Istanbul
This past September we did a 20 day (or thereabouts) tour of Egypt and Jordan. We did it with an Australian company - Scenic - with whom we've done quite a few other trips. Highly recommended.
It's a long way from Kelowna to Cairo so we decided to make a stop for a few days on the way to get over any jet lag before the actual tour started.
We chose Istanbul as the stop.
Istanbul has always been a kind of a mysterious place to me - an ancient city full of mosques, Roman ruins and modern buildings. These days Turkey is in the news a lot and it made us wonder if it was a good choice but we both liked it, we felt very safe and we may visit other parts of Turkey in the future.
To get there we had to fly to Calgary, then to Amsterdam and then to Istanbul. It's a long way and takes quite a few hours.
It's a beautiful day in Kelowna when we leave. September is usually a nice month in Kelowna.
HINT: ... the picture will look much better on a laptop or desktop PC or at least a tablet.
The two shots below are from the plane as we approach the Schiphol International Airport in Amsterdam. Holland is such a beautiful, green country. It's amazing that much of the country was once covered by the sea.
We're flying with KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) and they're one of our favourites.
And of course when you fly to Amsterdam from Calgary you always get there around 8:00 AM local time - which is about midnight Calgary time. So what can you do except find a lounge...
and have a beer.... and we love Heineken beer which just happens to be brewed in Amsterdam.
Do you think that putz behind me likes VANS?
The next few shots were taken from the plane as we approach the new Istanbul airport. I have to admit that I was blown away at the size of Istanbul...it's fucking huge.
A couple more.
The population of Istanbul is over 15 million...I had no idea!!!
Istanbul is also (as far as I know) the only city that spans two continents. The area to the left of the river (The Bosporus) is in Europe and the area to the right is in Asia. Pretty much all the stuff we saw was in the area covered by the word Istanbul in the map below.
Istanbul has a brand new airport (below) and it's freaking HUGE. And it's only 40% complete. I asked our guide why build such a huge airport...the answer is Turkey is expecting a lot of tourists in the years to come.
The interior is massive and super modern.
We got to our hotel a couple hours before supper and as luck would have it the restaurant our friends Boyd and Cindy recommended is only a short walk away.
Grilled meat and veggies...yum.
I had wondered if we would have a difficult time getting beer and wine in Istanbul...being a muslim country...but it was available everywhere. And they brew their own beer and they make their own wines. And they're both very good. I wasn't taking any chances with rum though and I brought two (plastic) bottles of Lamb's Palm Breeze along in my checked bag and it turned out later to be a good thing as liquor prices in Egypt were sky high.
Our first full day in Istanbul was a busy one. We visited the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Suleiman Mosque and the Hippodrome. As we often do when visiting a new city we hired a guide through ToursByLocal.com - a Canadian company as it turns out. The guide's name was Aykut - that's him below.
The Hagia Sophia is shown below. This is not my photograph but one taken by this guy.
This is my photo. Taken from ground level. Kind of the same but different too. Mine certainly has nicer trees.
Hagia Sophia means Holy Wisdom. Building commenced in 360 AD. It was the world's largest cathedral for over 1,000 years. It has been a muslim mosque and a christian cathedral and is now simply a museum.
The inside is truly massive. It's undergoing another renovation and much of the interior is hidden by the scaffolding.
Another angle.
There are many mosaics in the Hagia Sophia and a few shown below. As with most churches Jesus plays a big part.
And Mother Mary holding baby Jesus. I don't know who the other two clowns are.
A mosaic of Mother Mary, Jesus and John the Baptist
And a painting showing how the mosaic looked when it was intact.
And if you ever wondered (and I know you have) how to spell ALLAH...that's it below.
Mohammed is spelled below.
It's really hard to get a good picture in a place as big as this one.
A wee video from inside the Hagia Sophia
The obelisk shown below was created about 3,400 years ago by an Egyptian pharaoh, Thutmose III and erected in the Temple of Karnak. About 2,000 years later a Roman emperor moved it from Karnak to Alexandria. A few years later a different Roman emperor, Theodosius had it moved to what was then called Constantinople and which is now called Istanbul.
After we went to the Grand Bazaar. In honesty I was somewhat disappointed by the bazarr. We've been in many and this one was no different that any we'd seen before. So much junk for sale. I guess the sheer size of it was impressive.
The main entryway. Note the metal detector you need to pass through to get in. Every entryway, and I forget how many there are but there are lots, has one of these PLUS armed guards.
This is what Wikipedia say about the Istanbul Grand Bazar:
The Grand Bazaar (Turkish: Kapalıçarşı, meaning ‘Covered Market’; also Büyük Çarşı, meaning ‘Grand Market’[1]) in Istanbul is one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world, with 61 covered streets and over 4,000 shops[2][3] on a total area of 30,700 m2[4], attracting between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors daily.[5] In 2014, it was listed No.1 among the world's most-visited tourist attractions with 91,250,000 annual visitors.[6] The Grand Bazar at Istanbul is often regarded as one of the first shopping malls of the world.
Our guide took us to a place for lunch here that served local cuisine. They did not serve beer and I had to let him know to not let that happen again. I like a beer with my mid day meal.
