Istanbul, Turkey

Istanbul, Turkey, a vibrant city with an amazing past, present, and likely future. As the capital of various empires including the holy roman empire, ottoman empire, and a history dating back to Neolithic times resting at the crossroads between east and west, seems like a pretty cool place, right?

We arrived at the beginning of a long weekend and got into our first Turkish car accident only minutes after leaving the airport, when some punk rear-ended our hotel van! Quite an arrival! We eventually struggled through traffic with our bum bumper and got to out hotel, Hotel Turkoman, which I would recommend to anyone. It is about 50 yards from the Blue Mosque, so you can't really complain about the sunsets over the city from the rooftop terrace!

We had a few hours to kill before Cam and Emily made it to the city, so Erin and I wandered around the Grand Bazar to scope out one of the most well known markets in the world.

Following our wandering, we enjoyed sunset on the roof and played some cribbage while our friends arrived. Here is the view from our terrace at night of the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmed Mosque). That night, we went out with a friend of ours, Khaliq, who lives in Istanbul. We had dinner at a local spot in Taksim that included lots of Raki, which is essentially Grappa, or fire water! It helped the night get off to the right foot and end on the wrong, being a 4:30am taxi ride back home from the Supperclub!

The next morning we shook off the previous nights' festivities with a doner kabab and some tourist activities, including the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace and the grand bazar and spice bazar. It was amazing to get to see one of the world's most famous mosques as non-muslims aren't typically allowed to go peak around.

Grand bazar

That night we went to dinner at 360, which has amazing food. Unfortunately we made it an early night as we couldn't handle another night that wandered into the wee hours. The views from the restaurant were great. If you book there and have the early reservation at 8pm, get there right at 8 because they'll kick you out of your seat for the 10pm booking. The waiter was probably the worst ever, basically pulling our chairs from our seats and didn't offer if we wanted coffee and a drink or desert at the bar or anything and was extremely unpleasant the whole night. It marks the first time I didn't tip the waiter at dinner in my life. A bummer as it took away from the food a bit.

The next day we met Khaliq again and went to the Asian side for lunch on Baghdad Street, which was more like Malibu than Iraq! The asian side isn't too different from the European, maybe a little more residential. Following that we took at 3 hour boat ride on the Bospherous with a little tug boat. Though old school, it was still great as they gave us a couple beers to sip on while on the tour.

That night we went to a restaurant called Rafik that was recommended in the Eyewitness Traveler Top 10 guide. It was a nice atmosphere but again the service lacked and they didn't have the first three fresh fish choices Khaliq tried to get. It was okay, as the friendly staff at a nearby rooftop bar were nice enough to join us in the photo as we had another fun and exciting night out (although Emily might not agree the next morning was fun)!

The next day, our last, Cam and Emily had to catch their flight so after lunch we went to the Basilica Cistern, which was one of the coolest things we have seen in our lives. This massive underground chamber, built in the 6th century (yes that's 1300 years ago) during the Holy Roman Empire, used to hold Istanbul's water supply and was built directly beneath an old church that is no longer standing. The chamber is much bigger than we expected, over 100,000 square feet containing 336 marble columns. The lighting made for some amazing pics! The James Bond movie, From Russia with Love, had a scene filmed here and there was a crew spotting out some shots when we were there (you can see them walking on water in the second pic).

All in all, it was a very well balanced weekend between eating, touring, drinking, and dancing! Istanbul was much more western than we expected, but it nonetheless was a great long weekend and a memorable experience!