FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF TURKEY ISTANBUL IS SPECTACULAR!
what's up everyone today we are here in istanbul while we were in the middle east in greece we got many comments from people saying that we had to check out turkey and yeah just a few weeks ago we decided to come here and we're going to be spending a month here because turkey is a very big country right now we're on the rooftop of our apartment get some really awesome views from up here so on google maps it says that that is called the sea of marmara so loads of like boats around here into some islands as well the prince's islands are called but yeah just really nice views and from up here as well you can see the many mosques the minarets the little towers so over here as well you can see some more loads of noisy seagulls as well probably one of the better views we've had in a city right yeah yeah this place is very nice because you can see like different areas of this park i think this this area is called sultan ahmed or something yeah something like that it's like the main historic park yeah and i think that's one of the main areas where the tourists stay when they come to istanbul that's why we're staying here too and this is the spot that we're staying camelot apartments number nine up there somewhere and we really like this area because it's pretty quiet isn't it yeah we needed to find a quiet place to stay because we had some work to do and in instable istanbul is very hard to find a quiet place at least in this area so yeah we find some sort of quiet because there's still the seagulls yeah making the noise some construction yeah but it's a very nice area and like we said it's a touristic area so there are many restaurants and all the things main things to see here it's very close by you can walk to all of them i think yeah so this place has loads of other hotels and apartments around here but there's just not many people walking around here and you'll see in the rest of istanbul there's going to be a lot of people already got another mosque here loads of moths around istanbul another thing about our area we really like the architect style some really nice buildings around here the little cobbled streets as well quite colorful too as you can see so right next to the place that we're staying we kept seeing this big wall here and we've been wondering what it was it's around here it kind of curves around goes all the way around there and yeah you can just tell by looking at it that it's super old looks easily over a thousand years old so after checking online that is actually a public arena from the roman period so where they do like chariot racing horse racing so this is like the outer walls so it's around 2000 years old and it's still standing and now you even have a building on top of a modern building that always reminds me of the film ben hur i'm sure some of you have seen that i always remember the the chariot scene the main scene oh gladiator right so that was in a like a little stadium like that i was wrong to just say little stadium because from what i read that would hold a hundred thousand spectators which is kind of the similar amount to modern day uh football stadiums pretty insane ah that's cool here look i wonder what this is here uh this looks like where water would have come out i guess in the old times so this area that we're in now is called sultan ahmed square and this is where the races would have happened where we're at right now and you have these two obelisks here so you got this one here and then the more impressive one over there which we'll get to so this one looks older but it's actually newer a lot newer it's the 10th century column of constantine no idea how you say that part there it says here that it's one of the three ancient monuments which has survived to the present day in the middle of the hippodrome that's what they call the arena the the hippodrome so some of you have probably heard of constantinople which was the capital of the roman empire and later on the eastern roman empire during the byzantine period and that was here in istanbul that's where we are right now so this is the main obelisk that we were excited to see here the obelisk of theodosius and the reason that we wanted to see it is because that is from egypt so that is from kanak temple which we visited recently and i remember the tour guide telling us that there was two obelisks i think she said one was moved here which we're looking at right now and the other one was where in paris did we see that one in paris i don't know i don't think so right sunny square specific square which we didn't visit i didn't know it was from egypt but when i saw the picture i knew it because of the hierarchy the hieroglyphics yeah and it's very interesting that we are here right now and a few months ago we were in the original place of the of the obelisk yeah so that was built in kanak temple in the 1400s bc and when the romans conquered egypt they transferred that on the river nile to alexandria which is one of the cities the egyptian cities on the coast the mediterranean coast and i think it stayed there for 30 years and then in the fourth century they brought it here so you can get a pretty good close-up view here it's so still super detailed really impressed by how preserved it is so all sides of the obelisk are depicting moses iii victory in syria the egyptian king so there's another cool monument in the square not as old this is from 1895 it's called the german fountain see the locals getting water here it seems like pure water people are drinking it is it nice and cool yes it's very cold actually very refreshing because it's really nice designs in there so they built this because the emperor of germany at the time came here we are now entering the most famous attraction in istanbul which is the sultan ahmed grandmas also known as the blue mosque there is a strict dress code here i think we're good though so yeah if you're a male you have to wear pants well female as well i think you just have to cover until your elbows i think you have to wear a headscarf yeah i brought my scarf yeah carol brought it so it is prayer time right now so visitors aren't allowed we gotta wait about an hour before we can go into the mosque around here so we're just walking around this area this is sultan ahmed park now and there's another mosque over there really cool one um i think this is probably the most impressive mosque we've ever seen right yes i think so we haven't seen many really no that one in oman was very nice too yeah this one is different it looks bigger it looks bigger yeah different colors and stuff yeah it's