Turkey

I have decided to write my blogs in English instead of Dutch. Nowadays i think more in English and besides that i can practice my English grammar even more. The grammar wont be perfect but will get better by time. 

Late in the evening i leave with the bus from Batumi (Georgia) and after 18 hours i finally arrived in Ankara. Im not the biggest fan of bus rides in the night, namely i cant sleep good when I’m sitting. Thanks to this I prefer sleeper trains/ busses or a day bus even more. At the border of Turkey i experience the quickest entrance of a country (with visa) so far. I give my passport, they scan my passport, i got my stamp and without asking for a visa i continue my way. Not even one second of doubt by the police officer to ask for more. 

A lot of people think Istanbul is the capitol of Turkey. But the most people know this is Ankara. I arrive here because i need to pass via this city to go to Cappadocia. My interest for Ankara is pretty low. I heard from Turkish people and other travelers that there is not a lot to do. I decided to go for a walk in the evening and after a few hours i felt like i was done in this city. I’m not biased but there is just nothing interesting for me. 

After the last months spending in Iran, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan i only wanted to see a few things in Turkey. Im absolutely not interest in coastal places with all the resorts. My main interest at this moment is in Cappadocia and Istanbul. 

The day after i take the bus to Göreme, this is the main city to visit this area. Immediately i got some flashbacks from Kandovan in Iran, the houses in the rocks are really similar. This area is also famous about the hot air balloons that start flying with sunrise. The next mornings i decided to watch this beautiful free show at sunrise. The only minus is getting up that early, but the views are worth the lack of sleep. I decided not to go in a hot air balloon due the cost around 200 euro. Besides the cost i already experienced this in Bagan in Myanmar (Burma). If you have never done this before I recommend Cappadocia for sure to try this. Getting up to see the sunrise and beautiful scenery with the balloons is a must do when your here. This experience is one of the few that will be better than expected. 

There are a few different tours what you can book on the streets or at your hostel. I stayed at the Terra Vista view hostel and this was a nice hostel for solo travelers. I decided to join the green tour for 29 euro per person. Normally this tour is 33 euro but they said you got 4 euro hostel discount. If this really is a hostel discount or everywhere i leave in the middle. My main reason to join this green tour was to visit the underground city Derinkuyu. This is the biggest underground city in Turkey. 

In the bus i met a group of friends from Romania. They kind of adopted me from the first second. Thanks to them i enjoyed my day even more with their kind, interested and funny conversations. 

Our first stop is a panoramic view over the city and the red and rose valley. The view over the city and pointed rocks is very amazing. The next stop is at a lake in the shape of the apple logo. Not really special but nice to see. We move on to the Selime monastery what is for me more interesting. This ancient monastery is made and carved into some huge rocks with different layers. There are many hallways and rooms where you can walk and visit.  

After this we got dropped of by a valley. We walk through the valley for 40 minutes to reach the place where we get lunch (included). They have many options and even some for vegetarians. After my vegetarian cous cous its finally time to move on to the Derinkuyu village. 

This biggest underground city of Turkey has 4 kilometer paths and different rooms and churches to visit. With a tour guide we explored a huge part of the this city. This village is build by christians to hide in times of threat and war. The small corridors and rooms go to a depth of 65 meter under the ground. In times of emergency 2500 people could find their shelter here. These corridors are very similar to the corridors in Vietnam. We visited some different rooms and churches and got a lot of explanation from our guide. The air tubes to get fresh air in the city were also used as a communication system. Despite or the weather on the surface is there in the underground city always a cool, constant and nice temperature. 

After seeing the beautiful sunrise a walk through the red and rose valley was the goal of this day. You can easily spend here a full day like i did. The whole walk your surrounded by beautiful and different rock formations. Some rocks have abandoned rock churches and houses that you can easily enter. Its a beautiful walk, very quiet and even more amazing because there are almost no tourist walking around here. This is really a magical please and could be used as a filmset. Definitely download the application maps.me and download the area where your going to. This offline application knows all the walking routes even better and more detailed than google. Also on the way back we decided to hitchhike to go back to Göreme. Only 3 minutes and we go picked up, so even Turkey is an easy place for doing this. 

Istanbul also known as Constantinople, the only situated city in the world in two different continents. I’ve only heard good stories about this city and with my interest of history i couldn’t wait to visit this place. An advantage here is that you buy one (Istanbul) card for all the different types of public transport. 

Istanbul has a huge religious history between Christians and Muslims. Many times in the past there were religious battles between them. The result of this is that the city changed a lot between religions. The last battle was won by the Muslims who changed all the churches into Mosques. Even nowadays you can still see paintings of Jesus and other Christian stories in these mosques. 

My first morning i spend a few hours at the waterside by Topkapi palace. Just relax, see the people and boats passing by and enjoy the different parts of the city from here. After this a visit to the number one main attraction of Istanbul, Hagia Sophia. Build in 537 AD and in that time the biggest building in the world. This building was particular famous about the huge dome. This was an old orthodox Greek cathedral and after the Ottoman empire conquered the city they turned in 1453 the cathedral into a mosque. I was kind of surprised to pay a lot of money to visit this mosque, this because they turned the mosque in 1935 into a museum. The last months i didn’t pay any money to visit a mosque or church in the middle east.

