About the Bosphorus, tea and trams, or how to take mom to Istanbul.
Good things always want to share with loved ones. Last year's trip to Istanbul turned out to be a good emotional shake-up for me. Such sudden trips are incredibly useful when you are at a crossroads and trying to choose a new direction. Thanks to the trip to Istanbul, I gained confidence that even in times of crisis, new opportunities can be found to replenish the family budget.
This year I ventured into the river for the second time. But not alone. I took my mother to the shores of the Bosphorus. She heard about the "Bosphorus and Dardanelles" 45 years ago from the Georgian residents of the border village of Sarpi, which was divided in half between the USSR and Turkey. For weddings and funerals in a neighboring country, relatives, who usually shouted across the neutral zone, traveled through the notorious Bosporus and Dardanelles, flying to Moscow and Tbilisi. Now no-man's-land has turned into freeways, and it is easy to fly to Istanbul from Kherson and Odessa.
Perhaps it's time for me to open a mini-agency for organizing tours for older, but curious tourists. I work out the route as usual, taking into account the low speed of movement of my VIP tourist, with a minimum number of stairs and lifts, the presence of elevators in the hotel and the proximity of transport stops. In Istanbul, the program for the tour "five days - four nights" turned out like this:
Dislocation. Sultanahmet area. As close as possible to Hagia Sophia.
Those who have been to Istanbul will probably chuckle when reading the guides' suggestions for a tour of Old Istanbul. A quick tour of Hagia Sophia, Topkapi, the Blue Mosque, the graves of Sultan Ahmet and Kesem Sultan, the Hü rrem Sultan Baths, the Egyptian Obelisk, the Serpent Column, the Hippodrome, the German Fountain, the Basilica Cistern and the Ibrahim Pasha Palace is estimated at a minimum of 50 euros, without cost entrance tickets.
The program is rich, there are no words. In fact, this is one large Sultanahmet Square with a beautiful fountain in the center. For me, having read almost everything that is available in Russian about the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, a guide is absolutely not necessary. Mom has a personal guide. For those who are unlucky with a guide, I advise you to buy the book "Istanbul" at the kiosk opposite Hagia Sophia (they start selling for 50 lira, in the course of the auction they give it for 20-25, near Suleymaniye they offered the same one for $ 1). We are not in a hurry and rest wherever necessary.
Hotel.
Here it was unspeakably lucky. The small and elegant "The And Hotel" with its rooftop restaurant (with the eloquent name "Panorama") turned out to be the perfect reference point for all our forays into the city. To Yeribatan (Basilica Cistern) - ten meters diagonally. Goodbye. Sofia - 50 meters in a straight line. At a quite decent breakfast, you admire a phantasmagoric view of two-thirds of Istanbul's sights, including the Galata Tower and the Skyscrapers of New Istanbul, on the other hand, the minarets of the Blue Mosque are very close, and the bulk of St. Sophia kindly covers you from the sun.
After half an hour of fighting with the hotel managers, we got a room with a balcony on the fifth floor. The view, especially at night, is magnificent. Sound accompaniment - restless seagulls and classic calls to prayer. Street noise is almost inaudible.
For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that, regardless of the bill in the passport, at first we were offered a room on the second floor with a view of industrial air conditioners, then on the first floor with a private mini-patio resting against the wall of some building, then tiny room with a window on Hagia Sophia. In short, I simply exhausted the manager with my untranslatable and emotional "English". Be vigilant.
Excursions.
Running in formation behind a guide with an umbrella does not suit us categorically. They walked by themselves. Acquaintance with Hagia Sophia took about 3 hours. Topkapi - more than 5, with tea and syutlach on the famous view terrace. Evening walk through the Arasta bazaar (there is also the entrance to the Mosaic Museum) and tea drinking in a small cafe with a whirling dervish - more than 2 hours. That's why Istanbul is good, that here you can not rush anywhere, and you have time everywhere.
We managed to admire two bridges across the Bosporus from the board of the sightseeing boat. (Landing to the left of the Galata bridge, Turyol pier, 20 liras for a 2-hour walk, delicious tea and juices are offered on board).
Sultanahmet and its surroundings have been thoroughly studied. Dinner of boiled corn, sesame bagels and roasted chestnuts at the foot of Hagia Sophia brought a touch of playfulness to sedate walks in the center of Istanbul.
