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I’m very conscious that I’m, once again, behind with this blog and so I’m going to try and speed matters up. Our plan for the third day was to get a train to Ankara from Istanbul, a process that we thought would be easy, so we had hotels booked in the country’s capital.

The grand metro station of Yenikapi which opened in 2013.

Downstairs in the metro station.

On the metro and it was all going so well.

Safely at Söğütlüçeşme railway station where the high speed train from Istanbul to Ankara departs from.

Some nice views over the city from here.

And a nice old locomotive to look at outside of the station. This was all going ever so smoothly and we wondered which of the main trains we would be getting to Ankara.

The answer was none. There was no signage or ticket machines, just a ticket kiosk. After we meandered pointlessly around a ticketed area and were guided back, we visited the ticket kiosk and the staff member said that there were no tickets available to Ankara today.

I considered this sub-optimal as I had a hotel in Ankara and started to wonder what the options were, especially as I had no Internet (but I didn’t complain). Jonathan was less panicked, he’s a Turkey expert and so had plans to get us back on track. Note the clever pun there. Anyway, this all meant that we realised we were naive to think you could actually book a train on the day between two major cities, something we didn’t think would be a problem.

Back on the metro, this is Jonathan showing me his plan. And it led us into another adventure, but we’ve had quite a lot of those this week….

The Obelisk of Theodosius originated in Ancient Egypt as one of two monuments commissioned by Pharaoh Thutmose III to stand outside the Temple of Karnak in Luxor during the 15th century BC. Carved from red granite, it commemorates the Pharaoh’s victory during a crossing of the River Euphrates. The monolith remained in Egypt for centuries until the Roman Emperor Constantius II had it transported down the Nile to Alexandria in 357 AD to celebrate his twenty years on the throne. I mean, it’s either that or you build yourself a nice ballroom, although I suspect the engineers responsible were probably a bit stressed by traipsing this thing about.

Perhaps the engineers couldn’t be bothered by it as it lay on the docks for decades until Emperor Theodosius I successfully moved it to Constantinople in 390 AD to decorate the middle bit of the Hippodrome. During the transition, the obelisk was shortened to nearly two-thirds of its original height to facilitate transport which sounds like something my friend Liam would do to make things easier. Then I would discover that my precious obelisk has arrived with a chunk missing.

It was eventually mounted on a marble pedestal featuring detailed bas-reliefs that depict the Emperor and his court watching chariot races. Despite surviving numerous earthquakes and the fall of empires, the monument remains in its original Byzantine location today in what is now Sultanahmet Square. Incidentally, those bronze cubes act as shock absorbers in case of more earthquakes.

The sheer age of this is something of a joy to behold, the history that it has now just in its creation, but its moving about by Roman emperors and then in the heart of Istanbul for centuries.

And here it is at night.

The Blue Mosque, also known as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, which was constructed between 1609 and 1617.

Approaching the mosque, which was built by the Ottomans on the site of former palaces and there was controversy over the funding to build it. Some clerics said it should have only been paid for with money taken from conquests, but Ahmed I hadn’t won anything so had to use money from the state treasury.

The mosque’s courtyard and this is where the main entrance is and there were a large number of visitors, seemingly mainly tourists. It’s free to enter and visitors are made welcome, with the usual protocol of having to take your shoes off.

Inside and it’s a spacious and light space, with a grand domed arrangements. Pope Benedict XVI visited here in November 2006, only the second time that a Pope had visited a mosque.

The interior has been designed to amplify the voice of the imam so that 10,000 people could hear without the need for amplification.

A common local account attributes the construction of six minarets to a linguistic misunderstanding between the Sultan and his architect. According to this story, the Sultan requested ‘altın’ minarets, meaning gold, but the architect mistakenly heard ‘altı’ which is the Turkish word for six. Although historians generally view this tale as a myth, the mosque is historically significant as one of only three in Turkey to feature this specific number of minarets.

My previous photos might suggest that this is a quiet place for spiritual reflection, but this is more the scene.

The majority of the interior is either painted or tiled and there are over 21,000 tiles here.

The main dome is 43 metres in height and that’s supported by four pillars and it’s fair to say that they’re quite chunky in size, nicknamed ‘elephant feet’.

And a photo of the mosque at night, it’s a beautiful site given the way they’ve managed the lighting of it.

The city’s spice bazaar which has around 85 shops selling a variety of spices, chocolates, souvenirs, nuts and other assorted items. It’s quite an impressive arrangement, especially since it’s been here since 1660. Not surprising gives its name, it was primarily where spices were sold in the past, but that’s diminishing a little now as it caters for a wider market, not least tourists.

It’s a busy arrangement and it’s part of the property of the New Mosque which was also built at the same time. Although referred to as the Spice Bazaar in English, the name is the Egyptian Bazaar in Turkish, apparently because it was originally built with taxes charged on people in Egypt.

There’s a security process to get into the bazaar, although that’s commonplace around Turkey. There was an explosion here in 1998 which killed seven people, but it’s never been stated exactly where it was a gas explosion or terrorist attack.

