Atop the Bosphorus

We both woke up with unhappy footsies on Tuesday after the previous day's excessive adventuring, so we decided that several more hours sitting still on boats was called for. Opting for a touristy boat tour up the Bosphorus gave us an opportunity to do just this. The Bosphorus is also referred to as the Istanbul Strait, which is the narrow body of water that divides the European and Asian sides of the city, as well as connects the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea.

How's about a visual reference?:

Following our somewhat-helpful guidebook's suggestion, we arrived at the pier early and got a somewhat-decent place in line. We managed to secure a somewhat-window seat towards the front of the boat and had just settled in when we were accosted by a group of elderly wild women from an unknown country. They were quite raucous and were having lots of fun, which I fully supported, but Sarah and I were still sleepy and it wasn't exactly the soothing atmosphere we had been looking forward to. However, we soon forgave them for their brain-smacking bouts of loud when they offered us cookies and asked us questions about where we were from.

In this fashion we tootled up the Bosphorus, bouncing from continent to continent and swaying the ferry back and forth to Ooh and Aah at various castles and other swanky landmarks on shore. The final destination on the tour was a little town called Anadolu Kavağı that was situated on the Asian side, right on the brink of the Black Sea. There's not much to it except for the ruins of an old fortress on a hill and a myriad of little fish restaurants to feed the swarms of tourists.

The entire livelihood of the village revolved around the comings and goings of these boat tours. I was pretty taken aback when we poured out of the boat and saw the streets suddenly burst into action - fish stands displaying their scaled goodies, ice cream vendors pounding bricks of creamed ice into their rounded compartments with long metal rods, postcards gleaming in the midday sun, and everywhere waiters, vendors, and general let-me-sell-you-your-heart's-desire men vying for your attention. I wondered how quickly everything shut down after the last ferry departed each day.

We had been told by a fellow hostel-goer who had already done the tour that we could walk up a hill to the fortress ruins, where we would have a great view over that part of the world. Following her advice and the signs, we made our way up and up and up to the ruins. However, after seven or so minutes of climbing an ever-steepening hill-mountain in the Turkish sunshine, we realized that our idea of a "hill" was not the same as everyone else's. That was a pity. But. We weren't going to not climb it, of course, so up we went. By the time we reached the top, the tendinitis in my foot was most disgruntled after I had promised it rest and given it a mountain, but there wasn't much of anything to do about it but beg forgiveness and enjoy the sights.



I had been very excited for this particular adventure, not just because I wanted to visit Asia again, but also because I wanted to see if the Black Sea was, y'know, actually black. It wasn't. Bummer.

Dome inside the ruins.

We also had a great view of the Bosphorus from the peak.

Wary of the time, we made our way back to the village were we were coaxed into a restaurant right on the water. The waiter tried to "make us a deal" (=pay double the price), which I kindly refused and successfully haggled back down to the realm of decency. I was proud.

After nomming on fishy things and ice cream, we caught the first ferry back to Istanbul and enjoyed the sights on the other side of the shore.


Totally tuckered but with time to spare and the adventure itch yet to scratch, we decided to explore another part of the city in hopes of finding the old Valens Aqueduct, via the Sehzade Camii (mosque). It was almost prayer time and we didn't see any other tourists in that particular part of the city, so we decided it would be smarter not to go in.



There wasn't too much to do there, so we lay in the cool plushy grass in a nearby park for a while before making our way back to the Golden Horn's waters. We saw a shop selling diabetic-able Turkish delight on the way, which gave us great amusement.

Back at the water's edge, we walked over part of the big bridge so I could take pictures of all the people fishing off of it, which I'd been wanting to do for the last couple days.





For dinner, we decided to risk the mystery fish sandwiches that were fried and sold directly off of boats in that part of town. Our somewhat-helpful guidebook had described them as "dubious." They were interesting enough and didn't even give us food poisoning, for which we were both grateful. We ate them off of little stools around little tables in front of the boat and a local took our picture. I guess they were amused by western blondes indulging in their man food.

To supplement the lack of nutritional value in the sandwiches, we bought a variety of intriguing Turkish pastries from a shop and ate them with the stray cats and tea-sellers in front of the Blue Mosque to await the sunset call to prayer. Then we went back to the hostel and crashed.