I had the They Might Be Giants song stuck in my head the whole time we were in Istanbul. We spent six days there in the end, and I think that was enough. The city has such a rich history it is almost overwhelming at times, trying to explore everything and see it all. I think we did a pretty good job of it, as we saw all the major sights plus did some serious exploration on foot.

Exciting Arrival

Our introduction to the fast-paced environ that is Istanbul started with the drive from the airport. First some background. We landed at a new airport that is on the Asian side of the Bosphorous, but the place where we were staying was on the European side. This new airport is a pretty good ways out of town (why our flight was so cheap), so we just bit the bullet and arranged for a driver to pick us up and drive us straight to our hostel. And drive he did. On the highway he was a madman, weaving in and out of traffic, gunning it and then hitting the brakes, and all while juggling two mobile phones that rang constantly. When we finally got into the city, he took what I imagine were some shortcuts down hilly, run-down streets packed with children playing, old people hanging out, and parked cars. I was never really afraid for my own safety, I was mainly afraid he was going to plow into a car, the side of a building, or take out some poor child who wasn’t paying attention.

At this point I thought it was amazing that the streets weren’t littered with bodies. But we did learn our very valuable first lesson about Istanbul: cars (or buses, trucks, etc.) have the ultimate right of way. This was important because we had just been in Amsterdam where it goes something like trams, bikes, people, then cars.

It turns out that most people in Istanbul drive like our friend the airport pick-up guy. There are a few streets that only have enough room for two trams to go down, yet somehow people drive on the streets when the trams aren’t coming. Crazy, right? People are constantly driving on the wrong side of the street, as long as there aren’t any cars coming, or in places cars are definitely not supposed to go, driving in two lanes at the same time, etc. We saw an accident involving two taxis while having breakfast one morning in front of our guesthouse.

A million kinds of kebabs

Turkish food is awesome. Since we arrived, we’ve been eating a lot of it. Apparently Turkish people eat four times as much bread as anyone else in the world. When I read this in the Lonely Planet I was surprised. Now, I’m almost sick of bread. Almost.

If you’ve ever traveled in Europe or in a few different parts of the world, you’ve seen the doner kebab upright on the spit, slowly spinning. I was introduced to them while studying in England, and my brother ate them while he lived in Switzerland. Even in Kyoto we had a favorite kebab shop on Kiamachi that was open all night. The doner kebab is but one of many kinds of kebabs (spelled kebap here) they eat here in Turkey. We’ve had chicken and lamb kebabs in pita (like doner), shish kebabs, spicy ground meat kebabs, lamb slices with tomato sauce on bread, and countless others I’m forgetting. And the best part is, they’re cheap.

Probably my only complaint about Turkish food so far has been the breakfast. It’s always included in the price of the room, and it’s the same absolutely everywhere (so far). It consists of sliced cucumber, tomato, a basket of bread (served at every meal, every time), various spreads like butter, honey, and jam, some olives, cheese, and a hard-boiled egg. So we’ve been in Turkey for about two weeks and eaten that every day. I hear when you get out to the eastern parts it switches to bread with butter and warm milk. As plain as that sounds, I’ll be ready for it.

Rich and amazing history

The amount of history in Istanbul is staggering. It’s almost too much to take in, especially because the modern city is so different from even the Ottoman capital of a hundred years ago. The city of Constantinople was founded almost 2,000 years ago. There are old buildings and ruins from the Byzantine era of the city, like the Hagia Sophia, and there are old Ottoman mosques and palaces as well.

We hit all of the major sights, which were amazing. The pictures in the gallery do a great job of showing the types of things we saw in Istanbul. I’m also working on Episode 1 of BTBtv, which will be about Istanbul.

It’s an amazing city that is split in two, half in Europe and half in Asia. The Bosphorous divides it, and the Galata Bridge connects them together, spanning two continents. When we left Istanbul we drove over the bridge, thus beginning the Asian segment of our trip! We took a Bosphorous cruise the last full day we had in Istanbul and it was beautiful. There are old Ottoman mansions and mosques all along the coast, and the weather was beautiful, making it a really neat excursion.