On nearing Istanbul, even at 11:00pm at night, the traffic was manic with taxis cross-crossing lanes at will and pedestrians making mad dashes across the road. Meanwhile my new German friends were bickering over directions and as a result I think we saw most of Istanbul before eventually turning up at the Istanbul Hostel in the Sultanahmet region.
Still, it was all made worthwhile as we sat on top of the hostel bar with a view of the bay on one side and Istanbul's most famous landmark, the Aya Sophia Mosque, rising from the other.
In the morning, myself and Leo decided to cross over to the other side of Istanbul - a long trip for a city twice the size of London. Walking across the Galata Bridge we got an uxpected treat as a wild dolphin in the middle of Istanbul was playing in the water below (at least until a boat full of tourists drove it away). It was one of those great unexpected moments which really blow you away.
Transport in Istanbul is very modern with sparkly new trams, silent new underground trains and new long metrobuses with not one but two bends in the middle. On crossing to the eastern side of the city, we found ourselves officially in Asia, a completely different continent. Walking around the bay, we came across a selcluded area backing onto the clear blue water and took a swim with some locals before catching the ferry back to our side of the city from beside the wonderful Maiden's Tower (a little church on it's own island). It was a great start to life in Turkey.
The next day I took a trip out to the Istanbul Modern, an art gallery across the river which has some great displays and a wide variety of contemporary art - particularly from Turkish artists. From here, you can hike up a big hill in the centre of town to the Gelata Tower - one of the oldest towers in the world still standing. It has had many incarnations since it was built but now it is the crowded tourist photo spot for views out across the city. It is a great skyline though, with countless pencil-like minaret towers sticking up into the sky.
One of the highlights of Istanbul is bargaining for goods on the markets. The Grand Bazaar is by far the biggest and most popular and you can easily get lost in the maze of lamps, rugs, jewelery and fake designer items in over 4000 stalls. It is increadibly busy and no longer the place to find a cut-price bargain but I still managed to pick up a little Turkish rug for the van having bartered the price down from 120TL to 30TL by doing my best Del-Boy impersonation.
A short walk away is Istanbul's Spice Bazaar (which I actually prefered). Here you can pick up any conceivable herb, spice, tea or turkish delight and it smells amazing as you walk through the various stalls.
The city's major tourist draws are based within a stone's throw of the hostel, starting with the two mosques facing each other across Sultanahmet Park. The 1500 year old Aya Sophia mosque is an ancient feat of engineering and now a huge museum. Although it looks a bit shabby on the outside, on the inside it is a mix of gold domes, chandeliers and marble pillars. If you can fight your way through the vast groups of tourists, it is a wonderful place to simply look up and marvel.
Across the park is the Blue Mosque, a newer and aguably grander place of worship, which is still in use for prayer today under it's variety of blue domes. Once you have joined the queue (and taken off your shoes of course) you soon discover it is worth the wait with it's wonderfully painted archways and numerous stained-glass windows.
Next to the mosques and barely visible from above the ground is the Cistern Basilica. This sixth-century underground labyrinth of old pillars is probably my favorite place in Istanbul and lacks the same volume of touristy crowds. At the foot of the hundreds of reclaimed pillars is a shallow pool of water filled with fish and coins while at one end are two stone pillars of the head of Medusa (bizzarely with one on it's side and one upside down).
That night myself and Leo went into town to sample Istanbul's nightlife with one of his friends, Fabien, who I had met earlier that day. In the evening, the Gelata Tower becomes a sort of young people's meeting place for drinking and we sat and chatted away before getting a random invite to a reggae party. It was all going well but the reggae bar was empty and I was tired so I decided to return to the hostel.
On reaching the bridge across the river, I found it was raised up (presumably for a ship to cross) but by asking the non-english speaking locals, I found the bridge should be down in four minutes. It was still up 30 minutes later so I questioned a security guard who explained better that the bridge would not be down in 4 minutes but instead at 4am, another 3 hours later, due to maintenance. Being unable to get home, I took a nap on the concrete steps of the bridge with some similarly stuck locals until the bridge finally reopened about 5.30am. After a promising start, it wasn't the best end to a night out in Istanbul.
Another of Istanbul's popular attractions is the Topkapi Palace. Although the palace itself is nothing too exciting, just a few courtyard areas, it is worth squeezing in just to visit the fabulous armoury, treasury and sultan's wardrobe. Each of the these areas holds fantastic displays of things which look like they were made for extremely wealthy giants, from huge robes and gowns, to massive detailled weapons and armour, to glittering jewellery and precious stones the size of a fist (including an 86 carat diamond). In the mosque in the corner, they also claim to have on display the "staff of Moses" and the "beard hair of the prophet Mohammed".
I soon found out that trying a cheeky photograph in a restricted area gets you a stern ticking off and the picture immediately deleted, but some American guy who did not heed his first warning was rather agressively ejected from the palace by two burly security guards. I put my camera away in a hurry.
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