Exotic Istanbul

Turkey had never really been on our list of places to visit however we ended up staying in Istanbul for a week after we finished up in Africa and we're so glad that we did. Istanbul is a large dense city about the population of Los Angeles but in a much smaller area. Because it was crowded with lots of people on the street it reminded me a little bit of New York and the energy there. Istanbul has an amazing history so many different groups have conquered Turkey and ruled it at sometime or another so it is a mix of a lot of different interesting cultures.

Istanbul is a very cosmopolitan city with beautiful restaurants hotels and nightlife. One of our favorite things we did there was to take a sunset boat cruise on the Bosphorus to see both sides of Istanbul by boat. There is so much to see in Istanbul even with six days there we did not get to see everything we wanted to see.

Definitely a highlight of the trip was going to Hagia Sofia and touring the Topkapi Palace.

We used "WithLocals" to book tours in the city. We were so lucky to get Mine Turkuz as our guide. She went way beyond the call of duty to make sure we saw everything we wanted. She even picked us up and went back to the hotel to make sure we had no difficulties. Most guides meet you at the location.

Hagia Sofia is a huge place of worship it is currently being used as a mosque but it has been in the past as a Catholic church and a governmental meeting place. We really enjoyed going there and learning about its long history. One of our favorite tours was seeing the Topkapi Palace, this is the palace where the Turkish sultan lived with his harem. It was so interesting learning about the culture of the palace and how the hundreds of people who lived and worked there interacted with each other. Probably the most interesting part was learning about the harem which held sometimes up to 300 women and their children and was run by the sultans mother. Once a woman entered the harem she never left and had no exposure to the world outside of the harem. Only the eunuchs would serve the women in the harem but in a limited way. Even the sultan had to ask permission to enter the harem. Though life in the harem was isolated it was also quite luxurious they had their own swimming pool, a large spa and apartments.

Turkey is 95% Muslim and so there are many mosques throughout the city and they do the call to prayer five times a day. I enjoyed listening to the call to prayer which is basically chanting for about 10 or 15 minutes. Occasionally we would see people stop and pray during the call to prayer but the vast majority of the population went on with their day. Everyone we met in Turkey was very helpful and friendly, most of the service people spoke some English. We always try to learn a few simple phrases in the language of the country we are visiting but we could not pull it off in Turkey! Turkish is

a really difficult language we tried but we could never even manage “thank you”.

Turkey was really lovely and we wished we had seen more of a country we will definitely go back. Also right now the American dollar was quite strong mainly because their currency is really struggling so many things were quite affordable in Turkey.