ISTANBUL: CONTINENT-HOPPING BETWEEN SOUTH AMERICA, EUROPE & ASIA
After finishing our 2.5-month trip in South America we took our return flight to Milan via Amsterdam, where we made sure to stock up on some European necessities like a great Italian pizza, tiramisu and some sweets, and the next travel guide books for our trip. After an overnight stay in Milan we continued to Istanbul, the meeting point with our families in between continents. Istanbul was a marker for us as it roughly halved our 6-month trip between South America and Asia, it is located between continents itself and also because this is where we could meet our family before moving to Australia after the trip.
A couple of nights before our arrival a terrorist bomber killed and injured many people in central Istanbul, therefore we had some concerns about our safety in the city and whether we would be able to enjoy it fully. In the end, apart from avoiding crowded areas on purpose, luckily we had a good time, mainly due to being happy to meet our relatives. The difference we experienced was a reduced number of visitors at points of interests, as well as less people in general, including locals, on the streets. Our host told us that even Turkish people tried to avoid being on the streets as much as possible. Apart from the morale the recent attacks in Turkey have had a negative impact on the economy too – due to fewer travellers, restaurants and hotels suffer from unused capacity and try to attract the few visitors with heavy discounts. Conflict with Russia has lead to broken contracts which cut back on exported goods, a heavy burden on some industries. Fortunately, we spent our time there safe, but we hope that the situation will get better soon so that many others can enjoy this beautiful place.
Main Sights
We spent a couple of days in the centre of Istanbul visiting some of the places that are not to miss, but in general we took it easy and just wandered from street to street without too much of a scheduled itinerary. The few well-known points of interest that are worth mentioning:
Blue Mosque: this is a magnificent building both by daylight and at night at the main square, Sultanahmed, which is still in use as a mosque and therefore, can only be visited outside of prayer times, and with a cover on ladies’ heads. The inside is fully decorated with lovely mosaics with mainly blue dominating in the pattern, which gave the name to the building.
Hagia Sofia: a significant architectural piece, currently a museum, where Christian and Muslim characteristics mix into each other. It has a very mystical atmosphere and is worth the visit, including the upper floor inside.
Basilica Cistern: an underground water storage, which used to provide water for the Palace. Today it’s a beautifully lighted dark hall with hundreds of columns and pools of water. At the time of our visit there was also a photo boot here with traditional sultan and harem lady costumes, which further improved the experience!
Spice Bazaar or Egyptian Bazaar: a colourful market selling spices, dry food like tea and sweets on nicely organized displays.
Grand Bazaar: a wide array of vendors in a nicely painted market hall sell everything from clothes, homeware, handmade carpets or souvenirs to fresh and dry food, and its territory expands far beyond the borders of the main building but covers the surrounding streets too. Heavy bargaining is a must.
It was a surprise to us that wherever we walked in the city, vendors were trying to push their products on us so aggressively that it even exceeded our experiences so far in South America! It might have been due to the previously mentioned current economic necessity, but it was certainly a bit inconvenient. Some of them even learnt a few lines in Hungarian, so that as soon as they heard us speaking, they jumped in with their memorized few sentences hoping they would be luckier selling something to us. We weren’t successful convincing them that a carpet would not really fit any of our backpacks – they offered a delivery service right to our home address to avoid the hassle to carry anything we buy! In the end we quickly learnt how to smile kindly and reject the offers.
After visiting Istanbul, we also took a day trip on a boat on the Bosporus to the North to a fishing village, Anadolu Kavagi. The ride takes about 2.5 hours each way and the boat stops in the village for 3 hours, just enough time for a short visit and some lunch. On the way the boat passes by beautiful palaces, some mosques and also the main bridges of the river, some of which are quite spectacular. Arriving to A. Kavagi a few colourful old houses greet us from a street by the river, which still have the charm that reminds us what the village must have looked in the past when the main activity was still fishing. Today it is mainly famous for the fish and seafood stands and restaurants that make it a popular weekend destination for locals. After a short uphill walk there is also a castle ruin alongside with a few cafes and restaurants on the top of a hill above the village with a magnificent view over the Bosporus. We had lovely weather for the trip, topped off by a nice lunch on a square close to the port.