More of the bazaar...all of these things...Nike, Adidas, Under Armor, etc, etc, are counterfeits. All fake. Hardly any locals shop here - all tourists looking for a good deal.
Next our guide asks if we'd like to see how Turkish rugs are made...no pressure to buy one...RIGHT! guess who bought a new rug. Anyway it looks good in our entryway in Kelowna.
The Blue Mosque (I think)
Some gravestones in a cemetery. Our guide explained that these are ladies gravestones and the inscription tells the story of the person's life. The three flowers on the top of the middle one indicates the lady had three children.
The view below is from the balcony at our hotel room. All the place we visited today are there. If you look just to the left of centre you will see a thin tower. This thing was about 100 meters from our room. If you look real close you will see a speaker mounted on what looks like a walkway just down a bit from the top. It is in fact a speaker and about five times a day, starting at about 5:00 AM a guy comes on the speaker and calls everyone to prayer.
It is mildly fucking annoying to say the least.
Here's a sample.
Second full day in Istanbul.
The public entryway to Dolmabahce Palace.
We weren't allowed to take pictures inside (except the oriental tourists thought it didn't apply to them) but there are some pics and info here and just some pics here.
The clock tower outside the palace compound.
This was the sultan's gate. Only the sultan was allowed to enter the palace by this gate. Our guide told us that the palace cost so much money to build that it was a contributing factor for the decline of the Ottoman Empire which had ruled the area since the the 13th century.
A few additional shots of the exterior. This building is being renovated. Turkey is having some sort of a huge celebration in 2023 which I seem to recall has to do with 100 years since their independence. There is a lot of renovating and building going on in Turkey in anticipation of the celebration.
Just outside the Dolmabahce Palace is professional football arena. Very modern in appearance.
So after the palace we went for a boat ride down the Bosporus. This was always in the itinerary we'd agreed on when hiring our guide. BUT we were originally just going to take a public ferry. So yesterday our guide says "Maybe tomorrow for the boat ride you'd like to hire a private boat" $200 USD..or thereabouts. We said okay.
So below is the boat we hired leaving after we were dropped off way down he river.
So when our guide met us at the start of the second day he says "Some friends had dropped in unexpectedly last night and would we mind if they joined us for the boat ride" I thought it was a bit unusual that he would make such a request but we agreed to it - and why not? So here we all area the end of the boat ride. They seemed like a nice bunch and were grateful for the ride.
A shot of the Dolmabahce Palace from the Bosporus river
This was once a very ritzy and prosperous nightclub in the middle of the river - according to our guide the owner did not "grease" the right palms and the license was suspended. So now it sits empty.
There are a lot of very expensive homes along the river.
A shot of downtown Istanbul from our boat. I don't know why but I did not expect Istanbul to be such a modern - and HUGE - city.
At the end of our boat trip our guide took us to a very upscale seafood restaurant - all the fish supposedly caught in the river or one of the two seas surrounding Istanbul. The waiter brought all these different dead fish out on a platter and I guess were supposed to pick one to share amongst the three of us but all it did was make me queasy. I ordered a salad and Terri ordered smal small fish. At least I got a beer with lunch today.
After lunch we took a ferry back to the other side (where we started from) and went to a different market. It seemed like there were a lot more locals here than at the Grand Bazaar yesterday.
Lots of sweets.
Piles of gold.
And scads of spices. Terri got a great deal on saffron (Right!). The gals in the picture were from Saudi Arabia (according to our guide) and they were pretty covered up.
Isn't it interesting that the descriptions are in english
That was pretty much it for our second day.
Third day in Istanbul.
Topkapi Palace was the first stop on our third and last day. As with many other places we visited inside photos were not allowed. Bastards!
From Wikipedia: Construction began in 1459, ordered by Mehmed the Conqueror, six years after the conquest of Constantinople
It's now a museum.
The library.
The circumcision room (really)
The one thing we didn't see in Istanbul, which I thought we would, is Roman ruins. I'm sure there are lots - just not our itinerary. The picture below was taken from Topkapi Palace with zoom lens. Some sort of excavation of an ancient roman wall is taking place.
Next time I guess.
And there may very well be a next time as the cruise ships are returning in 2020. Due to some terrorist activity in recent years just about all of the major cruise lines have been avoiding Istanbul but we were told that will change in 2020. So it's entirely possible that we will be back by cruise ship.
One trip that we do have in mind is Antalya in southern Turkey and surrounding area, then to Cypress and then to Israel.
The one shot I did take inside was of these yellow / gold plates. All the sultans who lived in the palace were always worried about being poisoned. Someone invented these special plates that would turn to a different colour if a particular poison was in the food served in the plate. No idea how it worked but I guess it shows that being the sultan was maybe not all that great of a job after all. I worry about a very few things these days...global warming, Trump setting off a nuclear war, another Trudeau apology but I never worry about being poisoned at my meal.
After the palace we net to another freaking market.
Fresh roasted lambs heads...YUM.
Lambs, or maybe goats feet .... Double YUM!! And I see a couple uncooked sheep heads with eyeballs included. Yuuuummmmmy!!!
And then a bit more normal stuff...
Another shot of downton,
An artsy-fartsy shot taken from our balcony.
And a final shot of the cursed tower wit the man howling at the moon.
We're off to Cairo tomorrow. Coming soon.