His View 

Turkey - Feliks' perspective

 

Istanbul 

We had planned to spend a week in Istanbul and split it up into two stays. We found a couchsurfer that we would stay with for the first 3 days and then an AirBnB for the remainder of the time. The couchsurfer lived a little far from the city, or so it looked like on Google Maps. It was a little more than far; it took us nearly two hours by bus to get to his house from the city center. The first leg of the journey was by Metrobus, an awesome system. The buses travel in the middle of the highway where cars are not allowed, like an express lane in America. The stops were also in the middle of the highway so there was no need for the buses to pull off the highway. There were so many times where I saw the normal traffic at a stand still and we were doing 50mph easy. 

 

The second leg of the journey was on a normal bus; well, it was a taxi bus. So there are city buses in Istanbul, which are yellow, and then there are blue buses that are privately owned. The yellow buses have a schedule that they keep to; the blue bus is just a free for all. We easily saw two or three blue buses in a row going to the same destination within a minute of each other. Because the blue buses came so often, people mostly took these and during peak hours they were so packed that people literally were smashed against the window. Craziest thing I’ve seen with public transportation. 

 

Our couchsurfer host met us at the bus stop and we walked back to his apartment. Altay was a really nice and simple guy. A substitute teacher and traveler. His apartment was very simple, just the basics. There was not much to do in the town, just a couple of tea places and bars. No other tourist attractions to mention. We couldn't go to a lot of places even if we wanted to because most of the tea houses were for men only. There was a pool hall that we tried to check out but the power was out. 

 

We spent the first couple days pretty much doing nothing but relaxing and resting. Lots of movie watching. Altay didn't have internet so we were limited on what we could do. We did go to a restaurant on Christmas Day to have some dinner and call the families. My meal was beef sausage with a tomato red sauce poured over bread that was delicious. Caywood had a chicken dish that was almost like a mini chicken taco bar. Both were delicious. 

 

Rested and recharged, we made the two-hour journey back to the center of Istanbul and to our room at the AirBnB. Our hosts were a couple young professionals and a student from Pakistan. Really nice guys and a great place to stay. We took it easy that night and finished planning for the next day. 

 

Before we made the two-hour trip to our couchsurfer’s house we did spend some time in the city center and checked out a couple places. Our first place was by Boukoleon Palace. It was a long courtyard type area with three massive pillars from different time periods. They all kind of resembled the Washington Monument in shape but not nearly as tall. There were tons of people there and we got our first experience with the huge amount of homeless dogs. We then wandered over to the Blue Mosque. 

 

It was more white than blue in my opinion. The roof was a blue shade but it was still remarkable. Caywood had to wear scarf to go inside and it was the first time we had to take off our shoes. The interior was very different from what we were used to in Europe. There was a lot of empty space, the ceilings were really high and the whole space was really open. The walls were decorated with a mosaic-style pattern. The whole size of the thing was very impressive. 

 

Our second day in the city we decided to visit the Basilica Cistern. Pretty much as soon as we walked down the stairs, the lights went out and the emergency lights came on. It was still pretty lit up down there but I'm sure it would have been much more impressive with normal lighting. The columns went on forever, the fish swimming in the water were massive, and there were so many of them. There was a couple of columns that featured the face of Medusa. It was really weird that they were there, but they were really cool to see.  

 

We did see Hagia Sophia and it was huge from the outside. Parts of it looked like it was in need of some restoration. Unfortunately the line to get in was really huge and we chose to skip it. We did go check out the Topkapi Palace. This place was huge! There was so much to see. The courtyard was not nearly as impressive as the interior of some of the rooms. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to live in a place like that. The work that had to go in to building some of these had to have been insane. There was also a really good view from the back of the palace of the Asian side of Istanbul. 

 

We finished our day with a walk through the Grand Bazaar. This was no ordinary bazaar, as this one was the size of a small village with its own roof covered streets. They had everything you could think of. We even watched as some of the store workers got their lunch delivered on tray. There were even little boys walking around delivering tea. The workers spare no restraint in trying to sell you their products as we got hassled pretty much from the time we entered until we left. 

 

Our last day of touring the city we only had a few things left on our list. The first was the Galata Tower. It was cool. We then made our way to the Galata Bridge. We saw this thing when we were enjoying the view from Topkapi Palace but I had no idea what it was. It was a bridge, yes, but under the bridge there was nothing but restaurants…seafood restaurants. Caywood had to hold her nose the entire time we walked past all the places. There were people fishing from the road level and as we walked by we saw a number of them pulling fish out of the water. On the European side of the bridge there were a handful of boats tied off. They also happened to be restaurants that only served one thing: fish sandwiches. Needless to say, Caywood wasn’t happy with my fish breath, but I was full of happiness. 

 

Our last stop was the spice market, which was very similar to the Grand Bazaar. They were actually really close together. They did have a lot more vendors selling spices but other than that they were the same to me, just smaller. 

 

Overall, Istanbul is a massive city. I mean really huge. I would guess that if you travelled from one side to the other it would take a couple hours easy. Probably even longer if you used a car because the public transportation was really good. For someone who is not Muslim, I would imagine that it would take a while to get used to the prayer calls that happen five times a day. Over the loud speakers at every mosque the call is played and it’s not the most ear-soothing sound, mostly because it played over loud speakers. Also, the dogs go crazy when it’s played. The mosques are something to see; they are just so big and beautiful, inside and out. They did have public bathrooms in most of the mosques (for a small fee) but WiFi was far and few in between. Even some of the fast food places lacked internet access. Starbucks would be the best option.