very impressive that one too yeah that one too can't wait to get inside this is definitely the most beautiful area that we've seen so far really nice green park got a really beautiful big fountain there as well and then moss either side on the fountain you have some really nice mosaics as well i think all around you got different mosaics i guess that's the two mosques there dolphins i don't know if you get dolphins around here wow look at that though for a sight so you can hear the prayers now it seems like they actually take turns so that's the blue mosque right now and then when that guy finishes this one will do the prayer i don't know if it's the same prayer and it's just a continuation or if it's different they seem to be repeating the same thing i think so we've decided to come to the higher sofia mosque first got a big big line all the way outside in the park so it seems like it's for free right yeah you don't have to pay anything and if you need any spark or anything i think they can land you at the entrance but i think it's for free too yeah pretty epic looking entrance here wow look at the size of the doorway doorway for giants wow this looks amazing inside already this place is huge yeah yeah especially the the ceiling man the ceiling is so high so it's more like a golden and black it seems golden and black haven't really seen that mixture of colors before some blues over there this side's really faded but also kind of golden good shots yeah this is crying too it's got these cool like chandeliers as well everywhere wow look at the size of that one in the middle oh yeah i think that's the biggest one yeah that's definitely the biggest one i'm gonna sit down here on the floor after all that standing up in the queue so this place was originally constructed in 537 by a eastern roman emperor called justinian the first it was the christian cathedral of constantinople and at that time it was the largest cathedral in the world for a long time until the fall of the roman empire so in 1453 there was the fall of constantinople and that's when the romans or the byzantine empire was defeated by the ottomans and then this place was quickly converted into a mosque so this is interesting we were just about to leave through this exit here and as you can see that almost looks like uh christian images there i think i think it is so i don't know if that's from the past i think in mocks that we've been to you never really see images of people do you see patterns and designs like the mandalas and the designs are geometric and yeah and usually on like at catholic churches you see the the saints and jesus it's just different so we're going to grab some lunch now carol found some places on google maps that have a rooftop views so we're going to check those places out probably be a bit more expensive so far the food has been really affordable here i think we've been paying like three to four dollars for for some meals so it'll probably be more than that i got some other angles of the blue mask ah so even down here there's some nice restaurant areas and this is one of the bizarre areas the market areas probably be checking out a market properly in the next video oh it looks pretty cool though doesn't it yeah turkish market so we found a good spot nice breeze as well nice and cool so you got sea views right there you want to sit on the sea and got an amazing view here of the blue mosque look at that now you can see it completely as expected it is more expensive i think it's almost like double right what we've been paying the other days yes i think for the vegetarian casaroli which i ate another day i paid 90 and here is 140. yeah so we always get these cheese rolls that's going to be 80 liters and i think i'm going to go for the chicken 150 i think that's it right there what are you getting the same as usual the vegetarian oh the one that you just mentioned the price so i got this drink that's popular here it's called iron it's like a salted milk tasted weird at first but it's grown on me i actually like it now and then the places here always bring the bread it's almost like a naan bread right like an indian naan red yeah yeah and then this is like a spicy sauce and this is like some sort of yogurt right yeah so these are the cheese rolls right here also has a bit of herbs inside we've been getting this with every single meal since we've been in turkey so far every single meal i love that they put the herbs it gives a different taste than just the cheese roll so the portions are always great here in turkey so far and this has been one of my favorite meals the chicken shish kebab i really like the red sauce and got roasted potatoes together in the other place they always have this little slice of bread as well and then besides that just got some cabbage lettuce some onions there and other herbs tomatoes pepper they even brought some more bread so this is for free it's always been for free in every place that we've gone so that's good other places in europe usually charge and yours looks better than other places looks different yeah in other places i think they put like a tomato sauce but here is like a cheesy sauce so yeah totally different from the other casseroles that i had but it's very good too it's like potatoes mushrooms tomatoes i think some other things on top here and cheese yeah carol loves cheese so yeah that's a good thing so just like in greece they've given us some free things at the end so we got some free turkish tea and this is called baklava looks similar to the desserts that we had in like egypt and amman yeah it's a bit summer i think they have like lava over there too yeah i can't have it because it has a pistachios nuts i'm allergic go inside yeah that would kill me we're heading into the blue moss now as you can see it's under construction here or reconstruction so can't really see how it would look from the outside from here well this part you can so unfortunately we're not seeing this place at its best so even on the inside they're doing loads of maintenance so you can't really see much to be honest just a bit there through the middle the designs look nicer though since it is a lot newer than the other one oh yeah besides that if you look around on the ground you can't see any of the walls or anything it's come back another time i guess yeah it's a shame like like i said the ceiling looks awesome yeah so this one was built in 1616 much later than the other one under the rule of ahmed the first and his two may say ahmed the first and it was built on top of a byzantine palace the xanthine palace is beneath here and once this was constructed this became the main mosque of