i was in istanbul / turkey for 9 days… longest ‘stationary’ holidays in the last couple of years.
the city is full of stray cats and… guys. first must be a cultural thing, second one – possibly too. city is messy… for a while i felt it’s messy beyond my tolerance but i ended up liking it quite a lot. it’s very crowded and very lively although even in the touristic districts it’s mostly the locals. there are plenty of food stands – people selling rise, fried chicken or fish, kebabs, salads, sweets, chestnuts, boiled and fried corn, freshly squeezed fruit juice.
we’ve walked a lot.. really a lot – both on european and asian sides of the bosphorus. our hostel was in the Fatih district, very close to the sultanahmet mosque – we could reach it and the blue mosque in 5 minutes. in the same district there were some remainings of the old fortification, a bit more distant – parts of the roman aqueduct, big spices bazaar.
from Emınönü and Karaköy we’ve taken ferries to the Asian side [Kadiköy] [2TLY/pers/one way]. from Kabataş – ferry to the princess islands [4tly/pers/one way]. from Emınönü – ferry treep up the bosphorus [10tly/pers].
more often than not we passed by the Istiklal Avenue leading to the Taksim square – plenty of ‘western’ shops & restaurants.
we’ve tried to climb on the Boğaziçi Köprüsü bridge between European and Asian side but we gave up at the end – most probably only car traffic is allowed on it.
what did i like:
- food – kebaps, fried fishes and fruits,
- colorful crowd – mix of traditionally dressed woman with veils on their hads [~10-15% of them based on my obsevrations] and european looks.
- architecture
- princess islands were nice
on the flip side:
- it’s a huge city – 13M people… the center was crowded every day; streets are exploding with cars
- there’s a lot of abandoned buildings/ruins, plenty of garbage dumped just on the streets or in the backyards
- we had some short-lasting food poisoning; i suspect it was caused by the local water… i had similar sensations while traveling around jordan.
side notes: tokens for trams, commuter trains, ferries are different. machines where you can buy them are next piers/stops – so there’s no point in buying more of them since very possibly they’ll not be useful on other routes.
some pictures: here.