We walked around the Egyptian Bazaar, managed to get lost in the tangled streets and went to Eminenu using the offline Maps. me map and the instructions of Spanish tourists who did not speak English. Mom fought off an excursion to the Grand Bazaar with a sacramental phrase: “what I didn’t see there. ”
We sat in a cafe near the New Mosque, admiring the crowd of parishioners leaving after prayer and the police with machine guns at the ready. In general, the amount of tea consumed in cool and windy Istanbul exceeded about ten liters. At home, I don't drink tea at all. The Turkish way of brewing leaves for a long time in a double teapot revealed the taste of this drink that I had not previously understood.
We walked down to Sikerdzhi, haggling furiously with souvenir husk sellers for every lira along the way. At the end of the journey, they were rewarded with a visit to a tiny confectionery where locals buy tons of baklava and lokma at prices 2-3 times cheaper than the Sultanakhmetovs. You can recognize it by the wobbly tables next to the traffic lights, behind which some of the products (something like donuts) are consumed right on the spot.
We rode the T1 tram. Last year's Istanbulcart worked fine a year later, just had to be topped up twice. The one way trip took about an hour. It is interesting to watch how the tourist quarters are replaced by wholesale ones, in each of which dozens of high-rise buildings are filled with accessories, fabrics, knitwear and all sorts of things. At the same time, women's outfits are becoming stricter and the price tags on fruit and vegetable counters are lower. Mom was sure that we drove through the city. I just showed her a map of Istanbul - the tram route does not cover even the twentieth part of the area of the metropolis.
We admired the night illumination of Topkapi and Suleymaniye from the T1 tram platform at the Kabatash stop, on the other side of the Golden Horn.
We sympathized with the fishermen pulling fish from the Eminenu pier.
We tried the fiery sauce that is served with juicy kufta in one of the oldest kuftesh restaurants in Sultanahmet. There are empty restaurants nearby, and there is always a line here, and thanks to the walls with dates from a hundred years ago.
We tried to count the multi-colored lamps in the collection of the owners of the mini-hotel and restaurant "Kybela", which I read about in the Afisha guidebook. He was two meters from our hotel.
Feasted on sweet green tangerines bought from a small supermarket two blocks from the hotel.
We bought albums and books, halva and baklava, coffee and tea. This time I was smarter and bought air tickets with baggage allowance.
The only official tour that I arranged online from home covered Dolmabahce, Suleymaniye and Yeribatan. I was not particularly attracted to the new Sultan's palace; I have been indifferent to crystal since Soviet times. Mom was afraid to go into the Cistern after reading about 52 slippery steps. There was Suleymaniye, to which I could not figure out the route without using a taxi. The thought is material. The owner of the agency successfully forgot about us, despite the fact that we signed off via Viber the day before the tour, and the group left for Dolmabahce, missing two fighters. After my quite intelligent call, the boy flew to our hotel in his car and drove to catch up with the group. He didn't take money from us for the tour, he refused at all. We did not get into the palace, we admired the outer part, then with a group we drove to the wonderful Suleymaniye and the graves of Sultan Suleiman and Roksolana. Then they asked to drop us off closer to the stop of my favorite tram. We were dropped off in the Laleli area, with the money saved from the excursion we bought presents at Kosk, and with a sense of accomplishment and a heavy bag, we went to rest at the hotel.
Entrance tickets to museums have risen noticeably after the fall of the Turkish lira. Now the Istanbul Pass, which cost 85 liras, costs 185 liras. There is an alternative for 135 liras: only St. Sofia, Topkapi without Harem and Archaeological. The only benefit is that you pass without queues. During the day, the queues are huge everywhere. We were lucky with Topkapi due to the proximity of the hotel: we arrived early in the morning, and we were among the first visitors to walk around the Harem. But to the Sacred relics I had to stand in a motley crowd of tourists.
Despite its grandeur, Istanbul turned out to be quite a convenient city for an elderly tourist. The city center is full of shops, benches or cafes where you can sit down and relax. In the tram, mother was always given a seat - with a smile and kindly. The proximity of the hotel allowed for daytime breaks. A walk along the Bosphorus is comfortable and relaxed. Yes, we did not walk through Taksim and Istiklal, but a quick drive through this part of the city was quite enough.
Ataturk Airport is huge, but quite convenient for passengers: the passenger flow is clearly planned, it’s quite difficult to get lost, again, there are a lot of shops. Transfer to the hotel and back to the airport was included in the price of my tour.
Istanbul and the Bosphorus did not disappoint. Mom liked it.
