Day 11 - Leaving Europe for Asia and back again

Having spent the last day being very lazy, we were very motivated this morning to do a little sightseeing. We had yet another fantastic breakfast full of melon, bread, tomatoes and much much more halwa and left the hotel with our Akbil in hand. First we caught the tram to the Tophane stop on the black line, walking by the Dolmabahçe Palace. From there we again used our Akbil to catch the Kabatas ferry to the other side. Why did we cross the water you might ask? To get to Asia of course! There are not very many areas in the world were you can be in one continant and take a ferry ride to get to another continent that is connected with the same city. Pretty cool indeed.

Once on the other side, we decided to walk, but got a little ahead of ourselves and didn't realize how far we were from our destination. We had gotten a name of a great restaurant from our Turkish friend in Seattle and wanted to have lunch there. We had no idea we'd be walking 5 miles to the Karaköy ferry before we finally found our right the bus. On the bus, we found a lovely gal that knew English and managed to get our bus driver to let us know where the Kalamis Marina was so we can get off. At the Marina we managed to find the restaurant, Diwali, one of the BEST kebap places in town. The place was huge, but there was only three tables occupied. We basically told them we had no idea what to order, so they just kept brining us food and more food.

After our huge feast, we took a taxi to the Bagdat Caddesi from Suadiye, getting off along the water where the Suadiye Princess Hotel was located. Again, we were super lucky to find another English speaking woman on our taxi who helped us tell the taxi driver were we wanted to land. At the stop, I managed to find my spot to do my photograph of my foot in the water. From the beach we walked about three blocks up to the Bagdat Caddesi and started walking west. What a fascinating caddesi - apparently it goes from Istanbul all the way to Baghdad! It was like were weren't even in the same Istanbul we started in. There were hardly any mosques to be seen, the amount of women in hijab could be counted on one hand and everyone was dressed to the nines! It was like walking through parts of Paris. The stores were all high end shoes, clothing and everything was over priced. We walked for a few miles, hoping to work off our massive lunch before finally giving in and catching a bus back to the Karaköy ferry. From the ferry, we got lazy (or was it exhausted?) and just went straight back to the ferry dock under the Galata Bridge.

We got off the ferry and walked around the fish market before crossing the Bridge, watching all the fishermen staring into the Golden Horn. After we got across the Bridge, we spent a little time at the New Queen Mother's Mosque doing some people watching from the main stairs. Despite the Spice Market being connected to the Mosque, we decided to stop by on a different day. There were rows of shoe shiners all lined up waiting for the workers to get off the tram station and heading home. We made a stop at the grocery store to stock up on more cheese and bread for dinner and called it a day.

I just realized I went through the whole day with no food photo, so here is course 2 from our fantastic lunch: