Istanbul is a vibrant and exciting city with narrow winding streets, drivers zipping all over the place on mopeds seeming to ignore any traffic rules or even sticking to streets…and lots of honking whenever someone decides to just stop a car in the middle of a road for a while. There are lots of smokers, which really stands out to us since we almost never see anyone smoking anymore back home. The city is home to a diverse population of over 15 million people, and is shared by seemingly an equal number of stray dogs and cats of every shape and size. Sometimes (especially at night it seems) the dogs howl along with the call to prayer from all the competing mosques…it is quite a sound!
Today we took a train to a nice park full of manicured gardens, shade trees, a playground, and some waterfront along the Bosphorus Strait. Our kids played while Jessie and I read our Kindle books, and Ashton watched old men fishing (unsuccessfully).
We then took a meandering stroll up and down all the (very steep) hills toward the Suleymaniye Mosque, which was built in the 16th century and was very similar to the Blue Mosque from a few days ago. It was far less crowded and was high on a hill with great views out over the “golden horn” (which is apparently the name of the inlet of water separating the two main sides of the old town area). We also stopped to get Ashton some more Turkish Delight (a nougat candy roll).
We then made our way back down to the waterfront (along the way encountering a movie being filmed complete with catering trucks, wardrobe, generators, crew/gear, and lots of people looking busy) and decided to take the longest ferry ride we could find…so we took a ferry from Eminönü (at the base of the hill we just descended) all the way out and around the peninsula and into the Sea of Marmara and over to Kadıköy (not to be confused with Karaköy which would have been just a tiny skip away). It was an interesting ride next to a large port area loading giant shipping containers. We didn’t really stick around over there, but rather took another ferry back to our side of the city…this time slightly further north to the Kabataş ferry terminal because we knew it would be an easy tram ride from there back home.
For dinner, we discovered “pide” which is AWESOME. It is essentially a thin-crust pizza fired in an open stone oven but rather than round it is long and thin and looks somewhat like a boat. Also referred to as “turkish pizza”…this one was not on our radar until tonight. It is sliced into rectangles and was delicious. Actually…everything we have eaten this trip has been amazing…and cheap! We typically eat amazing large meals for around $5/person.