Day 4: Istanbul

It was a beautiful sunny day when we woke up in Istanbul this morning. We managed to get an inside table for breakfast today, but couldn't resist popping outside again to admire the views.

We caught a tram to the Eminönü station again, then from there caught a ferry. This was a different ferry to the one we caught yesterday, though; it was going to take us across to a place called Üsküdar, which is on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. As the ferry pulled out, we had some great views of the large mosques on the European side.

The journey to the Asian side of Istanbul isn't very long; probably about 15 minutes.

It looked like there were some impressive mosques on this side too.

It was a very scenic journey across the Bosphorus.

We passed the lighthouse known as the Maiden's Tower...

...while in the background we could see both sides of the Golden Horn; the Galata Tower marking one side and a large mosque marking the other.

We were nearly there now.

When we stepped off the ferry we were right beside two mosques. One was quite large...

...while the other was small, but unusual for the fact that it was made out of brick.

We needed to cross this road to get to a metro station. I was admiring the mosque and then noticed the rather ancient-looking car in the foreground!

We took the metro for one stop, to a place called Fıstıkağacı. From there our route was rather hilly, taking us first quite steeply uphill and then equally steeply down.

We passed another mosque.

This one had a fruit tree outside it, but I couldn't work out what the fruit were.

We were walking towards a neighbourhood called Kuzguncuk.

Kuzguncuk is famous for its colourful houses.

The wooden ones above were the most impressive, but there were others which were colourful too.

We found an Orthodox church...

...and a viewpoint over the Bosphorus.

We explored some more narrow streets...

...and then stopped for refreshments.

We walked back to the ferry terminal alongside the Bosphorus...

...and realised that when the sun shone on the water we could see jellyfish

On the ferry back across to European Istanbul, Tim bought some tea from the onboard cafe.

It was only quite a short journey, but we had just the right amount of time to drink it before it was time to disembark. We weren't disembarking at Eminönü this time, but rather at a place called Karaköy. After a bit of a struggle trying to cross roads around the ferry terminal there, we eventually succeeded in making it to Tünel, a historic funicular.

Within a few minutes the funicular took us up a hill towards a key sight we were hoping to see: the Galata Tower. It actually took us further uphill than we needed to be, so our first task was to walk downhill a bit towards the tower.

After a few minutes we turned a corner and got a glimpse of the tower from up close.

You can go to the top of the Galata Tower, but it's quite expensive. When he saw that the price was €30, Tim opted out. But I decided to go up with my family. You can travel to the 6th floor via lift, but it turns out that the lifts are quite small and can only fit about 6 people in at one time. So we had to queue outside for a while before it was our turn to go up.

Once we did get up, we emerged into an indoor viewing gallery area.

These pictures were taken through glass, so they're not amazing.

From that floor we were able to climb stairs to an outdoor viewing gallery, however, and the photos from there are much clearer.

We could see the bridges across the Golden Horn, including the metro bridge which I think I travelled across on Tuesday evening.

We could see the large mosques in the centre of the city.

As we circled around we soon realised that we could also see the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, where we'd been on Wednesday.

We could also see a stretch of green between the Haghia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace, which was the park with the Istanbul sign that we'd walked in at Wednesday lunchtime.

It's not captured in the photos, but in the far distance we thought we could even make out some snow-capped mountains.

We really got a sense of what an enormous city Istanbul is, stretching out in every direction.

Although we also got a sense of how narrow the land it's built on is in some places when we realised we could see where the land ended and the sea began on the far side of the photo.