Because I am on a fıxed, ıf somewhat hypothetıcal, budget and I want to have money left over for other thıngs, I tend to stay in the cheapest accommodation I can find. In Istanbul thıs ıs the Metropolis hostel. For $20/night you get a good bed in a shared room with AC, hot showers, free WiFi, and a fantastic all you can eat breakfast buffet in their roof top terrace overlooking the Bosphorus Strait (hard boiled eggs, lots of fresh fruit, youghut and muesli, bread, french toast, greek salad, and coffee or tea). Also, it is somewhere in the maze of cobble stone alleys right in the old city with thousands, literally, of restaurants, shops, and tourist attractions wıthin easy walking distance.
After checking out a few markets I go into super tourist mode, buy a 5 day museum pass, and hop from museum to mosque to monument and back. When I feel like a break I sit by the nearest fountain, people watch, and read my lonely planet guide or walk along the water front boardwalk and buy a hot bagel, fresh BBQ fish sandwich, bag of roasted chestnuts, or slice of watermelon to snack on. Everything is cheap; a 1.5 l bottle of cold water 50 cents, a chicken donair that would satisfy even the hungriest of my kids $2. Unfortunately I don't have a language in common with the two girls I am sharing my room with and there isn't another obvious companion here so when I am out and about I often ask English speaking couples sitting in outdoor cafes and having a cold drink if I can join them for a break.
I am not really a museum person, I feel you've seen one church/statue/ruin/etc you've seen them all, but having a museum pass gives me a set of objectives to meet.
The enormous and lavish Aya Sophya, commissioned as a church in 537 by the great Byzantine emperor Justinian, converted into a mosque in 1453 by Mehmet the conqueror, and then to a museum in 1935 was one of my favorites. It still contains the original Christian mosaics (why take something so beautiful down?) and runes carved at one point by visiting Vikings as well as the more current Islamic decorations.
Istanbul is a modern city of 18 million, half in Europe and half in Asia. There is no way one could ever see it all so I content myself with seeing the bits I can walk to this time, leaving, I am sure, many treasures for future visits.
One day I get repeatedly delightfully lost. I hike an hour across the city in a straight line to the old city walls and then turn left to go towards Chora Church and Museum. I'm happy because I can see it ahead high on a hill. When I get there I don one of the tourist cover-up robes hanging outside, take off my shoes and head inside to wander the huge courtyard and mosque in blissful peace. I'm a bit confused because, despite the tour busses parked outside, there was no entrance gate, no one collecting tickets, and the place is almost completely deserted. Eventually I realize that where I am 'supposed' to be is across the street and I am a bit chagrined by the audacity that being a tourist has given me, I can't imagine just walking into and visiting some random huge mosque in Ottawa, wanderıng the gleamıng marble coated outer court yards, lyıng ın the mıddle of the prayer area and takıng photos of the ceılıng! From there, I weave my way as if drunkenly across the city to Fethiye Museum. My tourist map doesn't name many of the streets, some things that look like streets on the map turn out to be endless stairways up, and more than once I am sure I know where I am only to find that I am once again at a dead end. If I'd wanted to know exactly where I was at each moment I could have gone on a tour. This way I have impromptu slapstick 'conversations' in which absolutely no information is conveyed in either direction but huge smiles are 'till I tap my chest, the symbol for thank you, receive in return a thumbs up, and I continue on as lost as ever. I do eventually find each of my objectives, and they are always magnificent but it is the journey I have enjoyed this day: walking on the top of the massive 2000 year old city wall, being out-stubborned by a 4 year old girl trying to sell me a second bottle of water when I stopped for a break in the lee of a church, having a museum guard desperate to practise his English talk to me for over an hour on a shady bench in a rose garden outside, ending up on a bustling market street on which I am the only woman not dressed in full length black robes with only their eyes showing....
I could stay a year and not finish seeing the tourist attractions let alone the rest of the city. Instead I think I'll just have one more ripe pomegranate and come back when it's cooler.
PS Which of my 50 photos to include? The ones that go with the story? The random ones I like the best? It's truly a delima, though a first world problem my kids would say!
PPS Second post completed using only my phone - though I did try, in vain, to cheat and use the hostel computer to help. I might well decide that without a laptop blogging is more of a chore than a joy... we will see!
