Saturday 18 June. Day 2: The Golden Horn from Fenner to Eyup

June 18, 2016

Our hotel served a breakfast plate on the roof terrace – boiled egg, cheeses, bread, cucumber, tomato, jam, olives…. Normally a buffet, but as the only guests in the hotel, a plate made more sense. Istanbul is pretty quiet on the tourist front.

View from the hotel roof where we had breakfast. Smog.

We caught the bus from the underground bus station at Taksim to the suburb of Fenner on the west coast of the Golden Horn. Once an area in which a Greek population flourished, there are now only a small number. However the remnants of Byzantine architecture and the Constantinople-centred eastern church in are still evident in places.

We walked up the steep streets and to the imposing red-brick neo-gothic Greek High School for Boys built in 1881, which was closed by the Turkish government in 1971. Awesome brick work!

We visited the Fethiye Müzesi which is a portion of the mosque build into the former church of the Theotokos Pammakaristos still containing beautifully restored sections of the church’s original early 14th C. mosaics. We had visited the nearby Kariye Müzesi on a previous trip – which has an amazing number of mosaics of similar vintage and quality. It is one of my favourite places in Istanbul. This was smaller, but still wonderful and we were the only people there.

Disco apostle. Another apostle (to the right) looks horrified at the behaviour.

Christ Pantocrator. From Sicily to Istanbul, this image from the eastern Christian church has been a feature of many of my travels recently! The Byzantines got around.

From there we wandered, finding lots of cool shopping streets, little parks and neighbourhoods.

The area was quite religious and it was Ramadan. So many non-food shops were closed in addition to the bakeries, cafes and restaurants. We did stop in a wonderful ‘deli’ like shop with awesome cheese and the smell of air dried meat (Pastırma).

As we continued walking north in the heat we passed through Balat which was more ‘open’ in feel with bars and street decorations.

We looked for the ruins of the Boğdan Sarayi, a ruin of an old Eastern Orthodox church. Eventually we saw what must have been the place, but it seemed to be inside the grounds of a tire shop with barbed wire fencing and a guard cat. Disappointing. But a nice cat.

We stopped at a small café for coffee/tea in an area with little traffic and lots of grape vines creating shade over the street.

Having our tea and watching the world (as always the mostly male world) go by.

Last time in Istanbul we had enjoyed an excellent lunch at the restaurant Asitane near the Kariye Müzesi. Having decided to go here again, we were guided on a very swift walk up the steep hill through a complicated route involving streets with switch-backs and small formal rectangular parks by an older chap who was being helpful, but expected a tip at the end!

Brilliant crushed olive dip and olive oil at Asitane. They aim to recreate dishes from the Ottoman Empire.

Sour cherry, rice, onion, pine nut, cinnamon stuffing...

Shade and great food. Plus kittens, which you can't see.

This looks like a semolina based dessert, but it was actually syrup soaked bread, with ice-cream in the middle and sour cherries.

We spent near three hours at Asitane at a shaded outside table, slowly eating our meal of mezzes, watching kittens and waiting for some of the midday heat to go out of the sun.

Eventually we kept following our noses north and met the old city wall, crossed a highway/bus interchange of almost certain death (pedestrians everywhere crossing but few actual pedestrian walkways, crossings etc), and walked through some parkland to reach the suburb of Eyüp.

This area contains the Eyüp Sultan Camii and a number of tombs which make the site an important pilgrimage site in the Islamic world. It was very busy with non-‘western’ tourists, and we visited principally to see the Iznick tiles on the outside wall of the adjacent Türbe of Ayyub. Later in Macedonia we saw Ramadan broadcasts on TV from the square at the front of the mosque.

Iznik tiles at the türbe of Ayyub in Eyüp

We then walked the streets of souvenirs (more religious souvenirs that in the other tourist parts of Istanbul) towards the cable car to Pierre Lotti, a hill with a café and great views of the city and Golden Horn.

Views down the Golden Horn from Pierre Lotti

Eventually in the late afternoon the 55T bus brought us back to Taksim. Such a great day of wandering and people watching.

After some resting in the hotel we headed out to another restaurant near the hotel and Taksim Square called Zübeyir Ocakbaşı (or BBQ), where we had a brilliant lamb shish, spicy mince shish and eggplant with lots of chilli and garlic. Everything cooked on the grill in the centre of the room.

Dinner of BBQ meats and eggplant. So good. Our clothes smelt of BBQ the next day...

Our little corner shop and the hunt for chocolate.

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