Adventures in Europe: Istanbul, Turkiye

Yesterday late in the morning our drive Mohammed picked us up and drove us to the Sharm El Sheikh airport, about one hour south of Dahab. On the way, Mohammed told us he has two wives, and we are inclined to think he was serious. He also took the opportunity to extol the values of multiple wives to me, but (for now at least) I will be sticking with one.

From Sharm we flew to Cairo, a quick flight, with some good views of Sinai as we took off and Cairo as we came in to land. In Cairo we had a quick layover before we transferred to our flight to Istanbul. Still, it was long enough to encounter more Egyptian incompetence, as we got stuck waiting (and waiting and waiting) for passport control to show up (the issue was not a line up of passengers, but a lack of officials). Eventually, finally, after I really pushed things by walking way past the guard, we were walked to another location to go through passport control, after our flight was flashing "last call" on the board. We made it, but I was happy to be leaving Egypt.

We landed in Istanbul as the sun was setting yesterday evening. We were through security quickly and to our hotel in the Sultanhamet neighbourhood by around 19:00. It was after dark, but the Blue Mosque was lit up and beautifully visible from the hotel's rooftop. 

The sun was rising this morning at 8:30, across the Bosphorus.

This is what the Blue Mosque looked like in the morning light.

After breakfast in the basement of our hotel, which is this one . . .

. . . we began exploring Istanbul. We visited the Blue Mosque first. 

Then we took the tram a few stops to the Grand Bazaar. 

We toured the bazaar, but passed on making any purchases, and instead headed down to Sirkeci and caught a ferry. The ferry took us over to the Asian side of Istanbul, Kadikoy, but mostly we did not care where we were going, the point was to enjoy the Bosphorus and city views!

We did not stay long in Kadikoy, instead jumping on another ferry back over to the European side, but this time Kabatas. Our ferry took us by the Maiden's Tower.

From Kabatas, we figured out where the Bosphorus dinner cruises are, because we will be doing one of those later, and then took the underground funicular up the hill to Taksim Square.

From here we headed down the wonderful Istiklal street.

We did a little shopping along the street, and also stopped for lunch, and after admiring window displays like these(!), baklava.

At Mado, they even present your coffee with a mini bouquet of flowers!

There are two churches along Istiklal, and we went inside St. Anthony of Padua catholic church.

Diana did some jewelry shopping near Galata Tower, while I did some more meandering.

Then we continued down the hill towards the Golden Horn and the Galata Bridge, which we walked across.

Our day had already been super full, but we decided we still had energy to visit the magnificent Ayasofya.

Since I last visited in 2018, Ayasofya has been converted (back) to a mosque, but the upper floor remains a museum. Tourists cannot, however, visit the ground floor any longer, although you can still get great views of it from up above. Here are some photos of around Ayasofya.

It was after 17:00 by the time we were done in Ayasofya, and sun was about to set, so we bought some drinks and went back to the hotel to enjoy them while watching the sun set over the Bosphorus.

I went out for a little nighttime walk around Sultanahamet before our dinner cruise, while Diana continued to rest in the room. I hoped to visit the Blue Mosque again, which is lit up beautifully, but no longer open to visitors in the evening. 

The dinner cruise was a bit obnoxious, and the food unimpressive, but nighttime Istanbul is beautiful.

The entertainment included a whirling dervish, and I had not seen this before so found it quite interesting.

Here is a little video:

There were also many other types of dances and some of them did a good job of getting people up and dancing as well and it was (I suppose) a fun way to spend the evening.