First Two Days In Istanbul

In an effort to be more “concise” with my blogging, I’m going to try writing shorter articles and be more brief when I talk about what we’ve been doing.  In the past, I’ve summarized several days into one blog, but this is a little different.  Right now we’re starting to research and plan our next leg – Southeast Asia – and I realize how useful people’s blogs can be when looking up information.  As a result, I’m making sure that I put any relevant and useful information into my blog entries while trying to be more concise.  Here goes attempt # 1….

Yesterday, we checked into Nena Hotel, which we found through TripAdvisor.  Compared to all the hotels we’ve stayed at so far, it’s not bad, but it’s not great.  They let us check in early, but they gave us a room with two separate beds even though we asked for one big bed.  This morning they pushed the two beds together and swapped the two blankets for one big blanket, but I have a feeling the beds will not stay together as we toss and turn and then one of us will fall through the middle!  On the plus side, there is a full buffet breakfast included. 

We went to the famous Grand Bazaar last night, but didn’t stay long.  Unless you’re serious about buying stuff, you can’t stop to look at anything because the shop keepers won’t leave you alone once you show some interest!  Even just walking straight people will come up to you and be like “want a nice carpet?” or “something to drink?”  The Grand Bazaar is a really cool market place, but stiff competition and lots of identical product makes it a really hard place to shop, unless you love to negotiate prices. 

And it’s not just the vendors at the Grand Bazaar that are aggressive – if you look like a tourist you will get harassed to “come try” every restaurant you pass.  From what we’ve seen, a lot of menus look the same so competition is again really stiff.  So far we’ve tried two restaurants that Ilyas recommended – Sultanahmet Köftecisi near our hotel and Konak Kebap on Istiklal street, Istanbul’s main shopping drag.  Sultanahmet Köftecisi specializes in Turkish meatballs and a Köftecisi sandwich with a yogurt drink is a good deal at 5 lira (they’re more like a short minced meat kebabs than meatballs).  There’s actually two restaurants named Sultanahmet Köftecisi on the main street by our hotel and we tried both (one last night and one tonight).  The one next to a restaurant called Pudding Shop was, in our opinion, better.  Konak Kebap was pretty good too, but service sucked. We’ve been getting charged a 10% service fee everywhere, which Ilyas tells me (via Facebook) shouldn’t be the case, but we’re not the type to argue, so I guess we’ll keep paying it and not leave a tip instead.

This morning we tried to go to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (also called the Blue Mosque) but it was prayer time when we showed up so we couldn’t go in.  If you hear singing coming from speakers placed all around the area, it’s the Islamic call to prayer and the Mosque is closed to visitors during that time.  Instead, we went and took the public ferry to Harem, which is on the Asia side of Istanbul. Most people take the Bosphorous Cruise for 20 lira to see the castle ruins at Anadolu Kavağı, but this puts you there for at least 2 hours, and Paul wasn’t up for that.  Going to Harem is kind of pointless, but it only cost 1.50 lira on our Akbil and at least we can say we made it to the Asia side of Istanbul.  After this, we made the mistake of walking across the Galata Bridge on the lower pedestrian only level, which is full of restaurants trying to solicit your business.  Unless you’re looking for somewhere to eat, there’s no reason to walk across the bridge on the lower level.

So far, Istanbul kind of reminds me of Hong Kong – vibrant, crowded, hot even though it’s November, and questionable in terms of hygiene and cleanliness but food tastes good so who cares!  I could do without all the pushy sales pitches, but the people here are so nice you can’t help but smile as you say “no thanks!”