Istanbul, Turkey

We woke up in Istanbul looking across the Bosphorus Strait to the Asia side on a beautiful, clear day. An exceptionally busy harbour with multiple ferries crossing the bay and expensive looking cruisers. We set off in search of a taxi stand but the Traffic Police were cracking down on all the taxi drivers. They must have a bit of power, the tax drivers were not going anywhere until whatever the issue was got resolved.

We were approached by Ahmet with quite limited English. He promised a “big car” and would drive us where we wanted for the day for €80. The boys looked after the haggling and trying to work out the Turkish Lira. 2400TL is roughly €80 – hardly high finance, but it wasn’t clear we had a driver for the whole day. Turkey’s current inflation rate is 59%, last year it was 80%! Just counting the notes out is a mammoth effort.

While waiting I popped into a mosque which was beautiful. Initially I walked into the signposted womens area which was just a large side room with a few childrens toys. Back out in the entrance the security guy invited me to visit the main mosque. He signalled for me to cover up my hair and shoes off. Beautiful plush carpet and I was the only one in there. Very peaceful and serene place, not overly adorned but beautiful in its simplicity.

The big car was an 8 seater Mercedes, perfect. The traffic was busy, lanes voluntary and it took us about 40 mins to drive the 7km to the tourist area. Ahmet volunteered to show us around which was fantastic. He fasttracked us through the ticket purchase at the Topaki Palace at a locals window? Pushed us through the prayer entrances at Sophia Hagia and Blue Mosques and waved away the overpriced vendors. He even held all our shoes so we could take photo’s.

Topaki Palace is huge with large, beautiful gardens. Interesting that the layout looked kind of familiar to the London Tower and Hampton Court. As an aside, the audience bed is massive. It would be double the size of King Henry V111. The clothing display was interesting with a variety of styles. A number of the winter items were thick fabric and furlined. I imagine they would have been quite weighty to wear. The

women’s waistlines were tiny. We finally found the harem which we were all keen to see but there was a queue and an additional fee. And we needed to keep moving.

Ahmet took us to the Haghia Sophia next. The queue was enormous weaving across the large public space. It looked like a 2 hour queue but Ahmet assured us it would only be about 20 minutes which proved to be correct. They let large groups in at a time, and then cleared the mosque out to let the next lot in. Very crowded but again quite stunning.

By 3pm we needed food. Explaining gluten free was challenging, not a Turkish concept I think! Ahmet found us a great little café and proceeded to make the order. This involved heated discussions with up to five staff at one point. One threw his hands in the air and stalked off, the next one shrugged and laughed. Very entertaining and not a clue what the issue was but the kebabs were great.

Off to the Blue Mosque which was not as crowded and we were straight in. We didn’t have time to visit the underground cistern unfortunately, and I was past knackered. We had done over 10km and I am not fully recovered from covid yet. So we set off for the car, except we weren’t. We ended up at the Grand Bazaar. It was really busy, really hot and really intense. There are so many alleyways that if one of us strayed, I’m not sure we could find each other. (And we have no internet/phone in Turkey – none of our phone plans include Turkey and the roaming charges are horrendous).

On the way back to the car, Ahmet stopped for a toilet break and we sat on some steps to wait. We had fun haggling with a guy trying to sell us silk scarfs. He wanted €30 each, we laughed and he came down to €25. Ahmet was taking ages, so kept stringing him along. It has to be said, we didn’t need a scarf! Eventually Ahmet came back and had words. €10 and despite not needing a scarf, Judy and I bought one.

Finally, we get back to the car and sink into the leather seats. We had such great day and Ahmet was fantastic. We felt he had given us such a special experience of Istanbul and felt the need to pay him extra. However, because we had bought the scarfs we were short of cash – not sure why the boys didn’t tell us at the time. More high finance in the back of the van, counting all these damn Lira and converting/adding to the Euro we had. We were back at our pick up spot at the port so Ahmet, Pete and Judy set off for the ATM. Oops the traffic police were back, wanting us to move on. Malcolm promised two mins which fortunately was true. Ahmet saw them and ran to sort it out, collect the cash and give us all a hug goodbye.

Back on the ship, we had a belly dancer show, a bit ordinary. And dessert included Turkish sweets which we had seen in town but not tried. Great city we have to return to.