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Ah Turkey! That whole 'East meets West' thing! We arrived in Istanbul after a sleepless night journey from Plovdiv, and immediately settled into our hostel in Sultanahmet, the backpacker centre. A UNESCO World Heritage Sight, Sultanahmet caters for all things touristy, though it's a little pricy in certain areas, most noticably beer.<br />

Two delights on the way through Asia Minor

Conor Meleady
2006-02-28 09:04:33

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Ah Turkey! That whole 'East meets West' thing! We arrived in Istanbul after a sleepless night journey from Plovdiv, and immediately settled into our hostel in Sultanahmet, the backpacker centre. A UNESCO World Heritage Sight, Sultanahmet caters for all things touristy, though it's a little pricy in certain areas, most noticably beer.

Our first port of call was Istanbul's biggest attraction, the Aya Sofia museum. Originally a church, then transformed into a mosque, I was strangely disappointed by it. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I couldn't get past the general grubbiness of the interior, in need of some serious restoration. In any case, it was a liberation! I no longer felt obliged to visit every sight in Istanbul. With this in mind, our time there is better looked at in terms of the things we didn't see, rather than the things we did.

We didn't enter the Blue Mosque, didn't see the Palace, didn't make it up the Bosphorus, or to Prince's Islands (though not for lack of trying). On our last day, I faced a dilemma. Having been told by Paul, a Texan lawyer on his way from Central Asia, to head for the Military Museum,.

Premiership was starting that day. There was only going to be one winner there, so we didn't go to the military museum either. Instead we watched Man Utd beat Everton 2-0 in the Irish Pub. We didn't go clubbing in Taksim, we didn't see the city walls.

So what did we do? After exiting the Aya Sofia, we wandered, got lost, found ourselves, got lost again, and again......Istanbul is not a great city for following maps. Our attempt to make it to Prince's Islands on a day trip was foiled when we realised we got the wrong ferry. But no matter. We loved Istanbul, so we knew we'd be back again. It's a city of characters, from the commission tout who told us about his 8 girlfriends, all different nationalities - ...