This beautiful and huge building is very unique due the combination of Islamic and Christian paintings and signs on the inside. A lot of the original christian paintings disappeared due to Islamic painting and plastering. The paintings, Mihrab (direction Mecca) and minarets were added and the mosque was a fact.  Unfortunately they were renovating the paintings on the roof and there was a huge scaffold inside.  

After the visit of Hagia Sofia i visited tomb of Sultan Ahmed followed by a visit of the Sultan Ahmed mosque, also known as the blue mosque. This mosque was build in 1617 by Ahmed with treasure money to show the reassert of the Ottoman power. This mosque is unique because it has six minarets instead of four. When they gave permission to build the mosque there was a miscommunication with the architect. They told him to build the minarets from gold, this word is very similar to the word six in Turkish. The architect understood as you already can guess the word six instead of gold. When the mosque was almost finished there was a lot of dissatisfaction in Mecca. Till that time they were the only place with six minarets as the most holiest place of the Islam. Due to this mistake Mecca was forced to build a seventh minaret. 

The last part of the day i decided to spend in the grand bazaar. This old building is full of shops where you can buy almost everything that you can imagine. This bazaar is different in a lot of ways from the bazaars I’ve already been. This bazaar is more like a shopping mall with expensive stuff. The building is authentic but you miss the chaos, sounds, colorful and cheap shops from the real bazaars. Normally you find the cheapest possible things in a bazaar but thats here not the case. This bazaar is really touristic and way more expensive than just outside this place. So if your interested in buying something you can better do that somewhere else. For example i was looking for an iphone cable because mine was again broken. In the bazaar they all asked 15 lira, i paid literally ten meters outside the bazaar 10 lira for the same cable. 

To be fair I’m absolutely not that impressed by all these buildings. After seeing so many way more beautiful mosques in Iran or other places this is just another mosque. When you’ve seen so many mosques, churches, temples, caves and more things they become normal after a while. Don’t get me wrong, they are still beautiful but not for me at the moment. But imagine going ten times into a church, number eleven will be kind of the same. 

Don’t get me wrong. All is very beautiful in this city for what I’ve seen so far. But i just came from the middle east and when i compare this it’s nothing really special in Istanbul. If i would come here on a holiday from the Netherlands this would definitely impress me way more. 

The morning after I decided to visit basilica cistern. I recommend you to be here around 8:45 in the morning just before the place opens. Its way more quiet and you have the place more for yourself. If you come 30 minutes later the queue starts getting bigger and the organized tourist groups will come in as well. This huge basement was used as a water storage for the palace. 

After the Basilica and a breakfast we go with a few people to the other side of the river. When you walk over the bridge you see a lot of people fishing from the bridge, a nice view and good for some pictures. This part of the city goes a lot more up and down. To reach the Galata tower we only had to walk a bit uphill. The meaning of Galata tower is the tower of Christ. This 66.9 meter high tower was for years the tallest building in Istanbul. The views over the city should be amazing, but when i saw the queue of tourist my decisions was very easy. The Ottomans used this tower later to spot fires in the city. 

We made our way to Taksim square via the areas Beyoglu and Pürtelas and Hasan Efendi. Nice areas to walk with a lot of small shops on both sides of the road. Not far from Galata tower you can also walk via the main shopping street to Taksim square. In my opinion not special, this street looks very similar to western European shopping streets. Taksim square has not more to offer than a nice statue, a park and a new mosque that they are building. The highlight here was a man cycling on a really tiny bicycle. Not higher than 15cm and for 10 lira you could try to cycle. When he was cycling all looked very smooth, funny and easy going. But all the tourist who tried this failed and couldn’t even go for 10 centimeter. 

Thanks to FIFA 2014 or 2015 i have in Turkey a preference for the football club Besiktas. I always used to play with them and couldn’t visit this city without going to the stadium.  After getting my ticket and joining the tour i realized that all the explanation would be in Turkish. After i asked them if there is an English guide they told me to get the audio guide. Off course i didn’t want to pay more money for this. So i decided to follow the group with Turkish explanation and just see all the things i wanted. A funny fact is that in the dressing room of the opponent 15 shirts were hanging and three of them from my club Ajax. Some old shirts from Jari Litmanen, Clarence Seedorf and Frank Rijkaard. For me this visit was worth the money and time. But this is nothing more special than any other stadium, so if you don’t have the time i recommend to skip this and see other places. 

In the evening we decided to go with 12 people from the hostel to Hafiz Mustafa. This place is famous for all the different baklava’s and other desserts. Definitely worth a visit to try the Turkish dessert cuisine. In the hostel I got surprised hearing Omar Souleyman after a long time on the speakers.  

The next day we took the ferry to the Asian part of the city. This to visited the areas Bahariya, Moda and Osmañaga. These areas are more artistic and particular for me to visit the murals in this area. This are some nice areas to walk and spend some hours. There are not a lot tourists around and for my feeling the prices in the shops are better as well. After this we took the ferry back to Besiktas and walked via Taksim square and Galata tower back to the hostel. 

The next and my last day in Istanbul i relaxed a lot and only went out for food and buying a bus ticket. My plan was to go by a sleeper night train to Bucharest to make from there my way more to the West. Unfortunately for me these trains start running from next week (summer season). I had no other choice than going first by bus to sofia and than to Bucharest by train or bus. 

Istanbul is a very nice and lively city with many things to do. I really enjoyed my stay here and i would recommend trying to join a free walking tour to meet new people and get more background information. Even if your here try to go to a traditional Turkish bathhouse if you’ve never done this before.