Istanbul

Istanbul is big and busy. Choked with traffic. Friendly once ice is broken, but with so many people in one place, people mind their own business more. 

My guess is 300,000,000 cigarettes are smoked each day (18m people, 75% smokers, pack a day ballpark). No bike lanes. It's noisy with rushed traffic. We like coming back to our hotel for solace after pounding the pavement. Cities like this would benefit so much from millions of cars with enough battery range to be taxis and take millions of decibels collectively out of the city, and more bikes.  Bike share, electrified bikes, car2go and or electrics would take the deafening roar down - it's loud as streets have either stone walls or buildings on each side.  Even diesel electric hybrids as so much idle traffic time is just sitting. 

I've never been around such a shipping centric trade area. Apparently 120 vessels a day outside of all the little boats go through the Bosohorous. It's like watching a ticker tape and seeing hundreds of millions of seaborne capital and goods go by. 

The history is fascinating and completely beyond grasping in a short trip. The points I get are it's been a key area due to geography and warring religions for thousands of years. Reading about the successful Ottoman Sultans though usually stresses as well that beyond conquering, they derived power from having a strong base. The farmers and peasants were left to their thing, the trade merchants were too, etc. and live as they wanted as long as they paid tax. Might be revisionist history but makes sense. They seem to have the underlying life of citizens doing reasonably well, despite some freedoms, free speech, women's rights issues. 

I'm glad we came in winter. It's cool but comfortable. Being here in summer with the masses they say arrive and dealing with sweltering heat wouldn't appeal nearly as much. 

Very few touts other than at the most obvious tourist places. We took an exact retrace taxi back from the Sultanhamet area and his meter said 3x what it cost to go down there earlier, traffic and duration were the same.  I told him that, at which point his English magically dried up, but the bilingual doormen at the hotel said just give him my amount, they try to do it all the time and somehow jerry rig/hack their standard meters. 

It's very cosmopolitan. Dress was reflective of a fashion sense.  Not much head covering in town. Turkish genes seem to generate a lot of women over 6' tall, it surprised us. There's drinking in bars and restaurants, but no public drunkenness.  It all seems very refined. 

Dinner and surprise

We walked through nice neighbourhoods for a dinner at a euro style jammed into a small space restaurant that was lovely.

Hotel staff had asked is about our stay, and we said honeymoon. They surprised us with this, which I commend as going the extra mile with service. It went over quite well with the intended audience. 

Blue Mosque, Haghia Sophia

We visited the blue mosque. Somehow we got in the locals line vs the other entrance for tourists, someone ushered us in there and we were in in 20 seconds. Amazing what the mastery of constructing arches did for early construction. The tiles inside are blue and ornate. It's huge, and it's proportions work - just feels proper and symmetric. 

The hanging lights are too bad that they can't be suspended different as there's so many cables that detract a little from looking up. The windows are nice, I'm sure they'd be even better at the angle/on a day with full sun blazing in.

Outside was rows of tour busses with visitors from Asia. The boat tour/rug guys/trinket sellers really work them over. That touristy square between the two buildings is the only place we really saw pesky touts; where there's busses of prey they'll gather.  Although the underground cisterns looked cool, we elected to forgo the lineup and passed. 

We only viewed the Haghia Sofia from the outside as the lineup was huge. 

We had tea and Turkish delights to recharge for the Grand Bazaar. 

Walked a few blocks to where old and new mix. 

Grand Bazaar

We visited the bustling Grand Bazaar. I had enough energy from an earlier Turkish delight break to make it through one pass. My shopping was humble. 

Evil eye which wards off the evil in some people who have the evil in them, old wives tale and/or tradition thing from the Aegan coast. A dollar. 

Turkish delights. Pomegranate flavour with pistachio was the pick of the day. 

I got out without buying a rug. Everyone wants to sell you rugs. If I wanted a Turkish rug, the prices and selection seem great. But they don't seem to get that I don't want to go home with lots of rugs. 

The tea section could have doubled as the aroma therapy section. 

Turkish spa

While not the classic Turkish baths, we took advantage of what was on offer as nobody likes cooking themselves in hot water more than Cindy. 

Istanbul morning

We had tea and Turkish delights.

Walked through the hotel area. 

The surrounding shops. 

Breakfast at a nice place. 

Checked out the Bosphorus full of jellies. Apparently lower layers flow to Black Sea and upper to Marmara. Depth ranges from 34m to 120m, width from 750m to 3.7km. Sewage is treated then put to lower levels as Black Sea has more robust capacity. 

Visited the nearby park and played on the exercise machines. 

Checked out the wildlife. 

These guys are tagged and seem to hang around, looked like the park fed them too. They're 20 feet from a coffee shop terrace taking a break from sniffing people. 

Got to the top of the hill for a view. 

Turkish hair cut

The Turkish breeze hairdo was a bit shaggy in the cosmopolitan vibe of an 18m person city. Why not kill some time here with a haircut vs do it at home?  It was an experience like no other haircut I've ever had.

The guy asked what I wanted I said shorter and "Istanbul style". He used the back of his fingers along my head to feel it's shape and suggested "balance up". 

He called over the assistant who had a quad folding stainless steel case of combs, knives and scissors. I got misted down, combed into sections, then the art began. Half was scissors, half was knife. It took shape. We made small chitchat about how it was living in such an enormous city with predictable output - culture and options great and wide open, commuting is a chore that is awful and time consuming. I'll vouch for that just from our airport trip. 

He proclaims finished and calls over the assistant who moves me to washing. This is intense shampooing with a head massage of great force that went on for quite some time. My folio les have never experienced such force. 

After drying I got back to the barber chair. Assistant put cotton balls in both ears, then tucked my collar in and re-wrapped me.  A bottle of yellow stuff came out and got squeezed onto the top of my head. I was again soaked, and it was something reminiscent of citronella, very lightly oily. He proceeded to vigorously send the oil flying with grazing slapping motions that barely touched my skin but flew through my hair to dry it. His eyes were closed, it was flying all over the mirror, but he was sending it flying faster than it could run down to my ears or eyes. Unreal. I was in a vigorous lemony haze. 

This left my hair dry, with body, and scented. He then pulled pasted out of an unmarked tub and did the finishing touches. 

Voila. Cindy immediately said I smelled tantalizingly complex, fresh and citrusy.