Today at 11 am we were meeting our shuttle to the lunch cruise on the Bosporus Strait.
Entrance to our hotel lobby - Timeks Hotel & Suites in Sultanahmet district - notice the stone steps - I was wishing that they had handrails.
Most houses and shops have these drains outside the house or business running between them and the street. I saw a couple of shopkeepers throwing water into them.
Atam Hotel and Suites building is attached to our building on one side then 2 more attached buildings on the right. So many "hotels" in such a small space! Notice that the stone road seems to be in good shape - other places it is full of loose or missing stones/bricks.
Parking for our block of hotels and the ones around to the right. That yellow and white building on the left is the end of our block of buildings - the white building on the right is hidden by trees.
White building beside the parked cars is another hotel - this gentleman with the pinkish bag came up the street and went into that hotel.
Looking past the white hotel - it has placed cones and a sign to prevent people from parking in front of it. You can see a minaret in the background - one of very numerous mosques all over the city. I don't remember having seen a church spire although the Ottomans decreed that churches and synagogues had to be lower than mosques. We never went past the white building - everywhere we went was in the opposite direction.
Looking down our street - we would walk down as far as this and take a right up the hill towards the Hippodrome.
So if you took the right in the former picture and headed up that street, you would pass this building on your left as you were walking up to the Hippodrome. It is a small grocery store - we bought a few things here last night including 2 liter bottles of water when we were walking home. We probably spent more money on water than on anything else - we were always buying water to stay hydrated especially in hot weather. I was always thirsty - not sure if it was because of my kidney disease or all the walking - probably a combination - I was drinking water all the time.
On the opposite side of the road were a few shops.
This shop was on the corner as we climbed and turned right. I loved all the colors of the pottery - so bright and shiny! If you turn right and head up the street, you then stay left for the Hippodrome.
The Hippodrome is to the left and the Arasta Bazaar to the right - this bazaar has maybe 50 shops - the Grand Bazaar probably has a couple thousand shops.
But we had booked a lunch cruise on the Bosphorus Strait for today - that was one thing we all wanted to do. We had slept in. I tried to have cornflakes for breakfast but there was no milk. I asked the wife (?) if there was any milk - she brought me back a yogurt drink. I can roll with the punches but I just don't like those drinks so I didn't even try to eat cereal with it. I had my usual bread with jam. We sat outside later waiting for our shuttle. It was an overcast day with a breeze. A guy walked up to us and let us know that he was taking us to the shuttle. He started walking down the street and gestured to us to follow him. We were all surprised - we expected a shuttle van would pick us up at the "hotel." We headed down the street - across the intersection - then continued down the street where a couple of other people were waiting. They continued on with us as we all walked down the hill - then walked down some more. All I could think about - and Violeta was the same - was the walk back up these hilly streets and that I better take a whiff of Albuterol before I started back up! We finally stopped at an intersection where we had to wait some more for a bus to finally arrive. The bus had other people on it - we piled in. I get the deal - the streets are twisty and narrow - a big bus couldn't make it thru these streets - so there is a meeting spot at a larger intersection. But the clerk at the hotel or one of his sons could have explained it to us - we all thought it would be a private shuttle like the one that brought us to the hotel. The guy taking us to the bus should have told us! Not a big deal but it would have been nice to know that we had to walk a distance to a bus.
The bus eventually started up and we were off! Our hotel is in the Sultanahmet district of Istanbul - same district as the historical sites. There are plenty of ferries in/near our district - we had seen them on the bus tour yesterday. Today the bus took us along the exact same route as the Hop On, Hop Off bus. We went across the same bridge to the Karakoy district. The bus finally double parked and let us all out. The bus driver just left the bus in the street and led us across that busy street and down an alley way to a dock. There was another man waiting there for us on a rickety dock. We waited, and waited, and finally a ferry arrived to let off what must have been the morning cruisers - there were some passengers who stayed on board. We climbed up to the top deck and grabbed some seats together. There were 2 tour guides - one spoke English, the other one spoke Turkish. The ferry started up - we were seated on the left or port side. As we headed down the Boshporus Strait, we were glad we were on that side because the many sights the guide was pointing out happened to be on our side. The English speaking guide was very good pointing out and explaining the sights. The Turkish guide seemed very animated as well altho we could not understand her.
We sailed along the route we took yesterday and saw the rear of the buildings and plazas that we saw yesterday.
I guess cruise ships are making Istanbul a frequent stop on their itineraries.
You can see that it was overcast - on the ferry it was also very windy and very cold.
Tina and Violeta went downstairs to the dining room to get out of the cold. We were going to have a meal at some point. A crew member had come around asking what hotel we were staying at - apparently for the hotel's kickback.
