Going up!

I came to Istanbul this time with a long list of ‘must see’ attractions in the city but apart from at the week-end when the city was overrun with a huge number of visitors and tourists, the timing of my dental appointments has made it practically impossible to tick any of them off the list. I was supposed to go on a Bosphorus evening cruise with food, drinks and entertainment on Saturday but this didn’t go as planned, fortunately for me I have to say.

I’d booked but not paid in advance and the arrangement was that I was supposed to have been transported from and back to my hotel but in the event was asked to walk a good ten minutes to a pick-up point outside a seedy hotel to the north. This made me rather annoyed and as it was a cold, windy evening and no taxi had arrived at the allotted time I just decided to call it an evening and headed back to my hotel. So too bad for them.

Today was (is at the time of writing) my last day in Istanbul and as for all I know this might be the last time I’ll ever get the chance to visit I decided that I’d head back down to Karakoy for lunch and check out the situation at the Galata Tower on the way. If there were no crowds or an enormous queue, like yesterday, I thought I might then do the climb up (figuratively speaking). And there was neither, so I did.

The price for doing so, 30€, came as a bit of a shock but I thought if you’re in Istanbul you’ve got to do it, which I guess is what the authorities also thought when they arrived at that figure. But anyway, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience so I swiped my card yet again and off I went clutching my no-refunds, use only once on the day of issue ticket. Somewhat unsurprisingly I found that the entrance is via a flight of fairly steep stone steps, so too bad if you have limited mobility and can’t scale them.

At the top of them is an entrance hall that’s all very swish and modern – not the way you’d expect a mediaeval tower to be at all. And that’s the way the whole tower is – it’s been thoroughly modernised throughout as a 21st century tourist attraction. There are a few museum pieces and artifacts on various floors as you make your way down – on foot on some very narrow and precarious staircases some of which have no handrails – but these don’t seem to be of much interest to most people although they are very well presented.

The big attraction, of course, is, or are, the views of Istanbul and the Bosphorus from the top of the tower, so having said that I’ll let the pictures tell the story.

After climbing the tower I made my way into Karakoy from a different direction to last time and couldn’t find the same little restaurant where I’d enjoyed an excellent burger and draught beer. So I tried another but somewhat disappointingly it wasn’t half as good. But that’s life isn’t it. I’ll take it easy for the rest of the afternoon – may pop out to buy some Turkish Delight to take back with me – and then have a last Chinese take-away this evening if I can find the room for it.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Istanbul yet again and was relieved this time to have some good weather despite it being a bit windy. And I’ll be coming back a more educated man because I’ve found out that the ‘g’ in Beyoglu* is silent, and it’s pronounced Bayolu, and Karaköy is pronounced Karakee. So how’s that then! What a brilliant Turkish scholar I turned out to be 😉

* The g is supposed to have a little accent over it but WordPress can’t cope with it