Eminönü - Kadıköy

TRAVEL

TURKEY

Eminönü - Kadıköy - Çamlıca

Saturday 22 January 2022

Snow! Overnight it has snowed! We could see a thin white blanket of snow across the rooftops from our hotel window.

Having written our postcards yesterday, we were keen to post them today, but we needed to find some stamps and a post box or a Post Office.

We had been told that there was a post office near the Hagia Sophia, so we headed back to the square to begin the search. We asked Police Officers, Shop Keepers and even passers-by. Each time the directions we were given, or rather the ones that we followed ended in failure, so we continued with the rest of our plan. Visit the Grand Bazaar and then catch a ferry across the Bosphorus to the Kadıköy area on the Asian side.

The Grand Bazaar was quiet. It is Winter and very cold, but even still, the merchants seem disinterested in the few shoppers wandering around the maze of tiny shops.

We managed to reach the ferry port of Eminönü without buying a carpet or a kilo of some unknown spice, but we were a little hungry and so splashed out on a couple of Simits. Simits are circular bread encrusted with sesame seeds. They were incredibly cheap and kept us going for the rest of the day.

Walking towards the ferry terminals at Eminönü, we noticed a large Post Office. Our excitement was short-lived as it was closed. Today was Saturday, and the Post Office would be closed until Monday, by which time we would have left Istanbul altogether.

The ferry to Kadıköy was a pleasant surprise. Large leather seats and plenty of room. We sat next to the heater, a standard ‘house’ radiator behind a wooden cover. Without fuss or ceremony, we had left Europe and arrived in Asia.

The Asian side of Istanbul seemed a lot like the European side, only a little slower and more relaxed. True to form, we found a small coffee shop and decided to rest and consider our next move.

For some reason that escapes me now, we decided to walk five miles uphill to the Çamlıca Mosque. The mosque is popular with tourists and locals for the fantastic sunrise and sunset views, but today, there was snow on the ground and snow clouds in the sky, so we knew that there would not be any sunsets worthy of Instagram. Still, we walked.

It wasn’t long after we left the coffee shop that it started to snow, and the further we went uphill, the harder it snowed.

The Küçük Çamlıca TV Radio Tower was an excellent navigational aid. At 369 metres, you can see it from most of Istanbul, and our route to the mosque took us right past the tower and the park that surrounded it.

The Çamlıca Mosque is the largest in Turkey. It is not old; the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, inaugurated it in 2019, and it has a capacity of sixty-three thousand people.

Knowing we had to walk from the Eminönü ferry port to the hotel, we didn’t fancy walking the five miles back to Kadıköy. The temperature dropped, and we got cold, so we opted for an Uber.

By the time we had reached our hotel, we had walked ten miles. We did not venture far for dinner.