This day may have broken me. Or made me stronger. Certainly one or the other, only time will tell! But let’s not get ahead of myself…

I had made a list last night of all of the things I should see and do in Istanbul. That list was almost two pages of my notebook; Istanbul’s got some sights to see, you see. I have three full days so I should have time to do most of them, but I want to get a good start. I’m into the hostel cafe as soon as it opens for breakfast at 8 and have an authentic “Turkish breakfast”. Interesting combination of things.

I plan to do as much sightseeing as possible in Fatih today – basically all of the main tourist spots. I’m out and walking by 8.15. It’s a pretty grey morning; nowhere near as good as in Athens but it’s not raining at least.

A lot of the rest of this post is going to brief descriptions of major points intermixed with a lot of pictures with captions.

First up: Topkapi Palace, old residence of sultans between the 15th and 19th centuries. Excellent views over the city and the Bosporus. There was a treasure room, unfortunately with no photos allowed, with old Islamic artefacts – including the cloak and staff of Moses. Impressive. There was a museum of very pretty clocks, also no photos. The palace itself is quite old so it was functional and forbidding rather than looking particularly comfortable or lush. There was a harem attached where the royal women lived, which was interesting but not really all that photogenic.

Next I pop down to the archaeological museum and spend a bit of time. I find some more sphinx but I’m a bit artefacted out at this stage so don’t stay there long.

Onwards to the Hagia Sofia. Built almost 1500 years ago (!!) it was a Christian (orthodox) cathedral for 900 years and a mosque from the 15th century onwards. I’m a bit unlucky as it seems like a cruise ship has just disgorged its pack of tourists. I now have a Museum Card, though, so I get to skip most of the queue. The inside is awesome, in the truest sense of the word. So ancient.

A few pictures around Sultanahmet Square:

Done with that I wander for a bit, vaguely heading towards the Grand Bazaar through backstreets. It’s getting near lunchtime so I’m keeping my eye out for a promising back-alley food place; it doesn’t take long, and I pay the equivalent of £2.50 for a ridiculous amount of food. The main bit is a spicy potato and cheese layered thing. Quite good!

I reach the Grand Bazaar – Istanbul’s famed area of markets, street sellers, haggling and all that. It’s definitely interesting and fun to walk through, but after about 30 minutes I’m finished; there’s nothing for sale that I’d be interested in buying (it’s mostly fabrics, antiques, tourist tat etc).

Off on my walkies again, I wander through a university and a random park. I end up at Suleymaniye Mosque, a UN protected heritage area and apparently the greatest mosque in Istanbul (measured by number of towers I believe). I put my shoes in a bag and go inside.
My first mosque! As a very tactile person there was something very satisfying about the feeling of the thick deep carpet underfoot. Certainly a more comfortable/cosy experience than going into most Christian churches!

More walking, miscellaneous sights.

I’ve walked a fair bit west now so I turn around and head back down the main historic street in Fatih which runs all the way to Sultanahmet Square – where I was to see the Hagia Sofia earlier, and where a bunch of other interesting sites are like the Blue Mosque. I do some tourist things when I get there. The Blue Mosque might be structurally inferior to Suleymaniye but the inside looks amazing.

I stop for a Turkish coffee (50p!) in a tiny cafe run by an old man, amused by the emphatic “no we don’t have WiFi” sign on the door.

Last tourist bit in this area is the cistern, known as the Basilica Cistern either because of the dozens of pillars or that there was a basilica on this spot before there was a cistern. It was one of many cisterns responsible for providing filtered water to palaces. It doesn’t sound particularly interesting but it actually was!

It’s raining now but that’s OK; next stop is to the Spice Bazaar, the famous spice-and-sweet-things market. Far more interesting to me than the Grand Bazaar, I didn’t buy anything this time but I’ll be back before I leave Istanbul. I did have my fair share of samples though!

On my way out I pick up a small bit to eat to get me to dinner: an “icli kofta”, a fried rice ball filled with lamb mince and spices.

It’s 5.30 now, back to the hostel for a brief rest.

I head out again, though, because last night I’d booked to see what should be a very interesting performance – Whirling Dervishes doing their thing. It’s something I had heard of before but didn’t know much about. It’s actually a religious performance, rather than for the purposes of entertainment; the dervishes (ie the performers) supposedly work themselves into a state of rapture during their performance.
Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to take pictures during the event, and it’s a bit hard to describe. The five dervishes go through about 45 minutes of ritual with constant religious singing provided by some others. Multiple times during the act they position themselves around the circular stage and start turning, their loose robes flowing out around them – whirling – and keeping it up for five minutes or more. It’s quite hypnotic and mesmerising, especially with the deep singing in the background. Definitely a different experience to anything else I’ve seen.

Religious experience over, it’s dinner time. I again am forearmed with a shortlist and settle on one of them. I had an “Ali Nazek” kebab, which had separately been recommended by both the guy standing outside and the waiter inside. It’s lamb on a bed of an aubergine and yogurt sauce, came with the bread, butter and strong (sheep’s?) cheese. Free baklava and apple tea, too, all came to £8.40.

Clearly that wasn’t quite enough food as I stopped at a bakery place on the way home for something called a “burma kadiyef” – pistachio/honey/pastry deliciousness.

Made my way back to the hostel.

Collapsed.

That was a long day.

Long, to the point of ridiculousness – Google reports 43463 steps, active for 7h 7m. Yeah, it’s feeling like it! Hopefully I’ll be fit to walk tomorrow.