Istanbul – a city on two continents

It has been quite a few months since my last blog and a lot has happened since then.  However, more of that later!  We are currently hauled up in Bulgaria, at our apartment in Sunny Beach on the Black Sea and have just come back from a fantastic two day trip to Istanbul.  We had thought about driving to Turkey in our motorhome (Sonny) but had heard the roads into Istanbul are very busy so we opted for a coach trip.
The coach picked us up at 4.45am and was full of mostly Russians, Ukraine's, 10 Germans, 4 Brits, 2 Irish ladies, and one Lithuanian.  Setting off at 4.45am in the morning, it's a 370km journey but the roads are slow and it took us nearly 8 hours (including a 1/2 hour rest stop) to get to our hotel in the centre of Istanbul.  An hour of that was spent at the border with passport checks, plus as Turkey is not in the EU Brits have to purchase a visa, which costs about £15 per person.  To save time we purchased online beforehand, otherwise you can do it at the border.  About 20kms outside of Istanbul traffic becomes a standstill and you crawl all the way into the city, which took a further 1 ½ hours - nightmare! 

Our hotel, Buyuk Sahinler, is rated as a 4 star, but it is more like a 3 star in UK terms.  That said, the rooms were clean, staff friendly and the buffet breakfast served from 7am to 10am is vast with everything from fruit, cereals, yoghurt, pastries, ham, cheese, eggs, umpteen salads, bread and even soup!

Buffet breakfast at the hotel

Arriving at the hotel, it was a quick basic lunch of salad, chicken and veg and fruit and then we were off on an afternoon sightseeing trip. Istanbul straddles Europe and Asia across the Bosphorus Strait and is the largest European city, with a population of about 20 million.  Istanbul is famous for its Ottoman architecture and mosques, with over 3,500 of them and there are plans to build more.  The most famous of them all is the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet), built in 1616 with its beautiful blue tiles covering the interior walls.  It is distinguished from the other mosques with its 6 minarets, others have only 2 or 4. To enter, women have to have their legs, arms and head covered.  Men only have to wear a T-shirt and shorts to their knees.  They provide scarves and hideously large and very long skirts, if you are not dressed appropriately.  Luckily, I was dressed in long trousers and brought my own scarf and Mel's shorts were the right length - not sure how he would have looked in the long skirt haha! You also have to remove your shoes at the entrance to the mosque and are given a plastic bag to place them in.  Given the amount of visitors they have daily, you can just imagine the amount of plastic wastage!

Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet)

Inside the Blue Mosque

Aya Sophia - former Greek Orthodox Christian Cathedral.  Build in 6th century, now a museum.

Sultanahmet Square - a public square with remnants of an ancient Hippodrome, for centuries the site of chariot races and Egyptian Obelisk

German Fountain in Sultanahmet Square - presented to the Ottoman Sultan by German Emperor Wilhelm II in 1898, marking Turkish-German friendship

Rüstem Paşa Mosque and Süleymaniye Mosque rise above the Istanbul skyline

St Stephen Church, is made of cast iron one of the few remaining in the world and inside is very ornate. It is a Bulgarian Orthodox church and belongs to the Bulgarian minority who live in Istanbul.  During the 19th century, the Bulgarians were allowed by the Ottomans to construct a separate church for themselves, due to nationalistic movements.

St Stephen Church

The home ground of Beşiktaş FC, in the centre of the city

In the evening we had a night trip on the Bosphorus with a meal, drinks and traditional dancing - including the religious dance of the Whirling Dervish, belly dancing and folk music - great fun!

Night view of the Bosphorus Bridge, connecting Europe and Asia

Boat Trip

The next morning it was off to the 15th century Grand Bazaar, the largest and oldest covered markets in the world.  It is a gigantic labyrinth with over 4000 authentic shops selling spices, jewellery, leather, pottery, carpets and of course Turkish Delight!  The smells, colours and vibrancy of the Bazaar are incredible; however you do get hassled a lot from the traders to buy their goods.  Remember the price they start out, will come down and down if you are prepared to barter, as we did! There are 11 numbered gates into the bazaar, all security controlled and one tip would be to remember the number of the gate you enter otherwise you can spend hours trying to find your way out and back to your hotel.  A Lithuanian guy who was on the trip with us took 2 hours trying to find his way out and back to the hotel!

Posing at the entrance gate to the Bazaar

A little courtyard inside the Bazaar

Time for mint tea, Turkish coffee and cake - yummy!

To get around the city in a van for deliveries is near on impossible, with traffic at a standstill most times of the day - cars, motorbikes, buses, coaches, tuk-tuks, push bike - every form of transport you can think of. So most things are carried in on sack barrows.  They pile them high and they must be really heavy but I guess they are used to it and take it all in their stride!  There is a good tram system that runs around the city and is really cheap, you can get on and off anywhere along the line for about 6 TRY (just under 1 euro).

Delivery man in Istanbul with his heavy sack barrow.

The afternoon was finished off with a daytime boat trip on the Bosphorus, going up the eastern side and then back down the Asian side.  After enduring near on 35°C temperatures around the Bazaar it was nice to cool down on the boat. There are a fantastic mix of mosques, palaces and some fantastic houses, built for the rich on the Asian side.  Our guide told us that they are not allowed to build anymore houses on the Asian side of the Bosphorus due to there being so many.

The Golden Horn Bridge

Ortaköy Mosque on the bank of the Bosphorus, beneath the Bosphorus Bridge

Old city walls from the days of when Istanbul was known as Constantinople

The coach set back off to Bulgaria at 7pm, arriving back in Sunny Beach at 2am.  We were exhausted but the 2-day visit to the city was amazing and would recommend that you all try and visit Istanbul at least once in your lifetime.  We hope to go back again one day but not by coach!

As mentioned at the beginning of the blog, a quick summary of our last 4 months.

We got back from year 2 of our travels on 3 January 2019.  Our house was still being rented out, so we stopped with our daughter and fiancé for a couple of weeks. Caught up with family and friends and then flew out to Spain (Punta Umbria) and stopped with our son for 3 ½ weeks.  We got back mid-February, our tenants moved out, we got our belongings out of storage and we put our house on the market, with a plan to buy a smaller house. We sold our house within a week, then it became a waiting game for it all to go through – 14 weeks later it was sold and we were homeless, as we couldn’t find a house we liked.  So, all our belongings went back in storage and we headed to our apartment in Bulgaria.

We travelled through 9 countries (UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria) in 6 days - a distance of 2093.8 miles (3350kms).  Our daughter and her fiancé joined us 5 days later in Bulgaria, for a week in the sun.  We plan to stop in Bulgaria for a few months, maybe driving into Greece for a short while before travelling back north through Europe.

Sally x