Istanbul For A Few Days – That’s Where We’ve Been

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Yeah, just as we get going on a bit of a roll with blog posts, we’re off again adding to our little Turkish life adventure tally.

And therefore adding to our ever-increasing stories we want to tell on the blog by way of words, photos, social media and videos – however it happens on the day.

No complaints from our end of course; just thought we’d update on why we’ve been absent from this space for a few days.

37th Istanbul Eurasia Marathon

Sunday morning was the 37th Istanbul Marathon and that’s why we took ourselves back off to Istanbul for the third time this year.

Barry was running in the 15k and I did the 10k. No photos from that as we were both running – but it was the second time for me doing the 10k and, on the first time, I walked it and took photos whilst I went.

We were lucky enough to have a glorious autumnal sunny day again, so, if you’re tempted to join the race some time, here’s the full 10k route scenery to tempt you further.

This year’s looked pretty much the same, give or take a few scaffolding changes between mosques and other historic buildings.

We did manage to post a photo on Instagram and on our Facebook page of our medals – you know, just to prove we did actually pound those streets and cross the finish line and all that.

We love taking part in the runs – just nice to be one little piece of something so big – and, this year, there seemed to be more runners (and walkers) than ever.

A summer of playing out with friends visiting from the UK is far from conducive to decent training so neither of us were expecting personal bests – far from it!

We did our bit though, my time was much better than I expected it to be and what’s come out of all that is a renewed determination to get back into to some description of regular training again, so that’s certainly no bad thing.

Barry goes out for a regular runs anyway – I’m the one who needs to kick myself up the backside, occasionally.

Our travels around Turkey are a bit of a mish mash, to say the least, but that’s what happens when you’re living in a country with such varied landscapes.

We’ve still got lots of tales to tell and small guides to write about the area we covered on our Kemer to Kekova to Kemer gulet cruise, for example.

So there we are, bobbing along in the serenity of the Mediterranean one minute, and the next, we’re at the opposite end of Turkey in its largest city jostling along with 15 odd million other people.

Revisits & Wanders Around Istanbul

Of course, the other great thing about making the effort to take part in these runs is you get to be in different cities.

The run and the expo before it is just a few hours of your time there – some people arrive from abroad purely to do the run and then disappear back from whence they came.

For us, though, if we’re going somewhere, we figure we might as well make the most of the time and have a little jolly, too. (Most of our wanders around Antalya have been as a result of being part of what is now called Runatolia.)

Istanbul is the perfect city to visit, revisit and revisit some more.

While we were there for the run, we obviously decided we hadn’t punished our aching feet and legs enough. We’ve walked, we’ve sailed, we’ve squished ourselves onto the metro like true city dwellers…and we’ve walked some more.

Over the last few days, we’ve reacquainted ourselves with two of Istanbul’s most famous landmarks (there’s an obvious clue in the top photo – and didn’t we mention scaffolding on mosques…) so those two hotspots will be making an appearance on the blog very soon.

Previous visits to these landmarks were not only pre-blog days but also pre-digital camera days – all photos from those visits were in photo albums that became lost during our move to Turkey which was done over a number of stages and a long period of time.

Hmm, anyway, all that meant very overdue visits were necessary to add those pics to the digital archives!

And we also love to go over to the Asian side of Istanbul and, as the weather was so perfectly sunny and autumnal, we couldn’t resist jumping onto the Eminönü to Kadıköy ferry for a little wander around across the water.

Kadıköy market was a must, just because we love to be there – we bought some more tarhana to bring back to Fethiye with us so we can make tarhana soup – but we also walked and wandered around this area with aching legs to explore more sights, too.

Unlikely sights at that – but that’s the complete pleasure of big cities isn’t it?

Dip in, jump back out. And, however much you think you know that city and however many times you visit, something new will always make its presence felt and surprise you. Istanbul is a champion in that game!

Eating, Drinking, Sleeping

And, you know us; we definitely didn’t go hungry or thirsty while we were in Istanbul. We wanted to eat çiğ köfte in Eminönü, again.

We also managed a fabulous crab claw sandwich at one of our regular haunts in Beyazıt.

Fresh Turkish bread, 4 crab claws, a generous drizzle of zesty, lemony, white sauce – 8 TL. That was the first thing we ate on arrival – mmm, what a welcome!

We’ve also found ourselves some new places that will definitely become regulars for us when we’re next in Istanbul and we’ll be writing about those soon.

And, as for resting our weary bodies and closing our eyes; get us with our proper posh hotel that didn’t cost us posh prices! That’ll be appearing on the blog, soon, too. Lovely place!

So, now we’re back enjoying the autumnal peace and quiet of Fethiye – time to get back into training and also up to speed with all these tales we want to tell…

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