Turkey: Day 3
For our third and final day in Istanbul, we wanted to explore the Asian or Anatolian side as we had exclusively spent our time in the European neighborhoods. While we had not seen as many recommendations for what to do on the Asian side, we were able to find another free tour through GuruWalk for 2 ½ hours. Given we had a great experience with our tour the day prior, we were eager to be shown around a side of Istanbul we had no expectations for. To get to the Asian side, we met outside a ferry terminal that would have been difficult to navigate on our own. Luckily we spotted the tour guide who handed us a headset that he would use to communicate to us through a wireless microphone he had clipped onto his shirt, so we didn’t have to huddle around him to hear. This was a notable upgrade from the day prior and got me excited to start learning about the history of the Asian side of Istanbul.
After a lovely twenty-minute-or-so ferry ride, we disembarked into a very crowded neighborhood. We were briefly given some history on how the Asian side of Istanbul was inhabited and developed, most of which I can sadly no longer recall. Then after our lesson, we were shown one of the tour guide’s favorite mosques. I can also not remember the name of this mosque, as we saw numerous during our trip. But I do recall the place being beautiful. We then walked around through a local fish market which had some particularly memorable odors. Thankfully after that we walked to a local bakery to get some refreshments to fuel the rest of our tour. After snacking up (not proper English, but who cares), we boarded a quick bus to see Beylerbeyi Palace.
The Palace was truly beautiful and the grounds were super relaxing. It is located right on the Bosphorus, so many people were posing for photos with the scenic background of the river. The breeze was lovely and cooled us off on a rather sunny day. After taking in the views, we wandered around the grounds of the Palace, but couldn’t go in to look around as it was a free tour so no tickets were included. Nevertheless, the architecture was lovely and reminded me of many European style palaces I had studied in Art History classes in college. After roughly half an hour at Beylerbeyi Palace, we boarded another bus to explore a Jewish neighborhood.
Being a Jew myself this excited me greatly as I didn’t know much about Jewish populations in Istanbul. We were also told there was an old synagogue in the neighborhood that my friend and I immediately wanted to visit. Sadly, we were informed that due to security concerns you had to book a visit days in advance to give them time to clear you. This dampened our mood somewhat as that's truly upsetting to hear. Nevertheless, we wanted to keep relatively upbeat so we went to explore the neighborhood and were immediately pleased to see how beautiful it was. There were a ton of cafes and art studios, alongside streets of colorfully painted houses. Additionally, there was a large public garden that we walked through that had lovely scents that made up for the punishment my nose experienced in the fish market earlier. We finished our tour at a small bakery which the guide said had the best cookies in Istanbul. I begged to differ after trying them, but they weren’t bad.
After departing the tour, my friend and I had to figure out the local bus system on our own (harder than it sounds when we couldn’t find any English speaker to explain things to us). We eventually boarded the right bus and found our way back to the ferry terminal we landed at earlier. Now our next big hurdle was finding the proper ferry as we didn’t know the name of the neighborhood we disembarked from earlier in the day. We decided to open Google Maps on our phone and point at it while talking to a worker who sent us in the general direction of one ferry. We boarded and noticed quickly this didn’t look like the boat we were on earlier. However the worker seemed very confident in telling us which one to go on so we decided to trust him. The ferry started to move so we were stuck on that boat no matter what. After twenty minutes or so we arrived at a location that was not the one we were aiming for.
However, it was merely on the opposite side of the river from where we wanted to go and a mere 10-15 minute walk across a bridge. So all things considered, I view that as a massive success. We finished the day at a nearby rooftop restaurant before taking a half-hour tram ride back to our hotel. It was a lot less walking than prior days, but we got to explore the beautiful Asian side of Istanbul and save ourselves from a third consecutive day of foot pain.
