Istanbul to Antalya - Day 0: Istanbul
Merhaba!
It's been a while since the last bike tour, but my legs have still been going the entire year. In fact, in preparation for this trip Mylène and I participated in a bike race around Berlin (granted it was not with loaded packs).
As Mylene wrote in a previous post, we have both been casually learning Turkish for the past couple of months and trying it out in our neighborhood I'm Berlin, which had a very large Turkish population.
We packed our bikes up and checked them along with our paniers in the plane.
We arrived early and our couchsurfer was at work, so we found a place in the city center to leave our bike boxes while we went around for the day. We decided against mounting them at the airport and riding into town, which would turn out to be the correct decision. Traffic in Istanbul is horrendous, and probably fairly unsafe for anyone, including bikes.
The first day we spent gawking at the activity around the center of the city. Crossing the Gattala bridge where tons of fishermen cast their lines into the Bosphorus river. They were catching a lit of fish but I wondered about the quality since the river is full of boats. In any case, I didn't wonder for very long since directly under the bridge was a series of restaurants, all selling balık ekmek - basically fish from the fishermen directly above in between two slices of bread. Water quality aside, they were delicious.
Getting to our host's house would further affirm our suspicions about riding in the city. It took about 2 hours in stop and go traffic to drive the 10 miles our so to his house a suburb of Istanbul called Ümraniye. The driver actually didn't know his way around and relied on my GPS and me to navigate, I quickly learned the Turkish words for "right" (sağ), "left" (sol), and "straight" (düz) and we eventually arrived safely...except for that one part where he made a left turn into a one way street into incoming traffic taking my "left" too literally as I meant "next left."
Our host was Yavuz. A computer engineer for a bank. But his real passion is the saz, a traditional Turkish guitar-like instrument. He its quite a skilled player and indulged our many requests. The instrument itself has a large, hollow body and a long skinny neck. The frets are pitched to a much different tonality than a western instrument and includes quarter tones, giving it the typical Turkish wavering effect.
In Istanbul we did some typical tourist activities including some mosques, the Hagia Sofia, and the cisterns.
Tomorrow we will ride out to Tekiedağ, trying to avoid as much of the city as possible...
Yavuz playing the Saz
Balık ekmek stand on the water
Electronic recharging station outside the public restrooms - recharge your phone while relieving yourself
Fishermen of Gallata bridge
It's been a while since the last bike tour, but my legs have still been going the entire year. In fact, in preparation for this trip Mylène and I participated in a bike race around Berlin (granted it was not with loaded packs).
As Mylene wrote in a previous post, we have both been casually learning Turkish for the past couple of months and trying it out in our neighborhood I'm Berlin, which had a very large Turkish population.
We packed our bikes up and checked them along with our paniers in the plane.
We arrived early and our couchsurfer was at work, so we found a place in the city center to leave our bike boxes while we went around for the day. We decided against mounting them at the airport and riding into town, which would turn out to be the correct decision. Traffic in Istanbul is horrendous, and probably fairly unsafe for anyone, including bikes.
The first day we spent gawking at the activity around the center of the city. Crossing the Gattala bridge where tons of fishermen cast their lines into the Bosphorus river. They were catching a lit of fish but I wondered about the quality since the river is full of boats. In any case, I didn't wonder for very long since directly under the bridge was a series of restaurants, all selling balık ekmek - basically fish from the fishermen directly above in between two slices of bread. Water quality aside, they were delicious.
Getting to our host's house would further affirm our suspicions about riding in the city. It took about 2 hours in stop and go traffic to drive the 10 miles our so to his house a suburb of Istanbul called Ümraniye. The driver actually didn't know his way around and relied on my GPS and me to navigate, I quickly learned the Turkish words for "right" (sağ), "left" (sol), and "straight" (düz) and we eventually arrived safely...except for that one part where he made a left turn into a one way street into incoming traffic taking my "left" too literally as I meant "next left."
Our host was Yavuz. A computer engineer for a bank. But his real passion is the saz, a traditional Turkish guitar-like instrument. He its quite a skilled player and indulged our many requests. The instrument itself has a large, hollow body and a long skinny neck. The frets are pitched to a much different tonality than a western instrument and includes quarter tones, giving it the typical Turkish wavering effect.
In Istanbul we did some typical tourist activities including some mosques, the Hagia Sofia, and the cisterns.
Tomorrow we will ride out to Tekiedağ, trying to avoid as much of the city as possible...
Yavuz playing the Saz
Balık ekmek stand on the water
Electronic recharging station outside the public restrooms - recharge your phone while relieving yourself
Fishermen of Gallata bridge
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