Last night we realized that we are not beside one great neighborhood, but sandwiched between two - the already mentioned Beyoglu and Cihangir. The reason we hadn't visited Cihangir before last night is largely a result of growing up in the US. Back there, if you see a dark alley you avoid it like the plague. In Istanbul, you waltz on down it and find antique shops, cafes, bars, restaurants and countless people enjoying their days. After we discovered this last night it was inevitable that we would return for breakfast, and as it turns out, dinner.
For breakfast we stopped by the retro 70's restaurant Journey for a quick bite. The menneman, eggs and juice were solid and helped propel us on to what was our big excursion for the day - a ferry out to Heybeliada, one of the Princes' Islands 20km southwest of Istanbul in the Sea of Marmara. Part of the fun was the ferry ride (which was almost ruined by 'selfie-stick' wielding passengers) that took us passed European and Asian Istanbul and a handful of islands before we arrived at Heybeliada. The island has no cars, meaning that transport is by bike, horse or walking. We chose to uphill through the not so scenic town to the Merit Halki Palace; a hotel with nice views over the sea. As the only patrons, we enjoyed our espressos alone on the balcony before we followed the advice of their guest relations manager and hiked up to the currently shuttered Greek Orthodox Monastery at the top of the island (see: politics for the reason behind this) to see their gardens and views. Despite being closed, the grounds were open to anyone who wanted to visit - essentially us and three women of unknown origin - and were very well maintained. After just a few hours on the island we succumbed to Istanbul's pull and took an express ferry back to the city.
Our first stop back was the Blue Mosque, which was fun partly because we got to play dress-up...Amanda sported a scarf over her head and Brian donned a skirt/short/pant to hide his legs. The mosque itself is beautiful. Unfortunately, there are so many Ottoman-era lights hanging from the dome and ceiling that it is hard to appreciate the tile design and caligrophy without being distracted by cables, wires and lightbulbs.
Afterwards we had a quick bite with singers and a whirling dervish before we spent some time in the bazaar - and the bazaars around the bazaar. Perhaps we were overwhelmed by its scale, so we have no purchases to report.
But, we did get hungry. So back we went up to Cihangir, where we stumbled upon Mellow for an entirely calm, delicious and Italian-style dinner with fantastic ambience.
Also, and so we don't forget, there was a man with a horse selling watermelon off his cart in front of our hotel. It makes no sense, but it happened.
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