JB and I stayed upstairs for most of the commentary but eventually I was shivering so we also went downstairs. They began serving lunch - some kind of soup, a salad, then an entree with a fried sausage or such with potatoes and a vegetable. The food was pretty good - everyone seemed to enjoy it.
The Dolmabahce Palace above and below.
The ferry stopped on the Asian side of Istanbul for 30-45 minutes so people could walk to some shops and restaurants. And so we could say that we were in Asia! Since the time was so limited, I got off the ferry but stayed at the dock watching people walking by as well as all the ferries, boats and ships passing on the Bosphorus Strait - there was so much traffic on the Bosphorus that sometimes I couldn't keep track of it all. The waterways were as crowded and busy as the streets and sidewalks. I eventually went back inside to the table where we had been sitting and stayed there in the heat for the short trip back to that rickety dock where we had picked up the ferry.
We were separated into groups depending on what bus we were waiting for - we were on bus #17. One of the "guides" was asking if anyone was interested in getting off at the Grand Bazaar. There was no mention of bus #17 and we didn't see the other people who had been on it with us. JB suggested we take the bus for the Grand Bazaar which we hadn't seen - we agreed and headed for that bus.
The bus headed back to the other side of the city
It is always interesting looking down the alleys.
Crossing Galata Bridge again.
I believe Fatih is the municipality that contains the Sultanahmet neighborhood where we were staying as well as the Grand Bazaar.
Signs for the Tram and the Spice Bazaar/Misir Carsisi.
These pictures cannot come close to showing how jam packed Istanbul is - there are people everywhere!
The bus dropped us off down the street from the Grand Bazaar - as we were walking toward it, people were heading in our direction. As we got closer, we noticed that the shops were closing - it was around 5 pm. We kept heading into the bazaar and then we saw the crowds - there were masses and masses of people moving in every direction. I was looking at the ground so I didn't trip on the uneven streets. It was so crowded that no one could stretch an arm, never mind arms, out to the side. I did grab onto my purse and held it close - people were jostling and bumping into us. I had no idea where we were or where we were going - I just followed JB who had directions on his phone. I tried looking up at the shops - we were in a jewelry area - people were bumping into us as we made our way along the street. We turned down another street/alley - leather goods. I started feeling claustrophobic after a while - I couldn't see any exit and it seemed like we were just drifting along. JB led us through and finally out of the bazaar into a plaza with storefronts and lots of taxis. He said the hotel was 1.5 miles away. We decided to get a taxi - none of them seemed to want to take us - were we too close to make it worth their while? What's up? One of the taxi drivers finally told us that the streets were blocked off because of a protest against the war in Gaza. I suggested that we just start walking toward the hotel. We crossed one intersection where we came on some of the protestors marching as well as some police or military on the sidelines. We kept following JB - it was getting dark - we were walking downhill - I was still watching the roads and sidewalks when we were on a sidewalk. There were still masses of people. We were passing a lot of stores and lots more people! Eventually we came out near the Haj Sophia and the Blue Mosque - JB did a great job with the directions. We walked along the Hippodrome and down the streets to our hotel. We all sat down outside while Violeta had a cigarette.
We spent the rest of the night packing up our bags - we head to the airport tomorrow. We aren't sure what we will find in Fort Myers - Hurricane Helen hit Florida starting September 24 while we were away. We didn't know at first how much damage was inflicted or that anywhere but Florida was affected. Between our locations and the spotty internet, I couldn't pick up any American news - I kept getting messages that MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS were not available in my location. My Prime Video had different offerings - none of my regular shows were available. I was able to get BBC news which provided limited coverage of the hurricane. We picked up CCN Europe on the TV at Tina's - that was mostly coverage of the US Presidential Election - the same with BBC. JB was in touch with fellow post office workers on FB - and Violeta surprisingly gave us an update on hurricane Helen's effect on JB and Tina's condo complex from the family who lives 3 or 4 buildings down - they and Violeta are friends on FB - there was a power outage only - no flooding like in other areas of Florida. Then Hurricane Milton was supposed to be stronger than Helen and was heading straight for Fort Myers when we left for Greece. I had contemplated changing my return flight to Boston instead of Fort Myers, but wasn't able to do it online and couldn't reach Turkish Airlines. We later heard that there were a couple of tornadoes in Fort Myers. I was very surprised at how difficult it was to get news coverage of the hurricanes, but there was plenty of foreign political coverage of the US presidential election - especially of former president Trump. We finally heard that Milton went bust - more hype than anything. So we breathed a sigh of relief.
