Day 2 in Istanbul

I spent my second day in Istanbul flying solo because Darius had to work. It was a little daunting at first. I had "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon playing in my head all day because I was that stranger who didn't speak the language. Fortunately, I held enough currency to get some food and had enough training from the day before to have mastered the ferry and bus system. I still got a little lost at one point. Actually, I knew where I was the whole time, I just couldn't find Dolmabache Palace, the massive Ottoman castle I was looking for as I walked right past it twice. I eventually discovered the entrance only to find it was closed anyway. Not to worry though, that just left me more time to wander.

For the first half of the afternoon I explored Rumelihisari (also known as "The Throat Cutter"), a fortress that was built in 4 months in 1493 to cut off supply lines to the city of Constantinople so that Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II could conquer it. The thing is massive and was all mine when I was there. There were only a handful of other tourists and some guards and there are no handrailings or ropes to prevent you from climbing all over everything. It was windy and the fortress has a comanding view of the Bosporus at it's narrowest point. I felt like a kid on a jungle gym as I scrambled all over and took a million pictures for about two hours.

This still only took up about half of the afternoon so I decided to walk back to Istanbul through some of the upscale waterfront suburbs that line the Bosporus. I watched freighters pass a few hundred feet from the shore, dwarfing everything else around. There were fisherman and a dozen or more boats that claimed to be from Wilmington, Delaware. It took me about 2 hours to get back to Besiktas, where I met Darius to go pick Meredith up at the airport, but I felt like I had a much better feel for the city by the end of the day.