We didn’t buy anything inside, but Jonathan treated himself to a football shirt outside, but more of that later on.

Here are a few photos of Istanbul at night, we visited some of these places in the day as well so I’ll surprise and delight (or something like that) readers in other posts with more details.

Pick your favourite ATM, there’s no shortage of choice….

On the left is the Galata Bridge, which is the fifth structure built at this location, completed in December 1994 to replace a historic pontoon bridge that was damaged by fire. Spanning 490 metres across the Golden Horn, the bridge is a bascule design, featuring a central section that can be raised to allow large vessels access to the inner waters. The bridge is unique for its two-tier design, with the upper level dedicated to transit and the lower level housing a commercial corridor of licensed restaurants and cafes.

Standing on the lower deck of the bridge looking at the Golden Horn (an inlet of the Bosporus River), these aren’t flying fish, they’re the fishing lines from the fisherman standing on the top deck of the bridge.

We have a finely tuned policy on where to eat which requires advance research, so we weren’t tempted by the waiting staff trying to drag us into their restaurant on the lower deck.

Standing watching the river traffic going by.

The bridge links the Eminönü in the Fatih district and Karaköy in the Beyoğlu district. The photo shows the Fatih district, which is where we were staying and spend the day meandering around.

I’d note that there were a lot of people fishing and they were all catching a fair number of fish.

I’m very conscious that this ‘riveting’ blog is getting behind, I’m having some challenges with the Internet. Jonathan’s extremist view that I’m addicted to being online is ridiculous, so I’ve ignored that. Anyway, this is from Istanbul, so my first proper meal in Turkey. Posts might be a little shorter than usual in my attempt to catch up.

The bread, spicy ezme sauce and Tzatziki type dip was provided free of charge and they also replaced it when we ate all of it, which was really rather lovely.

I decided to go for a salad side as a healthy diet is obviously important to me. There was more salad than I expected and it was certainly a colourful and well presented arrangement.

The main course was chicken kebab which was really rather lovely, a depth of flavour to the chicken which was tender and moist. There was bread to mop up the juices and some texture from the onion.

There was a free dessert provided by the restaurant, this all felt a little bit like the Lowestoft Tandoori. It was similar to the Indian dessert of gulab jamun as it was sweet and syrupy, but the nuts added extra texture.

I paid around £6.50 for the Pepsi, salad and chicken kebab, with the rest of the elements all free of charge. It was also handy that they accepted card payments as I wasn’t sure what the set-up was in that regard. The service was attentive, polite and welcoming and the environment was clean and comfortable. This was certainly a really rather positive first impression of Turkish food in a casual and informal restaurant.

I realised that I was taking too many photos of stray cats in Istanbul, so I’ll pop some of the photos in this post and then I won’t need to mention it again. It’s not known how many stray cats there are in the city, but it’s thought to be around 125,000 to 175,000. That’s a lot of cats and the city has a policy to just let them be.

Sitting on a validator is likely quite warm and passengers can always work around it….

Very sweet.

A very focused cat.

A sleepy cat, I liked him…..

This one wanted attention but then saw a bird. Not that I went too near the cats, I’m unsure what little illnesses they might carry.

If you want to support local stray cats, they have cat feeding machines…

Perhaps this is why most of the cats looked relatively healthy. although it seems that many cats are adopted by locals who look out for them.

Istanbul Airport is a beautifully laid out building with clear signage and grand opening spaces. I’ve already mentioned that the wi-fi didn’t work, but I won’t continue to dwell on that.

The public transport signage, I was fortunate to have Jonathan to guide me through the options.

This is the covered outside area, it reminded me of Heathrow T5. It’s about a ten minute walk to get from the arrivals area of the airport to the metro lines.

I was hoping that the transportation system would be contactless, but it was more like London’s outgoing Oyster system. However, there were enough machines and the process was relatively painless and inexpensive.

We needed to take two metro trains to get to the city centre, this is the platform at the airport where we ready for our first journey.

We were heading to Gayrettepe Yonu station when we were transferring to a second line.

A photo of the metro train as we departed it, it had been much busier than that during the journey.

Changing trains at Gayrettepe Yonu, our first journey had taken around 45 minutes as the new airport is located a fair way out.

There was a bit of a walk, but we meandered up and down lots of stairs and corridors to another line which dates to the early 1990s. There’s a charge every time you change lines, but it’s all clear and works well.

There is wi-fi on some of the network for locals, but it doesn’t work on UK phones. I hardly complained about this to Jonathan.

The second train heading towards the Vezneciler-Istanbul University metro stop which is where we were getting off. This was a shorter journey of around twenty minutes.

And at around midnight, we arrived into the heart of Istanbul with just a twenty minute walk to the hotel. It was a little later than we would have liked, but we knew that the hotel had a 24-hour reception and it was good to be properly in Turkey for my first time (or Jonathan’s about 20th visit).