Turkey

#4  Turkey – May 2022. Age: 28

Istanbul is a joke. Again, it’s getting slapped with a top 5 city I reckon. I have my 4 best mates from secondary school; we’re all about 5’7” – 5’9” and we all played in the back line in rugby at school. More importantly, we’re all complete hobbits. Unfortunately, as I write this, we’ve yet to get all 5 of us away on a trip. For this one, it was just three of us in fact, Cam, Nick M, and myself. Marco and Barn were unavailable. 

First experience is a Turkish breakfast with Turkish Coffee; a smorgasbord of delights; cheeses, meats, dips, lentils, chickpeas, hummus, herbs (soft “h”) and spices. 

I could run you through all the places we visited but there are simply too many. The first experience is the mind-bendingly powerful size of the Hagia Sofia mosque; an obvious must. Slightly disappointing was that the Blue Mosque, which is, if anything, more beautiful, at least on the outside, was under construction, so the inside was not really visible. Just glimpses of the mosaics were enough to make me want to go back and witness it in full splendor. 

In the evening, we saw a display from the ancient whirling dervishes; ethereal and enough to send you down a rabbit hole of introspection, this was a very strange and wonderful experience. 

Certainly use the ferry services around the Bosporus to visit the various other parts of the city, including the more Muslim quarters and the party district, Beyoglu. Don’t forget, this is one of the oldest and most historically significant cities in the world (previously Constantinople) – there’s a wealth of culture and history to consume too. That’s for the history books though. What I like about this most of all though is the melting pot of difference cultures evident across the architecture and food too. 

Next on my list was a Besiktas game. The atmosphere was unbelievable; they do this raw in unison, kind of reminsicient of when England lost that game to Iceland in the Euros and the Icelandic fans seemed to just blow the shit out of England with their synchronized raws. 

I should briefly mention the Grand Bazaar; although I did very limited shopping. The main recollection of this, is the wall of flavours and aromatics which hit upon entry. 

Last on my list is, unlike a lot of countries in this region I’ve been to which seem to be dominated by stray cats, this city is strangely dominated by stray dogs; we made friends with quite a few of them – see below. 

In my quest to visit every country and experience as many different things as possible, I think Istanbul, along with perhaps Cappadocia (not yet visited) will be somewhere I would definitely relish going back to, simply because there is just so, so much to do and see and experience. I feel I’ve barely scratched the surface.