Istanbul Ferry to Check Out Kadikoy

This morning we walked up to and then down through the streets near the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar. We can now navigate this area without referring to the map, which is quite cool. We went to the Eminönü ferry terminal and, using our Istanbul Card, boarded a ferry heading to Kadıköy on the Asian side of the city.

The ferry takes about 20 minutes and is a nice way to see the city from a different perspective. We didn’t have anything in particular we needed to do or see on the other side — it was more just to say we’d been there. The one-way ride cost us 50 lira each, about $2 NZD.

We wandered around the streets on the other side just to have a look. There were a couple of statues and some lively local streets. I couldn’t walk past a raspberry jam-filled donut, and we also got a simit bread straight from the oven for me, and a pastry for Sarah. It was close enough to lunchtime to call it lunch. 😉

Wander completed, we headed to a metro station thinking we’d try that mode of transport on the way back. But after checking the metro map, we realised it would require two line changes. That sounded a bit too complicated for a short journey, so we grabbed the ferry instead. It stopped at Karaköy first and then dropped us back where we started.

The walk back through the bazaar streets was much more hectic and claustrophobic than on any of our previous walks there — far too many people in the narrow lanes today.

Soon after we arrived back, our apartment host Abuzer messaged us to say he was dropping off some food he had made: two plates of chickpeas with pilaf rice, chicken, and tomatoes. It was delicious. We shared one and kept the other to have with dinner. Sarah Googled it and found that it’s called tavuklu pilav — a very common dish here.

Our dinner tonight was therefore a bit of a mixed bag: fried eggs on pide bread (similar to the one we had yesterday, but today’s had cheese in it), plus a small pizza, and the rice dish Abuzer made for us.

Tomorrow is our last day in Istanbul — and our last day in Europe, for this trip anyway. A mixture of feelings: both happy and a little sad that we’ll soon be heading closer to home.