New Day, New City, Still Istanbul

Of the ten trillion boats doing a Bosphorus cruise tonight,
this is the only one that was gliding in front of the Suleymaniye Mosque when I snapped this photo.

The planned primary item on today's tourism agenda was not do-able. Topkapi Palace is closed on Tuesdays and this is a Tuesday. So it's time to do what I often do when tourism-ing in a new city: improvise. But there is a surprise, even shocking, plot twist: the day's tourism activities included the most disappointing funicular ride ever. Ever.

It all started innocently enough with a tram ride: Sultanahmet to the Kabataş station to start the day with a funicular ride up to Taksim Square.

There are two funiculars in Istanbul: the one to Taksim Square and another which is called the Tünel Tramway. I knew that the Tünel funicular was, as the name implies, in a tunnel. So I opted for the Taksim Square funicular.

The area in which you board the funicular is inside a station. Unfortunately, you stay within the enclosed space for the duration of the ride. You see nothing of the surrounding environment. And, to make it worse, if that is possible, the slope of the ride is very gentle. I would be OK with the enclosed tunnel if the incline were steep, giving you the feeling of climbing and ascent. This was not Taksim Square funicular experience. Enclosed and gentle. What a funicular should not be.

But once I disembarked, Taksim Square at the top of the ride was incredible.

This is the Republic Monument. And a tram car that you can ride through the New City that looks like a proper tram car.

I do not know why the Republic Monument is wrapped in cyclone fencing with police signage on it. I also do not know why the New City has historic, old-fashioned tram cars while the historic Old City has sleek ultra-modern trams. Oh the cognitive dissonance.

This is the Taksim Mosque:

With an old-fashioned New City tram car artistically placed in front of the shot.

I shot this photo through the chain link fencing so that the Republic Monument did not so forlorned:

Much better.

And this is the Taksim Mosque with banners of the Turkish flag and the nation's entire pigeon population:

Time to walk through the New City.

Dessert stores aplenty. Each looking more delicious than the last.

This is more than sweet shops selling "Turkish delight" to us tourists. Not that there is a problem with that. This just seems to have a less touristy vibe, as this seems to be a street where everyone shops, not just the tourists who have a few days in Istanbul as part of a two-week package tour of Turkey and the Greek Isles.

This child is riding on the tram.

Why is he riding on the outside, perched on a little block on the back of the tram? Because he's a boy doing things that little boys do! Or, as the instagrammers would call it: living his best life.

About a mile walk from Taksim Square is Galata Tower:

You can go inside.

It's a 30 euro ticket. There is an elevator inside to take you most of the way up, I just found out. I wasn't go to spend 30 euros, which is more than 6,000 Turkish lira, on having to climb several flights of stairs. But now, having googled it, the elevator will take you up seven floors and you walk the stairs to ascend the final two floors. Those terms would have been acceptable had I known the terms at the time.

Considering that Galata Tower was built in the 1300's, more than 100 years before the Ottoman takeover of Constantinople, I am quite surprised that there is an elevator inside.

This is an interesting building I saw walking from Galata Tower to the cruise ship embarkation zone.

It's not famous. It's not a tourist attraction. It just looks interesting in a good sort of way. And, if you're a building, isn't that enough?

I ate local for a late lunch. Doner. The sauce on the left was awesome and perfect. The sauce of the right was too mild and too eggplant-y. There might have been a little eggplant in the spicier sauce on the left that I loved, but the flavor was so awesome, I will forgive it for its eggplant ways.

And, quite sadly, Istanbul is a Pepsi town. It's like that old Saturday Night Live skit from way back in the original cast days: "No Coke. Pepsi."

After my late lunch, I moseyed down to the waters of the Golden Horn.

The Golden Horn separates the Old City and the New City on the European side.

This is the Galata Bridge, which is the first bridge in succession crossing the Golden Horn, starting at the point where the Golden Horn flows into the Bosphorus.

There are plenty of restaurants on the underside of the bridge. And on the top deck?

People fishing. The Galata Bridge is well known for the number of people who gather on it everyday to fish. With fishing line and fishing poles. Old school fishing.

Oh and wedding photography, too:

Is she being married on the Galata Bridge? I don't know. But I don't see a groom, so I am guessing that these are only pre-wedding Instagram photos.

There are millions and millions of boats in this area, all there to take people on late afternoon Bosphorus cruises.

I would have been tempted to take one myself, since there are sights along the water that are seen best from the water, as that is the angle and direction these buildings were designed to be seen. Such as the Dolmabahçe Palace, north of here, where the final Ottoman sultans ruled during the Ottoman Empire's "Sick Man of Europe" phase. Things were much better for the Empire when everything was based in Topkapi Palace in the Old City.

I didn't take a cruise so we will save Dolmabahçe Palace for another time. But Galata Tower is visible in the above photo looking back at the New City from mid-Galata Bridge.

