Istanbul (Craig's perspective)

[A guest post from Craig]

I’ve wanted to go to Istanbul for a long time. First, because of the They Might Be Giants song, “Istanbul, not Constantinople” and then, much later, because I read about the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmed Mosque) and the Hagia Sophia. Even later, I read a great fictional book, “The Historian” (a realistic vampire novel that is a slow burn but worth reading) that takes place in more than one section in the Hagia Sophia and Istanbul. This wouldn’t be the first time a fictional novel lured me to far off destinations.

So what started as a sh*t show turned into a pleasant surprise of sorts when we missed our connection to Abu Dhabi in Istanbul. I’ll report, it wasn’t our fault. Our Turkish Airlines flight out of LAX was delayed without explanation. We had a 70-minute connection. By the time we got off the bus that took us from our plane to the terminal, we had ten minutes to make our connection. We didn’t.

After many queues and waiting and shuffling around to and fro we were given vouchers to stay at a nice airport hotel and three meals (as there is only one flight a day from Istanbul to Abu Dhabi). We ate a (very) late dinner and crashed, but the next day realized we had about eight hours to kill before we had to go to the airport and so we decided to see the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia before we had to make our connection.

Less than 30 minutes away, we cabbed to the old part of Istanbul. It was lightly raining and we made our way through narrow street markets, past touristy souvenir shops, countless rug dealers, perfume and incense shops, and other trinket purveyors. We rounded a tight corner, went up a flight of steps and were standing at the Blue Mosque.

We had read it was closed but to prayers for renovation, so we looked at it from outside, missing the “blue” part of the mosque. Still, what an architectural marvel! The mosque was huge.

I had no idea that the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia were, essentially, mirrored by a huge park and grounds, but they are, the Christian structure and the mosque anchoring the two sides of the park. That’s more explanation for their significance than I knew. I had known Istanbul to be a mash-up of Christians and Muslims, which made it unique, but I didn’t know it all sort of became symbolic in that spot.

We went over to Hagia Sophia, were accosted by “guides” (they really only want to direct you to their rug store) and went to tour the ancient and magnificent cathedral that, in the 1800s, had been converted to a mosque and back again. The structure dates to about 500, as I recall. We spent a good amount of time walking around throughout, the gold mosaics being a highlight.

After, we went to do a little shopping in the narrow street markets (almost a souk, but not quite) and it began to pour rain in a deluge. We huddled under the awning of a closed store (it was still late morning on a weekday in March, so many shops weren’t open yet) waiting for it to let up, but it didn’t, really. So we made our way to grab a taxi and headed back to our hotel.

I can’t say we have “done Istanbul” after that, but I do feel like we’ve gotten the highlights done. An unexpected bucket list item: done.