Istanbul, Turkey
Istanbul, the hustle and bustle of Turkey.
At first, I didn’t know what to expect because I had heard a lots of contradicting things about Istanbul. From my experience, it was great, such an amazing place and so much to see. What would I have changed differently? Maybe the length. I feel like I didn’t see enough of everything it had to offer and that was purely down to the fact that I just didn’t have enough time. After travelling with someone for a week, then staying in a hostel it was nice to interact with other people, fresh faces. I had been incredibly good not drinking as much as I usually would, so on the first night in Istanbul we decided to joint he pub crawl that was hosted by the hostel I was staying at called Cheers Lighthouse Hostel in Sultanhamet. (If you’re visiting Istanbul, I highly recommend this place to stay. Not only are they really informative, it’s super cheap and they organise fun things for people staying at the hostel to do during the day and night.)
Now it’s a bit difficult to find a place in Istanbul, especially in old town that sells alcohol during Ramadan and although it got super busy after 7pm when all the local people would gather in the parks, or swarm into restaurants it was a great atmosphere and something to definitely witness firsthand. The only problem with this was the fact that security had heightened, with potential terror attacks every single day and you could feel this tension with the alarming amount of military and police present with automatic rifles. But all really cool to see with their bulletproof cars, which were basically tanks.
There is lots to do and see in Istanbul, took a few days to just cover most of it with lots of different mosques, the spice market, the grand bizarre… There is just too much to see in only 4 days. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see it all, but I did get to see a great deal of it, which satisfied my need of not needing to return back again and that isn’t because I didn’t love it there, but because I would prefer to visit somewhere new.
