Istanbul; Friday, 17 December, 2021

Semih met me in reception at 08:30 so we could head out on the second day of our tour. Today and tomorrow we had the advantage of having a taxi at our disposal to be able to explore further. When I booked the tour this was an option – we could have just used public transport, but that would have meant quite a bit more walking, and also less time at each point on the tour, so I’d opted for the easy transport option.

The first stop of the morning was the Dolmabahçe Palace. Located on the riverside in the newer part of the European side of Istanbul the palace was build in the middle of the 19th Century as the Ottoman Empire pivoted away from it’s Islamic roots to try and copy the styles and palaces of the Western European powers. Consequently this palace looks very much like something that would fit into Napoleonic France, Hapsburg Austria or even Victorian Britain. There are still a few Islamic twists such as the exquisite Hammam and the prayer rooms, but it is very much a palace of a Western monarch rather than an Islamic Sultan (and in part this pivot to the west is what led to the eventual downfall of the Ottomans and Turkey becoming a republic). We weren’t able to see all of the place as the Turkish President was due to give a speech there later in the day which meant that parts were already closed, but we were able to see large parts.

A short walk down from the palace and we reached the landing stages at Kabatas and from here we picked up a Bosporus Cruise. Once again having Semih was invaluable as the on-board commentary was patchy at best where as he was able to point out all the major buildings that we saw. The tour sets off heading upstream along the European coast before reaching the narrowest point of the Bosporus, at which point the boat turns and head back downstream, this side on the Asian side, before eventually turning back and crossing back over to the European side and returning to the landing stage.

Due to the Presidents appearance at the Dolmabahçe Palace the police were moving everyone along, so our taxi driver wasn’t able to be waiting for us as we disembarked from the cruise, instead he’d had to keep driving round the block, but it was only a couple of minutes before he got back round to us and headed off to our next stop of the morning – Taksmin Square.

The square is the main meeting point of people in the city, and also the starting point for many demonstrations over the years. From the square Independence Avenue or Istiklal Caddesi heads away – this is the main shopping street of the city, an Istanbul equivalent of the Champs Elysée or Oxford Street, but hiding behind many of the shops are little alleyways that lead to galleries or courtyards housing smaller shops, little markets and restaurants – and again having a guide was the only way I could have found these. We walked a long way down the road before taking a short detour to the Pera Palace Hotel, this was the hotel that Agatha Christie stayed in whilst she wrote Murder on the Orient Express. It’s also historic for being the first building in Istanbul with an elevator inside of the building.

From the Pera Palace we hopped back in the taxi and headed over to our lunch stop, another excellent recommendation from Semih with a delicious mese of local delicacies, and then it was back into the taxi and over to the last stop of the day at the Spice Market.

Officially known as the Egyptian Market to the locals of Istanbul, but known to tourists as the Spice Market this is a much smaller building than the Grand Bazaar, consisting of just one L shaped building, but inside there are a large number of shops mostly focussing on spices and sweets – including more Turkish delight than you could shake a stick at.

The spice market was the last stop on the itinerary for the day, so from there Semih walked me the short distance back to my hotel. After freshening up I headed out for a little bit of a wander around the old town, before heading to another one of his suggestions for dinner, which once again turned out to be an excellent dinner.