Rewind … Istanbul Day 3

After taking a taxi everywhere on Day 2 we thought we’d tackle the tram system in Istanbul.  According to Google Maps, the tram stop was just outside of our hotel.  Right across the street in Taxim Square, is a cute little tram car.  Very old school like the ones they use in San Francisco.  We pay our 4 TL, hop on the tram and start riding down the street.  Until we realize that the little blue dot on our iPad GPS is not moving in the direction we thought we were supposed to be going.  We were not on the right tram.  Fortunately, that tram line doesn’t go very far and they kicked us off at the end of the line maybe a mile away from our hotel.  So then we started looking for what we thought was another tram station nearby.  We got semi-lost and finally found a metro / subway station, not a tram station.  So we gave up and got a taxi! (P.S.  The subway icons and the tram icons on Google maps look very similar.)  (P.P.S What did we do before GPS?  We would have been completely lost on those curvy Istanbul streets without the iPad.)

The first stop was Topkapi Palace.  Home to the Ottoman Sultans and their harems from the mid-1400’s to the mid-1800’s.  It’s a huge complex with many different buildings but the most interesting part was the tour of the Harem.  The small museum accompanying the tour had a lot of interesting information on the hierarchy of the harem system and how young girls would be educated and could work their way up in the harem system and eventually marry the sultan or another nobleman of the empire.  They also had a pretty impressive collection of jewels and bejeweled artifacts belonging to the sultan.  

 We ate lunch at the café on the terrace overlooking the Bosphorus.  I think we were too tired to remember to take any pictures of that lunch so you’ll have to take our word for it that it was delicious and the view was fantastic!

Next, we walked back towards the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia with the intention of seeing the Basilica Cistern.  But the line was really really long so we just sat in the park and did some quality people watching.  At least until Amanda remembered that we wanted to try some Turkish ice cream and we had seen a vendor just up the street the day before.  So we set off in search of ice cream.  And promptly got lost again.  OK, not really lost, just on a different street than the one we intended.  I’m telling you, Istanbul streets are narrow, curvy, and easy to get mixed up!  But we stumbled upon a great souvenir shop and we eventually found the ice cream stand so it was worth it. 

Turkish ice cream (dondurma) is denser and stickier than American ice cream and probably more delicious also.  I had lemon so it was more like a sherbet than ice cream but was excellent.   “Two qualities distinguish Turkish ice cream: texture and resistance to melting. Inclusion of the thickening agents salep, a flour made from the root of the Early Purple Orchid, and mastic, a resin that imparts chewiness. Dondurma is commonly sold from both street vendor's carts and store fronts where the mixture is churned regularly with long-handled paddles to keep it workable.” (from Wikipedia)

And not far from the ice cream stand was the tram we had been searching for.  So we hopped on and took it back to the hotel.  For reference, the station we should have gotten on that morning near the hotel is underground like the subway … even though it’s a tram line … which is above ground … except that section.  You can understand our confusion.

The final adventure of the day was an 8pm flight from Istanbul to Split Croatia with a very short layover in Zagreb.  More on that and our other Croatia adventures in the next posts.