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| the impressive church of Aya Sofia |
We love Istanbul. We’ve
been there many times and have good friends there, so we decided to end our trip
to Greece and Albania with a 2-day visit to Istanbul and some time there with
our friends, who own a carpet shop in the Grand Bazaar, Adnan & Hasan. We have bought carpets from them for 22
years, in their shop, online, and when they’ve stayed with us in Colorado and
turned our house into a Turkish carpet shop for our friends to see (and buy).
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| Don and friends at Adnan and Hasan |
During the worst of Covid, the Grand Bazaar was closed for 5 months. Even after, it was mostly empty, so many businesses closed and Adnan & Hasan downsized sharply and hung on, mostly with sales to people like us who know and trust them and occasionally bought rugs from them online (https://www.adnanandhasan.com/).
We spent time in the Bazaar over the last 3 days and found
it packed with people once again. Almost
all the shops are open and sales are pretty good. We talked to one friend, now selling leather
and fur jackets in the Bazaar instead of carpets, who told us he can support
his family once again and send his son and daughter to university.
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| server and Fuego |
We found a very small hotel, the Fuego Design Suites, in a perfect location a few minutes from Sultanahmet Square, the Aya Sofia and Blue Mosque. It’s a bit funky, down a hard-to-find narrow corridor on one of Sultanahmet’s many stone alleys full of small restaurants and coffee shops. Our room was wonderful, very spacious, with big windows on 2 sides and a balcony, all of which looked out directly on the Aya Sofia and Blue Mosque. The hotel has a really good restaurant where you get breakfast, and a sweet little kitty named Fuego who thrives on all the attention he gets from servers and customers alike.
Four cruise ships were docked in the Golden Horn, so the lines to get into the major tourist attractions were long. We decided to walk around the beautiful historic sites of Sultanahmet rather than get stuck in hour-long lines to actually get inside the sites. But a walk around the old parts of the city is also wonderful because you get to see old Ottoman wooden houses tucked away in cobblestoned alleys, people going about their lives, hawkers trying to entice you into their shops and the massive architecture of Byzantine and Ottoman Istanbul.
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| row of old wooden houses |
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| women washing outside mosque |
We did visit one of our favorite museums, the Museum of Turkish
and Islamic Arts, right on Sultanahmet Square.
It has Turkish carpets from as far back as the 12th century
and gorgeous illustrated Korans. There
are ceramics and beautifully etched vessels of various metals.
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| huge carpet at Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art |
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| illustrated Koran |
The streets were packed with people and cars. Lots of vendors sell food and trinkets from colorful carts. There are too many vacant stores as you get away from the main squares. Turkey is having a tough time economically—and also politically, with an elected president who acts more like a dictator, eliminating free speech and jailing his perceived enemies, from military leaders to journalists to professors.
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| corn vendor outside library |
Istanbul has grown tremendously since our first visit in 2000. We drove through the Asian side of the city to have dinner with our friends, through miles of giant skyscraper office and residential buildings and countless buildings under construction. There aren’t enough green spaces for Istanbul’s huge population of somewhere between 18 and 22 million to be able to get away from all the concrete. Public transportation is good, but very crowded, and the narrow streets are choked with cars, buses and trucks. Istanbul has a grand new airport about 25 miles outside the city, an hour and 15 minutes away by car.
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| dinner with our friends |
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