Day 3: Istanbul

Today started with breakfast in the hotel. There weren't any free tables when Tim and I came down just before 8am, so we ended up sitting outside. It was a little bit chilly, but the view was amazing.

We had an exciting trip planned for today, catching a ferry up the Bosphorus to a place called Emirgan. The first stop was to catch a tram to the Eminönü stop where we were yesterday. The tram stop is right next to the ferry terminal. We had a great view of the New Mosque while we waited.

It was really easy to catch the ferry; we were able to just swipe the Istanbul cards which we bought at the start of the trip. I'm not sure how much it cost but we still haven't got through the £10 which we loaded them with at the airport on Tuesday evening. Soon we were off!

The journey to Emirgan took just over an hour by ferry and we had some fantastic views on the way.

We sailed passed various impressive mosques...

...and some very ornate palaces.

We went under bridges...

...and saw mosques which were right by the water's edge.

It was quite windy outside on the boat at times, but that did mean I had some great views of some of the enormous Turkish flags that had been placed on the hillsides.

As we got further along the route, the areas we sailed passed seemed to become more residential.

Some of the neighbourhoods looked like they were really quite posh.

We were starting to feel a bit windswept by this point, but there wasn't much further to go.

As we got closer to Emirgan we had some good views towards the Asian side of Istanbul, which we hope to visit tomorrow.

We also sailed past the Rumeli fortress...

...and saw some newer buildings in the distance too.

And then we had arrived. It was only a short walk from the ferry stop to Emirgan park, which was our final destination. There was a very specific reason why we wanted to come to Emirgan: tulips!

We had seen some tulips yesterday in Gülhane Park, but the displays at Emirgan promised to be even more impressive.

We got our first glimpses as we entered the park via a path lined with different coloured tulips.

Here we encountered our first member of what we've decided to call the Tulip Police; a group of security guards who patrol the park, watching over the tulips and blowing whistles if anyone oversteps a fence and threatens to trample on the flowers.

It was a system that seemed to be working, because almost all the tulips we saw were in pristine condition.

The park is on a hill so we climbed upwards, eventually reaching a viewing platform over the Bosphorus. We would probably have been a bit more excited about this if we hadn't just spent an hour on a ferry.

From here it was difficult to know which direction to go in because the flowers in each direction looked stunning.

The tulips themselves were obviously beautiful, but I also loved the displays where they were interspersed with blue grape hyacinths.

The combination is really stunning.

Around the corner we found a duck pond.

We realised that tulips really are everywhere here, from the nest in this little sculpture in the pond...

...to the railings around the pond itself.

And, of course, there were tulip sculptures too.

Although I was enjoying the tulips, I was a bit confused about why there were so many of them in Istanbul. After all, it's a flower that typically we only associate with the Netherlands.

What I had had no concept of previously is that tulips actually originate from eastern and central Asia, and didn't come to western Europe until the 16th century.

Tulips were a symbol of the Ottoman Empire, which even had an official Tulip Period in the early 18th century.

So it suddenly started to make a lot more sense that tulips are so big in Istanbul!

As we continued to walk through the park, the displays became even more impressive.

There were flower beds where different colours were interspersed with each other...

...others where there were stripes of different colours...

...and some where there were circles of tulips surrounded by hyacinths.

Definitely the best tulip displays I've ever seen in my life!

It would have been nice if there was some information in the park to tell us what type of tulips we were looking at, as there were clearly a lot of different varieties. Some were striped...

...while some had delicate frilly edges.

I loved these pink ones...

...and these purple stripy ones.

At times it was honestly hard to know which way to look!

Eventually we came to an area with some small pools.

The pools seemed to be home to turtles, which was particularly exciting because I have spent months struggling through Turkish Duolingo lessons trying desperately to spell the very difficult Turkish word for turtle: kaplumbağa.

The first few turtles we saw were so still that we were debating whether they were real or not. But soon we saw them blink - and swim - so yes, they were definitely real!

It must be beautiful in this part of the park even without the tulips.

We had seen a lot of tulips by this point and were getting hungry, so after circling the pools we decided to start walking back downhill towards the exit.

There was a cafe not far from the ferry stop, where I had a slightly disappointing chicken kebab (it was thigh meat)...

...and also a Turkish take on the affogato, which seemed to confuse the waiter a bit when we ordered.

Then it was time to start the long journey back to the centre of Istanbul. The weather was feeling colder and threatening rain by this point, so I was glad to be able to sit inside on the boat for the return journey!