istanbul no longer higher sophia that we just visited and i wish we could see it though without all this construction so here we can see how it is supposed to look on the inside so we couldn't see this outside area here definitely couldn't see that it looked like this from the inside i can't really see anything right now to be honest yeah it does look beautiful though look at that so next to the mosque of higher sophia there are some more attractions so we have the fountain here another fountain really cool one and we're heading into the palace here which is now a museum almost looks like a castle walls are like a fort on the outside what's this about the fountain fountain of ahmed the third 1729 it's beautiful isn't it yeah i really like the designs yeah almost looks like a temple yeah and i really like that they have these things here like uh we've seen many historical places here they all have the same thing explaining which is very good it's like a obelisk yeah yeah and i think they have in other languages too yeah i guess that's turkish isn't it yeah and then this is arabic i guess yeah so as carol was saying they have the obelisk of information in front of everything so this palace is called top cafe alice says that it was built after the conquest of constantinople in 1453 so just like the area outside got a really nice green garden area here just a very nice place overall i got some horses coming through so this is just the courtyard area we do have to buy tickets to enter this place i have to see how much it is i think the actual palace area is behind there oh that's a cool wall cool entrance the towers carol going for the illegal shortcut long legs long legs so the ticket that we got was 420 per person and that's entrance to the paris museum and something called the harem section so our first stop is in haring and look at this it's beautiful you got the the tiles everywhere ceramics it looks like the palaces that we went to in india which were islamic too and also the one that we visited remember the big one which was islamic too yeah yeah so you had all these cool tiles there so this palace was the residence of the sultans in the 15th and 16th centuries and then in the 17th century they moved to another palace around here and this one was kind of abandoned this right here is definitely the best room so far so this is called the imperial hall so important ceremonies would happen here like weddings birth ceremonies oh look at the ceiling as well yeah so we mentioned the palace is the indian palaces it was like this as well i remember there'd be a big area like this the seats were very similar and there's so much artwork though one big piece of art the entire room so even in the courtyard area still looks amazing they still have the tiled walls this side's more plain but still really cool architecture i think it reminds us the most of udaipur yeah i don't remember the name of the place but it was like a palace like this very similar it was beautiful one of the most beautiful attractions in the area yeah if you want to know what we're talking about check out the udaipur vlog maybe i can link it at the end of this video very similar the palace style so inside the palace you also get some awesome views here so this is the river that splits the two continents so istanbul on that side is in asia and we're in europe right now so there is a bridge back there and you can cross from europe into asia and there's also a tunnel here what below yeah yeah like connecting the two continents oh really yeah channel we got it oh okay with the car yeah i thought you meant like a walking tunnel i was like what the hell i can walk over there there's the bridge and also the tunnel yeah you have to pay at all right to get across yeah we did that we went over there because there's a big mall about two days ago ah so not only in greece you have cats chilling everywhere turkey also has loads of cat chill spots yeah we've seen loads of cats around turkey as well they're always well fed yeah so we've left the palace now but we're still going to do some more exploring still got a bit of energy it's really nice out here this neighborhood loads of like little restaurants around here and as you can see you can get around on these trams if you want what is that a scooter yeah with a logo oh with luggage that's why i couldn't work out what it was that's a good way to travel around we need to do that so we're gonna go through these walls here i guess this is still like the old walls of the historic city and there's a park here so we're gonna walk through the park yeah so so far literally everywhere we go in istanbul it is absolutely beautiful once again this park don't know how you pronounce it i think it's called kulani park look at this um so we're going a different way back home we're kind of circling around so now we're walking along the river here got many local fishermen around here loads of cats around here as well maybe they're waiting for the free fish from the fishermen these dudes are swimming i didn't know you could swim around here you have the original byzantine wall from the byzantine era so yeah it's heavily damaged but still standing for the most part looks like they might have renovated it the part on the top looks pretty new yeah this area looks new as well looks like they're restoring it maybe now we've got kitchen overload look at all these little kittens here like three of them look the same hey carol look at these guys just floating down floating away wow that's dangerous i wouldn't do it where are they going um so it's the next day now i almost forgot to close this video so closing it out now and this is the place that we're staying i didn't show you the room so this is 40 euros a night so it's just a small little room right now we only have this view before we were in another apartment above with a nice view but now we got this view so the reason we changed is because we decided to stay longer in istanbul extend our stay and that room wasn't available that one was around 50 euros i think about 10 euros more but the view was really awesome and besides that just as usual got a nice modern bathroom and just a fridge there is a place where we can cook outside the other room for 10 euros more also had a like a little kitchen inside the apartment so it was a lot better but this is a nice room anyway and the internet's good and we're planning on making one more video here in istanbul there's still a lot more to do so that will be the next video if you like this one just drop a like to support us subscribe like see more 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2022-07-11 05:55