Culinary Delights
Turkish main food and deserts are no doubt a culinary experience everyone should try at least once! Don’t expect to be on a diet here though, as most mains are thick, and are served in generous quantities and with plenty of irresistible fresh white bread or flat local bread.
During the day while trotting the streets we were invited several times to delicacy stores to sample some Turkish delights, halva, baklava or tea, and we both agreed that these deserts beat the ones we had in South America by far! The wide choice of desserts and tea is very impressive, and the way they’re displayed in speciality stores is a feast for the eyes too. Although the classical Turkish tea is a bit too bitter and even I needed to add some sugar, several other flavours, like pomegranate or the ones made from instant sweet powder are very tasty. At restaurants a nice apple tea of this type is often offered for free at the end of the dinner – often together with some dessert. We tasted the traditional Turkish coffee too, which is similar to the espresso in size (about 50ml), but has a spicier flavour and some of the filtered coffee, oddly, stays in the glass after finishing it.
In terms of food we tried traditional local restaurant food and street food as well, and we had mainly positive experience:
Appetisers and mains
Naturally we tried the real Turkish döner (also known as kebab or gyros in Europe), which can be made in a roll or in durum, a tortilla-like flat bread. They add some (cold) French fries to it, which we have only seen in Greece before – it seems this is the real way to make döner. The content includes some vegetables and pickles apart from the meat, but unlike in Europe it does not include any sauce (at best sometimes you can add some mayonnaise for yourself) hence it’s a bit dry.
We liked most of the soups. Various lentil soups are common, which never left us disappointed, and some other soups were tasty too, that we couldn’t understand in Turkish and there was no common language to figure out its content. Most of them tasted quite similar to the red lentil soup we used to make a lot in London, so it was a bit like home food for us. Soups are served in adequate portions and with lots of bread, so it easily stands as a meal in itself at the best value for money (a portion costs around 2.5-3 lira, the equivalent of 80p).
Humus also has a great tradition here, and it was tasty but similar to the one that we eat elsewhere in Europe
Casserole is a local stew that has numerous variations according to the meat, but it’s most common with chicken, beef or seafood. It’s a hearty and tasty dish, for us Hungarians it tastes a bit like our stews back home. It’s worth a try.
Lamb meatballs in tomato sauce and sour cream on top, another local classical and yet another very filling and tasty dish.
The local version of mezze is made out of different creams and served with bread, including eggplant cream, shredded carrot cream, humus and other creamy, spicy pastes, which was worth trying.
Burek is a pasty with various variations of fillings. We tried the one with spinach and another with sour cottage cheese, the first was more popular.
Desserts
Turkish delight was a positive surprise for me as I had some vanishing memories from the one I bought in Cyprus when I first went there about 10 years ago, which ended up in the bin as no one could eat it in the family. Some of the ones we tried now were very nice, jelly-textured but with pieces of pistachio, fruits or nuts.
Baklava is an evergreen favourite in Szilveszter’s family, so it wasn’t new to us, but it was an exciting experiment to try some new fillings apart from walnut, like pistachio, nut or coconut. It’s not a cheap dessert, but you can’t eat more than a couple of pieces as it’s extremely sweet.
In the evenings, apart from the local specialties we were lucky enough to enjoy some of our favourite home-made sweets delivered by our parents too! We also got a great supply of (the best ever!) Hungarian sweet, “Túró Rudi”, a sweet cheese bar covered in chocolate, which is to die for.
The four days passed way too fast, and it was time to say goodbye again and continue our trip. Luckily (or not) this time wasn’t long enough to get fully used to the European time after South America (there is 7-hour time zone difference), so we struggled each night falling asleep. This came handy to use as much time as possible catching up on details of what has happened with each of us since we last saw each other, and also later when adapting to Japanese time (GMT+9 hours).