Our time in Turkey was nearing the end, and in late May we had our house packed up. At previous posts, we packed up about a week before leaving, but this time we decided to pack up a month early and it was a great decision and much less stressful. Once you pack, it’s typically 4-6 months before you see your stuff again, so we figured what’s a few more weeks. Leading up to the pack out, you have to pack your suitcases, which seemed odd to do so far out, but it was also good to know early on how much stuff we planned to bring. We were allotted 15 suitcases plus carry ons, and only ended up taking 9, then we last minute decided to ship 2 boxes of stuff we accumulated with kids ending school, clothes and other misc stuff we didn’t need for a while so we didn’t want to lug around in suitcases all summer. We gave away so much stuff, it felt good to purge.
Ready for the movers.
A little over a day to pack and few hours the next day to load.
Going, going, gone….see you sometime in October/November!
Just like when we moved in, we enjoyed living in an empty house for the last month.
On 19 May, Turkey celebrate the Commemoration of Ataturk and Youth and Sports day. It’s a public holiday where schools and businesses are closed, and Turkish athletes carry the Turkish flag from the Black Sea port of Samsun to Ankara, to commemorate Turkey’s War of Independence between 1919 -1923. It’s a fun day with lots of sporting activities. I love how much the Turks honor and celebrate children. In our neighborhood, a local gyms hosted several sports competitions throughout the day and the kids enjoyed playing in a soccer match. It was a fun day for all!
The last part of the trip, Mark, Betty, and I went to Istanbul for a couple of days. The photos uploaded backwards, so here is what we did in opposite order. We stayed in a very local hotel in a busy part of town close to the Grand Bazaar, and it was in the middle of the shoe district. Everywhere you turned were wholesale shoe stores and lots of people carrying around cargo on their backs filled with shoes to go to other parts of the country. Our hotel was at the yellow sign on the right.
The roads were full of pedestrians, vehicles, people walking with carts, motorcycles, bicycles, and more, starting from the early hours of the morning.
There were so many fruit stands, very colorful and fresh.
Our second day, we got dropped off in the morning by taxi at Taksim Square, walked through Gezi Park, down Istiklal avenue, took a Bosporus River tour, explored the Egyptian Spice Market, and surrounding outdoor markets. It was a long and fun day with lots of walking and exploring new sites. These photos are of the outdoor markets when you exit the Egyptian spice bazaar, heading back to our hotel. It was busy!
Inside the Egyptian Bazaar, also known as the spice market - it’s the next largest bazaar in Istanbul after the Grand Bazaar, and such an interesting place to explore. Love the large images of Ataturk and Turkish flags hanging everywhere.
So many local sweets and spices.
My favorite, rolled Turkish delight. They come in so many flavors and are so delicious!
Right before entering the bazaar, we wandered into a CHP (Turkish political party) rally!
Browsing some shops and admiring the beautiful pottery.
No trip to Turkey is complete without seeing lots of street cats and dogs. The stray animals are very well cared for here.
View of the Aya Sofia on the way back to the hotel.
When Nathan and I came to Istanbul the previous month, we found this Turkish towel and blanket store down by the Bosporus River, and stopped by again to get some bath towels.
View of the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia from the Bosphorus River. The cruise left from the Golden Horn and went up the west side of the river and down the east side. Istanbul is a huge city, and seeing it from the river is a great way to see lots of sites in a short amount of time.
Maiden’s Tower, sitting at the southern inlet to the Bosphorus. It was closed for renovation for years and had just re-opened. The tower was used during the Byzantine for protection and was destroyed and rebuilt many times over the years. The tower got its name by the legend that an oracle prophesied that the Emperor’s daughter would die on her 18th birthday. He locked up her there for years and on her 18th birthday brought her a basket of fruit, which unbeknownst to him had a snake in it, which bit and killed her…and so it’s called Maiden’s Tower.
There are several main bridges in Istanbul and this is the first and oldest suspension bridge built in 1970, spanning European and Asian sides, hence its name the first bridge. It was re-named the 15 Temuz Şehitler (15 July Martyr’s bridge) to honor the victims who resisted the coup in 2016.
