6th of April, 2022.
My new CS host does not leave that far from the city centre. It is a walking distance, around 1 hour. So I decide to not waste time and go all the way to his house first for then later coming back, no. I plan to drop my backpack off at the tourist info, go around the Asian part of the city (right side of Galata bridge), and in the end of the afternoon I finally go to his house.
When I cannot find the tourist info centre (even though it was right at my face), I ask for help in a bags & purses shop. There are three men inside and they all are incredibly friendly. One of them, walk with me until the building, only a hundred metres away. Before he leaves, he says that if I need anything else, I can ask him and he will help me.
Not much luck at the tourist info though. I mean, when it comes to drop off The Hulk. Because regarding information about Istanbul, the young man with whom I talk, had his text thoroughly memorized. Like a robot. It surprised me a lot that they couldn’t keep my backpack. So it is not all Turkish people who are whiling to help?
I go back to the bags & purses shop, and ask my new friend if I can leave my huge backpack in there for some hours. He promptly says yes!
The free map sucks! But you know, it might be enough to go around. Only enough. When I get to where Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque are located, the Sultanahmet District, I see the whole place surrounded by police officers and barricaded. I try to ask one of the officers what is the reason for that, but she is so afraid of speaking English, that I have to try another source. So I ask in this city bus tour, to a guide, and she explains to me that, after a terrorist bomb attack, back a few years ago, now this area is always like that. What a shame!
The Blue Mosque is under restoration so I cannot see much. But the little I see also does not impresses me much. And the fact you have to take your shoes off is really annoying.
The whole area is full of people / tourists. It is a warm sunny day. I pass by some old Turkish bath and walk towards Hagia Sophia. I understand that there is a lot of History surrounding this mosque, and the fact that it used to be a church (as many mosques in Turkey), and that it has its charm, including the inside frescos and all, but was I impressed by it? Nope. Perhaps because of that, once and for all, I am done with big cities and capitals, I just cannot enjoy it that much anymore.
I take a walk down to the sea. I want to the see the Byzantine Walls. The Walls which defended Constantinople for so long. When you are in school, you hear and study so much about Constantinople, the capital of what once was the Roman Empire, and later the Ottoman Empire. A city which “does not exists” anymore, that it became almost like a myth. But once I was there, I didn’t feel like I was in a movie or something. Perhaps it has to do with what the city became nowadays, what the new humans have done with it. And I am surprise that I am basically the only one down here. Later on I am told that this is not a very safe area. Ops!
My last stop is the Grand Bazaar. That was a big surprise! I have been to many bazaars before, in different countries, and I have never seen one so clean and organized as the one in Istanbul. Actually, I think you can barely call “a bazaar”, it is more like a popular shopping mall to me. I feel sorry though that the ceiling, which it has being restored, is losing a lot of its original essence.
By completely luck, I ended up at the door which leads to the bags & purses shop of my friend. I haven’t even notice before that this was one of the entrances to the Grand Bazaar. Anyway, I grab The Hulk and start what would be a long and tired journey to my Couchsurfing host.
