Day I- The Golden Horn

We take the tram to Eminonu, and walk through the subway. Come up the steps and you see water. Grey water under grey clouds with lots of people in the foreground. I am not sure what hits me first- the mass of people, bustling, chatting, hurried; the seagulls flapping out noisily over choppy grey water; the sight of fishing rods, so many of them; the vista of Asian Istanbul across the Bosphorus on one side, and the north half of European Istanbul across the Golden Horn; the boats and ferries cluttering the water like the transport hub that it is.

Then the other sights- hawkers sitting on the pavement selling completely random tings- from beads and nazars to underwear and socks; vendors with fresh fish being grilled and literally thrown into sliced loaves; the outpuring of people from the turnstiles at the ferry entry.

It is here that the Istanbul skyline that so fascinated me is truly visible. Take a 360-degree turn and take in seemingly endless city- a mass of low-lying buildings all clustered together; rising out of them, in every direction, are minarets. Entire tall minarets, the tips of others, solitary minarets and clusters, all searing into the sky, but gently, like beacons, like a signature, like grand, confident statements the the city is making.

And just behind, towering over Eminonu and its bustle is a smallish (by what we have seen anyway) mosque (only later are we to realise it is Yeni Camii). Despite its imperious closeness, it loses out in the sights stakes to a mosque further away, the distance adding to its charm- even from this far it seems huge and spectacular in the dying light, and we are unsure which one it is- maps and readings suggest it is Suleimaniye Camii.

Taking all this in has been a few minutes, but the first ting we have to do is buy an akbil. This is the key-like pass which works on buses, trams, the metro and even local ferries. Locating the akbil both, however, is quite a task- we never did lpick enough Turkish before coming, and despite roaming around with the LP open to its language page, it is a while, and many walks in and out of the underpass by the Galata Bridge, before we finally find it. The signs only say gunluk, haftalik, aylik...
So we are lucky to get a young boy (“Ingilizce?”, we ask, and “so-so” comes the reply) who helps us out understanding we don’t have to buy a daily, weekly or monthly pass, just a normal one (not specified in the signs) is available as well.

Then we are walking on the Galata Bridge. The sun is setting behind us now, behind the mosques. There are more people fishing here, many more. Cars, buses and small lorries (like tempos) whiz by but I still can’t remember them being as noisy as they surely must have been. Below you, and to the left and right, ferries ply the increasingly choppy waters of the Golden Horn (the finger of water that divides European Istanbul).
We stop a moment, taking this in and clicking photos. The sun is inching its way behind the Suleimaniye Camii (for that is what the grand mosque in the distance is), and you understand where those postcards have been shot from. It is as if the mosque was made so it would seemingly swallow the sun every evening, first basking in the glow then leaving an outline that couldn’t be better were it painted on.

in: travel / turkey / turkey travel / istanbul / galata / dna day1