There are only 3 mosques in Turkey with 6 minarets. The Blue Mosque, Grand Camilica (see in the distance) both in Istanbul, and the Sabanci Merkezi mosque in Adana.
Getting on the ferry…it’s called the barn door pier. We were enjoying exploring and meandering down Istiklal Ave, and I realized we had to book it across the river to make it to the ferry meeting point in time. Poor Betty with her hurt knee was a trooper this day especially!
Walking over the Bosphorus river and watching all the boats. It’s a very busy body of water.
Istiklal Ave near Galata Tower.
The Galata tower is an old Genoese tower that was the highest structure in the area and built during the Byzantine Empire by Emperor Justinian as a watch tower. The Genoese colony was abolished after the Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453, it was later used as a prison. In 1638, Hezarfen Çelebi, made the first intercontinental flight by jumping off the tower and landing on the Asian side. It was destroyed and rebuilt a couple times and in 2020 opened as a museum. The line was long and we didn’t have time, so we just admired it from afar.
This is a ceramic speaker…Nathan and I really wanted to find one before leaving Turkey and they were not as easy to find as we thought. On Istiklal Ave I found one and we will look forward to using it when our shipment from Turkey arrives.
Sights of Istiklal Ave. It’s a 1.4km pedestrian street and one of the most famous avenues in Turkey. Full of local shops, music stores, restaurants, and juice stands, it’s an easy place to spend hours exploring.
Famous flower passage, which is now restaurants, connecting Istiklal to another avenue.
Mark and Betty picking out some Turkish delight.
We ate a delicious Turkish breakfast at a restaurant overlooking Taksim square.
View of Taksim Square is considered the heartbeat of the city, and used to be the branching point for the city’s water distribution system (taksim means distribution in Turkish). On one side of the square is Gezi Park, place of the famous 2013 protests that led to countrywide civil unrest, and the other is the start to Istiklal Avenue
Gezi Park. It’s so beautiful and peaceful and hard to think about what it must have been like 10 years ago during the protesting and civil unrest.
We arrived in Istanbul mid-day, went to our hotel, then explored the Grand Bazaar, Blue Mosque, and Aya Sofia. This was late at night (probably around 10pm) after a full afternoon of exploring the city. The city is busy day and night and streets are always full of people.
Night views of the Aya Sofia. This incredible structure was built during the Byzantine empire in 537 AD by Justinian the first. It was an Orthodox Church until the conquest of Istanbul in 1453 where it remained a mosque until 1935, then a museum, and then re-opened as a mosque in 2020 All the times we visited Istanbul in the past, the line to get into the Aya Sofia was hours long and we never waited, and Nathan and I learned the month before if you come at night, you can walk right in…and so we did.
Before visiting the Aya Sofia, we had dinner at a restaurant overlooking the Blue Mosque and the Bosphorus River. It was beautiful scenery and delicious food. We even got to hear the call to prayer echo loud between the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia.
Before dinner, we toured the Blue Mosque. Much of the interior had been under renovations for years and had scaffolding covering a lot of the interior and significantly limiting the area you could walk around…but it opened up within the past few days of our visit and was beautiful to tour. The Ottoman mosque was built between 1609 and 1617 during the rule of Ahmed I, and is still a functional mosque today. It’s a giant structure with 4 semi-domes and 6 minarets, and is beautifully decorated with thousands of Iznik tiles that are primarily blue, hence it’s name.
Lots of people were out and about on this nice day.
Roasted and salted corn and chestnuts for sale.
Before going to the Blue Mosque, we walked through the Grand Bazaar, which is one of the biggest and oldest covered markets in the world, with 61 streets and over 4,000 shops! The construction of the bazaar started in 1455 and over the course of the centuries kept getting added to and was in its final form by 1730. The bazaar attracts more than a million visitors a year…but on any given day it feels like there are a million people there with you. It’s such an interesting place to wander (and get easily lost in), and we enjoyed just doing that for a while.
Don’t be deceived by the seemingly empty scene. It was busy, somehow down this corner there were not many people.
It was so great having Mark and Betty visit us in Turkey and getting to explore different parts of the country with them.
