Our style of travel focuses on history and the culture and lifestyle of the people. Typically we stay in nice hotels, eat really good food, fly expensive and then take public transportation once we get there. Visiting with locals, shopping in ordinary grocery stores and doing our own laundry is our usual.
This morning after breakfast we set out to look for a laundry. It is difficult to find in this area, it seems that they have many places that want to do it for you. We will have to figure it out.
Traveling to Asia is as simple as getting on the tram that goes under the Bosphorus Strait. It only takes about 3 minutes. Their tram stations here are spotless, NYC could learn from Istanbul.
Once on the Asian side we noticed there were very few tourists and fewer people spoke english. We walked along the water and many families were out together celebrating National Sovereignty and Children’s Day. It celebrates the day in 1920 when the parliament met for the first time during Türkey’s war for independence. We found the fish market and wondered along the Main Street. We also went into the Happy Market, a grocery store. The holiday made moving around difficult because of the crowds. Rick Steves recommended a nice seafood restaurant called Lacivert, it was about a 45 minute bus ride from the area where we had first come over on the tram. The buses were busting at the seams, but finally we packed ourselves into #15. After the bus ride, we had to walk for another 10 minutes, but it was well worth the hassle. Our favorite was the Lebanese Salad, with sumac, cherry tomatoes, fried tortillas and radishes. Instead of returning to the European side by tram we took the boat that the restaurant offered to cross the Bosphorus Strait and caught a bus back to our hotel in the New Town area. For the last three days, we have averaged over 16,000 steps each day.
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