And this is the view of the Old City from mid-Galata Bridge:

Look at the cruise boats lined up, like taxis at McCarran airport on a busy Friday night. It's like everyone in the whole world but me is taking a Bosphorus cruise in Istanbul tonight.

Bosphorus cruise boat with the Golden Horn Metro Bridge, or Haliç Metro Köprüsü, in the background.

The Golden Horn Metro bridge is a bridge that is there simply for the city metro and pedestrians. No cars. No trucks.

Once you cross the Galata Bridge, you are in a sea of humanity, filled with people embarking on, and disembarking from, their Bosphorus cruises,

There are only two types of food carts here, and there a million of each. Turkish bagels, which are sort of a hybrid between a bagel and a soft pretzel. And roasted corn on the cob (which is surprisingly popular here) and, out of the same cart, what I believe are chestnuts.

I skipped the food carts and headed for a dessert restaurant closer to my hotel:

Kunefe! With an espresso on the side. From this shop:

What is kunefe? I will describe it, but it will not sound nearly as delicious as it is. Imagine a giant shredded wheat biscuit. Filled with mozzarella cheese. And soaking in simple syrup. With a few ground pistachios on top. Mmmmm. Seriously. Mmmmmm. It sounds like a train wreck from my description, but it is beyond awesome. It is definitely not something you want everyday. But my favorite Turkish restaurant in Las Vegas closed during the covidiocy, so it has been several years since my last kunefe. I will not wait that long for my next.

Long day. I'm tired. Tomorrow I will be a new destination, but the flight got postponed from early afternoon to evening, so I will have one more tourism day in the Old City.

I will end with one last photo of the Blue Mosque, with the German fountain in the foreground, in the late afternoon sun.

A Day Full of Old City Istanbul Tourism: Stop 1: the Blue Mosque

The interior of the Blue Mosque is huge. And blue.

Today was the day for maximum tourism in the area in the historic core of the Istanbul Old City. Four stops in all, none of which were just a quick stop to snap my instagram-worthy photo followed by moving on. Well, except maybe the first stop: the Blue Mosque.

I hired a private guide (from the carpet merchant next to my hotel) (don't ask, it worked) to learn some history and to skip, or at least minimize my time in, the long lines at the various sights.

The line to get into the Blue Mosque was long, but not nearly as bad as Saturday.

The interior was huge. SuperDome huge. And ornate. And blue.

It was built in the 1700's -- which makes it "new construction" for this part of the city -- at the direction of Sultan Ahmet who had correctly deduced that he was somewhat mediocre of a sultan (the king in Ottoman Turkey) so that he had to build something magnificent to have any sort of legacy.

So this is what they came up with.

The place was packed, as the long line would indicate. Unlike the other places I visited today, this is not one that dictates a long linger. You stand in line. You walk in. You absorb the enormity and the beauty of the physical environment inside. What is impressive is the totality, rather than any specific facet of the building. This is not like a Gothic Cathedral elsewhere in Europe with an overwhelming amount of religious art. You walk in, gasp in awe, and move on to the next tourism stop.

But before I move on, I will point out that this mosque has six minarets. Minarets are the tall towers beside mosques from which the call to prayer is issued five times each day. An ordinary mosque has one minaret. Royal mosques have a few. This one has six. Which meant Sultan Ahmet was a somebody. However, this immediately proved to be hugely controversial because, prior to the construction of the Blue Mosque, the only mosque with that many minarets was the primary mosque in Mecca. Solution?  The sultan's architect built a seventh minaret to the mosque in Mecca. The Blue Mosque kept all six of its minarets, but in a way that kept the Mecca Mosque at number one.

A tourist can't go up in any of the six minarets. There is no special ticket to get such access. Not that I would want to climb straight up a minaret if the opportunity presented itself/

Free Walking Tour of Istanbul's Old City

View of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn from the Suleymaniye Mosque

And that was the place where the free walking tour of Istanbul's Old City came to an end, on the grounds of a huge mosque on a hilltop with a view overlooking the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, with the "New City" neighborhood of European Istanbul to one side and Asia to the other. Well, how did I get here?

The meeting point for the free walking tour was a short walk from my hotel.

Which makes sense since the hotel is conveniently located between of the major tourist attractions in Istanbul:  Hagia Sofia (above) and the Blue Mosque (below).

That's the reason I picked this hotel. Location, location, location, as the folks in real estate would say.

So after loading up on cash at the ATM, so I had tipping money for the end of tour, it was off to start the tour.

(Please note: when I said "loading up on cash," I was not joking. It's like the Weimar Republic here when it comes to paper money. The largest denomination bill is the 200 lira note. That sounds respectable. In the U.S., we're not printing any Grover Clevelands ($1,000 bill) or William McKinleys ($500) anymore. But 200 Turkish Lira is worth a little more than $4.00. Which means the largest denomination bill in circulation here is a four-dollar bill. Which means you have to got to have an extremely thick wad of paper to have any purchasing power in a place that is not fully committed to credit cards and electronic payment. So if you're carrying enough cash in your front pocket for a day's worth of consumption, people will think you're happy to see them.)

