İstanbul in 20 monuments or less

Fortunately most of our guests realize that while a tour of the highlights of Turkey can be done in a week, they know that it will most likely end up being a blur of historic sites. While they may have interesting photos to show when they return home, they will also be exhausted. Many people opt for concentrating on seeing only the sights of İstanbul. While tour companies can whip them through Sultanahmet in under a day, we try to help them map out a more reasonable visit, hopefully one that includes a little down time to simply observe life here. The main sights in Sultanahmet can be leisurely covered in two days, with another day spent in the bazaars and surrounding environs. If there is time left, a boat trip up the Bosporus is in order, as is a trip to the Princes’ Islands (Kızıl Adalar). Another day can easily be spent touring palaces on both sides of the Bosporus, or checking out exhibitions at museums. For guests with extra time and a little sense of adventure, we sometimes take a trip around the old city walls, stopping along the way to check out anything that catches our attention and piques our interest.

Sometimes, though, it is the guests themselves who offer us interesting insights into our own city. One friend arrived for her first visit to the country eager to begin seeing a city she had dreamed of seeing first-hand for many years. An art historian specializing on the Justinian era, she led me on an absolutely fascinating tour of Hagia Sophia. Her off-the-cuff commentary on the murals outstripped any tour book I have ever read. Unfortunately I failed to take notes and still have to rely on books for information when there. We took an entire day to wind our way through the Chora Church, with her expert commentary far outstripping the professional tour guides who zipped through with their groups in tow. We ended up with a small entourage of our own, made up of guideless tourists gripping their guidebooks, craning to hear her detailed explanations.

Friends arrived from California who were interested in Greek churches, so we spent a couple days discovering tiny churches tucked away and mostly forgotten in quiet neighborhoods. We finished off their trip with a visit to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Fener and a meeting with one of the priests. He gave us a personal tour of the numerous religious artifacts, relating the story of each saint in exacting detail. As we listened and marveled over each item, we noticed a group of what we assumed to be Greek tourists edging closer and closer as we slowly moved through the chapel. The priest’s explanations were in Turkish, which was then translated into English by my husband for the benefit of our guests. Apparently no one in the Greek group understood Turkish, but one young man in the group understood some English, so he listened to the English translation and relayed that in Greek to the others.