Istanbul

Our flight was held up on the tarmac for 45mins due to bad weather on our flight course but didn’t really matter to us as we had nothing we had to be in Istanbul for. We flew over Istanbul and kept flying, I did wonder what was going on but the new international airport is situated 48 min away, by taxi, to the old city, where our hotel is located. The Istanbul Airport was massive, the travelators were handy to get around a bit quicker.
Our hotel is on the waterfront which is lovely as it is hot, we have not seen one person swimming so I presume it is not encouraged around the main part of town. Our restaurant is located on the top of the building with a lot of shade sails, a very pretty area with a sea breeze.
We only have one day in Istanbul so our sightseeing was limited, we got on the Hop on Hop off bus, it gave us an overview of the city and the two bridges that go over the Bosphorus. I had to do a geography lesson on Google maps as to exactly where Istanbul is related to other countries. The Bosphorus is a narrow inlet between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. It is a main shipping route for Istanbul. We had a couple from Americans sit beside us and it turned out they are going on the same cruise as us tomorrow, what are the odds. I was very keen to visit the Grand Bazaar but they said it was pretty much the same shop repeated over and over plus very hot and humid in there so we gave that a miss.

The temperature kept climbing on the bus with no air conditioning, they had a digital temp just above our heads and by the time we got off it read 41 degrees 🥵 We were so glad to get off into the relatively mild 33 degree heat. We went straight to the Basilica Cistern, Neil even lined up with me to go in. This Cistern was builit in the 6th century, it met the water needs of the city for centuries by distributing the water obtained from historical waterways such as the Hadrian’s Pipeline and from rain, and delivered it to the Great Palace where the emperors resided.
They put different coloured lights on the pillars and it created a beautiful show. We walked on board walks and there was water all around us. They also have artworks in different places throughout the structure. The young female instagrammers were a pain in the butt.
We were looking for the entrance to the Cistern when a young man approached us and pointed us in the right direction, he said after you come out you must come to my families business. We thanked him and carried on. When we came out he was waiting for us, he was so persistent!!! In the end I just said no and walked away. There were men everywhere vying for our attention, we found it unsettling.

We had lunch at place we stumbled upon called Pudding Shop, apparently it is quite famous in Istanbul, I can attest to the delicious authentic Turkish food.

I did want to visit either Hagar Sophia or the Blue Mosque so I stopped at a street side stall to buy a scarf as you cannot get in without one. He said you must pay this man, who made a great show of the fact we were Kiwi’s, he said you must come and meet by brother who has been to NZ so we followed him down into a carpet business, there were 3 of them there, I felt so uneasy, nek min some coffee arrived on a tray and they wanted us to sit down with them, telling us they ship to New Zealand, I hightailed it out of there fast, we are not used to that sort of manipulation.
I did get to to the Blue Mosque which was closed due to prayers, I found the entrance, it was free but saw that it was for a presentation in a hall outside the main mosque so I gave up, we were hot, sweaty and all out of patience for pushy people.
Put on Google maps to get us back home, we were walking down a street (which was the correct one) and it came to an end, a building was being renovated and the way was completely blocked, we could see no way through, doubled back trying to find a street that took us down to the waterfront so we could find our way home, Neil asked a chap where to go and his friend said, No, follow me I am going back that way. I was not happy but we followed him, through the construction site which meant climbing through a small gap in the corrugated iron fence, along a bit then through another gap in the corrugated iron. By this time I was a bit distraught, thinking someone was going to accost us at any minute, but I guess we should have faith as he took us exactly where we needed to go and didn’t want any money for doing it. Never been so pleased to get back to our hotel and air conditioning.

Apparently there is going to be a heatwave in Turkey over the next few days and one of the locations for our cruise is having wildfires, interesting times!Read more