Friday
Dear Elsie
Today we were having a little discussion about what we did right and wrong in Istanbul.
The rights certainly outweighed the wrong. If you ever want to go to Istanbul, these are a couple of good things to know:
- ATMs are all over the place and give the best option for drawing Turkish Lira, so don’t exchange any currency at the airport on arrival. We got this right. We only ever used ATMs to get Lira.
- Get an Istanbul Card. This cost about 70 TL when we were there and to use it you simply add credit to it. Every time you get on a tram, you swipe it. Each journey is very cheap. You can use one card for multiple people so on our last day we caught a tram for the three of us to the ferry port. They also work on the ferries, so we used the same single card to get us to and from the Asian side. It is a winner. Cheap and easy travel around Istanbul and on the Bosphorus!
- While staying in the Old Town has the advantage of being able to walk to most of the main tourist attractions, it’s easy to stay a little way away if the tram or Metro station is close by. Public transport on the trams is so easy and cheap with the Istanbul card that it may pay to be in a less expensive hotel 10 minutes away where the view is better and the hotel more modern than to stay in a very old hotel in the Old Town. It’s not called the Old Town for nothing. While our second hotel, The Garden House Hotel was very comfortable and well run, it was still old.
I wouldn’t have done anything different but Mike thinks staying further away for less would have been a better option. - Check the dates you are in town against public holidays. Unbeknown to us we were in Istanbul over a public holiday and things were manic! If we had known, we possibly would have changed our arrangements and gone to the Asian side on the Sunday instead on the public holiday Monday. We got this wrong!
- Find out where the locals eat and shop. Mike asked at our first hotel where was a good place to eat. He was told down by the river- we had several meals at this place. It was a fabulous find. It was much cheaper than the restaurants in the Old Town that ramped up their prices to Euro level. ie A coke cost R70, where as at the river restaurant it was only R20! Generally, everything gets less expensive the further from the main tourist area you get. That includes the Grand Bazaar that had inflated prices in most of the stalls. There was one stall that had a ‘fixed price’ sign and their prices were reasonable.
Istanbul is an interesting and vibrant city. It represents part of Turkey but by far and away not all. The prices in Turkey have sky-rocketed over the last year. Once known as financially friendly for South Africans, we didn’t expect so many of the prices to be based on Euro costs. That came as a bit of a shock. If you are ever going to be in Istanbul, bear this in mind.
Back to today, I got some exercise. Mike and I went for a jog to Glencairn and back. We are thinking that we may do this on a regular basis and if the weather is good to go to the beach on our way back and have a dip. In winter, I don’t think I have it in me to swim for half an hour, so a run and dip would work well. We’ll see.
And friends came over to visit. It was good to see Riana, Ingrid and Ulindi. That provided a nice lunchtime respite from work.
Weekend already.
Psalm 119:105
Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.
It’s not about now – we are only passing through.
Keep the smile going.
God bless you.
In His Grip,
Gran xx 🙂