Istanbul (Part 2 - Digging in Deeper)

Our first day in Istanbul was full of aimless wandering and getting to know the city, which is one of our favorite things to do and something we had missed about being in Europe. The second day, however, we had a little more defined gameplan. We wanted to actually go into the amazing places that we had skirted around, and we did exactly that. We were still full from the night before, but still ate a big breakfast (when you're on a tight budget, it seems to be much harder to pass up free food or included breakfasts). From there we were off to see Hagia Sophia, the world famous mosque.

First, let us explain a tiny bit about some of the history of the city and it's mosques. Istanbul is cultural hub that has been a major metropolitan highlight for thousands of years and across many empires. It is located on both sides of the Bosphorous river, which connects the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, meaning that much of the trade connecting Western Asia and Eastern Europe with the rest of the world passed right through it's doors. It is also at the western end of the famous Silk Road. It was, at one point, the major trade hub of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and the Ottoman Empire, and many others. Roman Emperor Constantine actually moved the Roman capital to here (and named the city Constantinople) and made it a major Christian site full of beautiful churches. The collapse of the Roman empire and some other factors contributed to the area transitioning to a more Islamic focus, although Istanbul in the modern day is still very secular in spirit (all of you history buffs out there can rip into our loose descriptions of a very complicated story).

Hagia Sophia was actually built as a Christian church, but after it was taken over it was converted to an Islamic Mosque. Because of it's beauty it became the blueprint for other Ottoman mosques all over. It has a large, central domed area and 6 tall towers on the outside. Mosques of this style are ALL over Turkey. When visiting the mosques you need to wear appropriate attire which includes covering the legs and shoulders, much like visiting churches in Rome. One difference was that Nicole had to also cover her hair, but luckily there are many nearby shops that want to sell you scarves, and we had actually bought some in the Grand Bazaar the day before for $1! The inside of Hagia Sophia was beautiful, with incredible mosaics, gold leafed design-work, and even leftover Christian frescoes from it's time as a church. When you enter you have to take off your shoes (there are actually areas outside of most mosques for washing your feet). Inside, there are also separate praying areas for men and women. We were there in the small sliver of time between prayers, as the mosques actually close to tourists during these times. For the last 80 years Hagia Sofia was actually a paid museum, and just this year re-opened for worship. Note that the mosques were all free to enter.

Part of the Muslim religion is the urge to pray or meditate periodically 5 times a day. The call to prayer is actually signaled by singing from loudspeakers at each mosque (mosques that are close to each other will be synced up so that the songs are played at different intervals, or beautifully harmonized together). The calls to prayer happen at sunrise, early afternoon, late afternoon, sunset, and a little later in the night. Practicing Muslims will either pray at a mosque during these times, or lay down a mat facing Mecca if they cannot make it to a mosque (all of the altars in the mosques actually face Mecca as well). Hearing the call to prayer echo in the streets of Istanbul is a magical experience, although it becomes just part of the everyday background noise after a few days in the city. After Hagia Sophia, we grabbed Turkish coffee (of course) from a cool rooftop place overlooked both Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. This place was famous for photos/videos of seagulls stealing food from your hand, so it was lined with people standing on the balcony holding out French fries, bread, and whatever other leftover scraps they had (the waiters actually leave a plate of leftovers for people to use).

The Blue Mosque was closed for it's early afternoon prayer, so we walked down to Galata bridge area for lunch. The area under the bridge is famous for it's cheap fish sandwiches, which are simply a cut open hoagie, a piece of whole fish with most, but not all of the bones removed, and a little lettuce. We washed it down with some pickled beet juice and some donut holes from a nearby stand, all for around $3 each. We strolled across the bridge to burn off the food. The bridge isn't very pretty, but it connects the Old Istanbul area with the newer, swankier neighborhoods and is full of dozens of fisherman with their lines in the water below. After the bridge we hustled back to the Blue Mosque and we were just barely able to sneak in before they were closing it for the late afternoon prayer time. It is actually a much more beautiful mosque than the other on the outside (big slabs of white marble and shining blue domes), while Hagia Sophia looks more haphazard with different stone materials and rebuilt towers, but the inside was under renovation work. Afterwards we wandered around a nearby market, and spent some time petting the big, lazy dogs hanging about the square connecting the two famous mosques. Istanbul is full of fat, well looked after stray dogs. They hang around the tourist places waiting for pets, and the locals set out bowls full of food and water for them. We had a blast taking photos of them! We went back up to the same rooftop restaurant to watch sunset, and found a restaurant in a back alley street that night to split a meal of lentil soup (THE staple starter at all restaurants), as well as buttered rice, mashed and roasted eggplant, stuffed grapevine leaves, and pita bread with yogurt dip. Nicole absolutely LOVES dinners where you get to sample small bits of everything. Kyle liked dinner too, but was even more thrilled with the baklava we got to-go afterwards.

After seeing the mosques at sunset, we decided to catch them at sunrise the next morning too. After that, we set off on a river cruise along the Bosphorous. It was fun to see all of the sites along the water, but, for some reason, we did NOT get the guided information that we thought was supposed to be included, so we had to sort of make up backstories of what we were seeing. Later that day we finally ventured over to the area north of the Galata bridge. The difference in vibes was immediate. The traditional restaurants were replaced by hip, modern coffee shops and more burgers, steakhouses, and even cool soup places tucked away in old buildings. While there were almost no actual bars in the Old area (you could order beer from about 50% of the menus, but there were no sit-down-for-a-drink-only places), we finally saw our first pubs and clubs in Istanbul. We hiked uphill to the Galata Tower, a gorgeous old defense tower surrounded by brightly colored buildings, almost all of which had a coffee shop on the first floor (of course we had some coffee, and Nicole even ordered some tea by accident while we were practicing our Turkish).

From there we walked all along Istiklal street, a broad shopping street with an old-timey tam car running down the middle. It is constantly full of people, and vibrant with locals and tourists alike. The street is famous for the the trickster Turkish ice cream men, who tease you over and over again before you finally get your cone. Nicole had not seen this act before (Kyle kept her from looking) so she was the perfect victim at the first stand we stopped at. The street ended at Taksim square, where we got doner wraps and "wet burgers," which are literally dripping-wet burgers with kebab meat that have been sitting under heat lamps all day and are smothered with sauce and grease. Kyle's take: 10/10. After Taksim, we strolled back down Istiklal to people-watch, got another coffee near the Galata tower, and watched sunset at the Galata bridge. We were way too full still, but still had dinner nearby consisting of kumpir (a baked potato full of about 10 toppings) and gozleme (a flat bread stuffed with cheese and spinach). We were miserably full at this point...but Kyle still managed to pull us into a baklava shop to end the night.

The next day we were off to Asia! Actually, just the Asian side of Istanbul...we had a lot of fun in this city.