loudly we were also mistaken for Spanish, Russian, Australian, and Canadian.

 

The last day we got stuck in a downpour while making our way from Taksim square, spying the Galata tower and exploring the Beyoglu neighborhood, which is separated from the old city and is the more modern side of Istanbul.

We waited under a covering for the tram just as the rain really started to beat down.  More and more people crowded in, until we were all huddled so close together there was no more room for others to take shelter.

When the tram came everyone piled in.

With the rain continuing to come down, people continued to pour into the tram at each stop until it was so stupidly tight I wanted to scream out, “no more people on this tram! There’s no room!”

Claustrophia was settling in and I couldn’t wait for the next stop.  I didn’t care where it was, or if it was still raining, I just wanted off the tram.

As we slowed down for the stop I felt something against my breast.  And there it was again.  I had my arm stretched overhead to hold onto a hand grip for support and I knew we were all squished in there so I thought someone was just brushing against me.

But it felt different and I looked down and sure enough there’s this hand, just outstretched, looming fingers, groping me.

The tram stopped and I busted my way through the sea of people.

Get. Me. Off. Of. This. TRAM!!!!!  I screamed inside.

 

The last day we walked the Grand Bazaar and the blocks and blocks that surrounded it.  It was a stressful outing, with shopkeepers constantly bombarding you for attention and to spend money inside their shop.

By the end of the day we were so excited to get a beer at the grocery on our walk back to our hotel and sit and relax on the balcony.

When we came to our room and I must have had a subconscious suspicion because I reached for the door handle without a key, and sure enough it was unlocked.

We walked in and the whole room was done up like for a new visitor- the bed made, etc, and ALL of our belongings that we had sprawled out over the entire room and the bathroom were gone.

We ran down to reception and reported our room was open and belongings missing and the front desk person did not seem concerned at all.  He said he would call someone.

Another hotel worker came and called the maid, who told him, supposedly, the location of our bags.  He led us down to the basement area and into a dark room with a couch on its side and lifted it up to expose some bags hidden behind it, thinking they were ours, but they were not.

He called the maid back and then he led us back up to our room and lifted the bed.

There was a secret storage under the mattress and there we discovered garbage bags stuffed with all our things.

He apologized and said the maid must have thought we had checked out.  But this I didn’t understand, as surely it would have been clear we were coming back given the arrangement of our things—toothbrush and soap on the bathroom sink, clothes hung in the amoire, etc.

As soon as he left we started to go through our things.  Immediately I began to notice that items were missing and that my bag was not in the same order I had left it in. The maid did a very good job of folding back all my clothes very nicely, but I knew it had been gone through because my dirty clothes bag was now mixed with clean clothes and vice versa.

Then I found a plastic bag our toiletries had been stuffed into, including my soap, sea sponge, toothbrush, toothpaste etc, and there were several cigarettes butts in there floating in water.

Among the things stolen were: money, an eccentric pair of sunglasses I had just bought (I’m a sunglasses junkie!), a big bag of figs we had gotten at the spice bazaar as a gift, local Turkish tea, the handle of my razor blade (yes, just the handle!), a fancy zippo lighter (gift for a friend), pretty little embellished bags (again, gifts for friends), and several more small items.  And all our toiletries had to be thrown away, as they were swimming in cigarette muck.

We immediately went back down to reception and once again the person at the front did not seem concerned or sympathetic in the slightest. He called the manager at our request who argued with us and refused to refund our money or be helpful or apologetic in any way.

Our argument attracted a group of Turkish men who stood around and watched intently, and by the time my BF gave the big “F@&$ you! F@&$ all of you!” grand finale I had already begun to question our physical safety and couldn’t wait to get the heck out of there.

I no longer cared about a refund for our stay or being reimbursed for our stolen things. I just wanted to be someplace where I felt safe.

Of course the hotel was at the bottom of a HUGE hill, and with the weight of our backpacks we trucked it as fast as we could out of there.  I felt paranoid thinking that someone would come after us, but they did not – obviously they weren’t as rattled about the situation as I had been.

I felt like my privacy had been invaded and I felt insulted.  Had someone really gone through ALL of my things, everything down to my dirty underwear, and then put her cigarettes out in my belongings?!

Basically, it was the worst hotel experience I’ve ever had in my life!

Luckily, we found refuge in the hostel we had stayed in nights before, which was ironically by comparison, cleaner, cheaper, and felt much safer.

 

Another stressful thing was that Turkish people seemed angry.  I felt like people were screaming at each other all the time.

Their interactions were LOUD and sounded harsh.

I couldn’t tell if people were constantly arguing with each other or if their impassioned speech was merely a cultural/language difference that I was misinterpreting.  Nevertheless, it oftentimes made me feel very uncomfortable.  I frequently thought a physical fight would erupt at any moment.

We did in fact witness at least one situation of obvious quarreling, people pulling back on others away from each other in an attempt to stave off a fight.  We just kept walking, minding our own business.

 

The city itself was very loud.  I am particularly sensitive to noise and like any other big city Istanbul was FULL of noise pollution.

My ears were constantly bombarded with a cacophony of sounds that after a while I found to become physically exhausting.  I wasn’t sure if it was because I hadn’t visited a big city in a while so I just wasn’t used to it, or if Istanbul is simply more intense.  (I suspect it’s probably a combination of the two.)  The quiet and stillness in our hotel room each night was met with much gratitude.

 

Do I regret going?

Absolutely not.

It was a once in a lifetime experience and one that I will never forget.  Istanbul is an ancient, divinely beautiful and incredibly unique city and I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit.

Like most all travel in a foreign country my eyes have been opened in ways I never could have foreseen by experiencing a small bit of the country, its religion and its people.

I got to gaze upon what I believe to be some of the most awe inspiring architecture in the world, eat lots of amazing food and just walk and explore the streets of a culturally rich and mystical city that for so many years I’d only dreamed of.

That said, in the future I plan on being a smarter traveler and being more discreet about my destination choices.  And with so many places on this gorgeous earth still to see, that shouldn’t be a problem!

I feel I’ve learned my lesson about doing more research before jumping on any flashy plane deals I see, researching the countries and cities I long to visit more extensively before considering a trip there, and staying more up to date on current world events in general.

Yes, things can happen anytime, anywhere– but denying that there are places with higher risks is just being foolish.

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Tell me, have you ever taken a travel risk? Why? Would you do it again? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!