First stop on the tour: the German Fountain.

This is next to the Blue Mosque. It was a "thank you" gift from Germany to the Sick Man of Europe, the Ottoman Empire, for being Germany's wing-man during the First World War.

This area is the old Roman Hippodrome:

They don't run horses through here anymore. The tourist horde would frighten them. And at the far end of the old Hippodrome is:

The Egyptian obelisk, a.k.a., the Obelisk of Theodosius, which I believe no one calls it other than a few pedantic travel blog writers.

It is impressive, especially when you consider that this is only the top 60 percent of the original Egyptian obelisk. The original obelisk was carved from a single piece of granite and was so enormous than when it was shipped out of Egypt to its new home, the entire obelisk could not be shipped. No ship was big enough to transport the whole thing. So they improvised.

The base is very Roman:

While the writing on the side is Egyptian. Quick, break out your Rosetta Stone and do a quick translation from the Google translator of its day.

Next is the Serpent Column, Yılanlı Sütun, which used to have the head of a serpent.

Now it is merely serpentine. Constantinople (not Istanbul) was once the center of the civilized world so the treasures of the ancient were brought here and put on display, a function later usurped by places such as the Louvre in Paris or the British Museum in London. Centers of global power always seem to collect the treasures of the world.

Obelisk and minaret visible in one photo:

We then walked to the Blue Mosque. "To," not "in," because in the morning hours, the line to get into the Blue Mosque is huge.

The colloquially called "Blue Mosque" is actually called Sultanahmet Camii, or the Sultanahmet Mosque. Sultanahmet was an Ottoman Emperor from the 1600's who built a lot of this part of town. The blue tiles inside give this mosque its more familiar name, as the interior is more blue than the exterior.

The exterior is the popular photo for tourists. And here is one of said tourists getting a souvenir photo taken with the Blue Mosque in the background:

With the Blue Mosque being off-limits due to extraordinarily long queuing, we instead entered a much smaller mosque from the same era on the same grounds.

Keep in mind that, in Islam, the word "mosque" is used like we Christians use the word "church." Both words generally mean a spot where the faithful gather for worship but, practically speaking, nearly always refers to a building, rather than a site, where said gathering occurs.

The interior of this mosque was small and ornate:

Those are not coffins or graves. Those are cenotaphs, which are monuments to those buried elsewhere. The smaller cenotaphs are for children.

Time to get back onto the tour. There are many more mosques to see,

And columns:

This is, I believe, the Column of Constantine. Named for the man for whom Constantinople (not Istanbul) is named. So, contrary to the popular song, apparently you can go back to Constantinople. (BTW, that is the tour guide for my free walking tour on the bottom left. He had a name at the time.)

Next mosque up: the Nuruosmaniye Mosque

Cats aplenty throughout Istanbul. The reason? The prophet Mohammed was a cat lover. So in Moslem cities, stray cats are everywhere and they appear to be well taken care of.  Stray dogs?  You don't see them.

This mosque is new construction, relatively speaking. It dates from the mid 1700's, rather than the 1600's.

The chandelier hand low because it is used to be oil-lamp lighting, not electricity. 

It's nice, but give me the 1600's over the 1700's when it comes to Istanbul interior design.

Next up: the nightmare part of the tour: the Grand Bazaar.

Shall we enter?

This surprised me. I was expecting more of a "bazaar" atmosphere with stalls thrown up all over the place, with cloth roofs, and amazing and sometimes frightening smells. Instead, it was a shopping mall atmosphere. A huge crowded shopping mall, with storefronts. Only imagine that this is a shopping mall with an overwhelming number of Zales and Kay Jewelers and carpet salesman. I was expecting sensory overload of the scent of spices fresh off the Silk Road. Instead, I got Black Friday at the Galleria.

The tour ended at a mosque on a hill.

The Suleymaniye Mosque, which is a tourist destination primarily for the view:

Again, you can see the Bosphorus, the narrow strait that separates European Thrace from Asian Anatolia, separating what we once thought were two continents but we now know as a single giant landmass that we still call two continents out of habit. You also can see the Golden Horn, the narrow passage of water on the European side of Istanbul separating the Old City to the south and the New City to the north.

I planned to take a short rest and head out to a museum later in the day. Didn't happen. The jet lag and time zone shift and the lack of sleep caught up with me so when I went back to the hotel, I fell asleep. It's now 10:00 p.m. as I post this and, for the time time, I feel wide awake. That does not bode well for getting a good night of quality sleep. At least my tourist neighborhood goes silent after 9:00 p.m.