Turkey - Istanbul, Cannakele and Troy
Posted by Anura Samara, 27 April 2015
Sprawling, fascinating and beautiful Istanbul, with a few stops in other places in Turkey.
One of the requirements to the tickets to the ANZAC Day 2015 Commemoration was to be part of an organised tour. We have never travelled with an organised tour before and always swore that we would avoid them – but here we were.
Istanbul
The first stop was being picked up the airport by a transport company to take us to our hotel. We had some free time before the briefing session in the hotel so we decided to make our own way to the old city.
Above ground, the city has that exotic mix of the old and new. New buildings and shops competing with old buildings and roads in varying states of decay. But the minute we went underground we found a cheap, modern and frequent metro service. So, our first stop was to head to the old part of the city to at least get a feel for the area and some local food.
After formally joining the tour, we had a day trip around the city. The benefit of this was the explanations from our tour guide of the significance of the sites – the downside was the limited time at each with a need to keep the tour on track. We saw:
- Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet Camii) — from the outside, it looks like the other large mosques but the interior decorations give it it’s “blue” name. Thousands of tiles decorate the interior of the domes, with large circular lights with embedded lamps hanging from the ceiling. The interior design of the mosque is completely different to churches, more open with less decoration.
- Aya Sofya — another large mosque, but converted to a museum. The benefit is that you can explore the upper stories of the mosque and look down into the main praying area.
- Hippodrome — the Hippodrome is the central area and is one the few places where you can get a sense of the Roman influence. It’s broad an open, with a couple of obelisks and a fountain, and is really the heart of the old city.
- Topkapi Palace — a massive palace complex built within two courtyards. There are a variety of buildings befitting an imperial palace, including the treasury, within beautiful gardens and all overlooking the Bosphorous.
We returned to Istanbul at the end of the tour. Apart from the mandatory stops at a leather factory and carpet factory – which we really just an opportunity to sell – we also stopped at the Istanbul Archaeology museum. This is definitely worth a visit as you will see artefacts from throughout Istanbul’s history. There is also a good display showing the development of the city from pre-history villages to the modern day.
On our last day – and under our own steam – we visited the Grand Bazaar. This is a massive labrynth of laneways with a massive variety of stores but all under cover. It reminded me of the souks in Marrakech except that many of the stores are pretty upmarket. Yes, there are the stores that are nothing more than stalls overloaded with products, but then there are many jewellery stores built from glass and timber, with window displays and lights and everything you would expect in a modern shopping mall. As always with these bazaars, there’s the ever-present risk that you might snap up a good deal at one store only to find an even better deal just around the corner!
Cannakele
Unfortunately, there’s not much to report on Cannakele. Our hotel was outside the city, and all we saw of it was just from the windows of bus as we passed through for the ferry. As it’s on the Asian side, it would have been nice to have had time to explore on foot to see if there was anything distinctive about the Asian part of Turkey.
Troy
Our tour included a half-day at Troy. At least at Troy, we were allowed to wonder around by ourself to just meet up at the entrance at the allotted time.
Troy is really just the foundations of various civilisations built on top of each other – there’s not much in the way of standing buildings, but there are the scattered remains of buildings around such as columns, altars etc. But you do get a sense of how each era built on top of the preceding ones until they had created absolutely massive fortifications. Apparently the sea has receded till its barely visible in the distance – the famous scene from the movie where they watched the Greeks arriving by ship isn’t the same!
Categories: Turkey
Comments [0]
Feel free to share your thoughts on this entry through a comment. Because I know who you are (yes, I'm talking about you), all comments will be moderated before appearing here.
Come on, be the first to comment on this entry!
Leave a comment