Business meetings + slow travel + big city recharge + family time = fantabulous first trip with Sulana in the city of transformation 🕌
Istanbul is a beautiful city with such a rich history–it’s over 3,700 years old!
✅️ From Izmir we drove over 400km of highway in 4 hours, including 1.5 hrs of traffic in the greater Istanbul area. It’s about 100km longer than Manila to Daet (Bicol) and Koray says when he was a kid this trip was also about 8 to 10 hours. Amazing they cut travel time to less than half today. Hoping PH can catch up and do the same.
✅️ It’s a hilly city! ⛰️ Much like San Francisco, walking around İstanbul will definitely up anyone’s fitness level. Izmir is mostly flat and very organized, with reliable public transportation from end to end (about 250km). İstanbul is a different story…more rowdy and chaotic, difficult parking, drivers are hotheads that honk at you for being slow (parallel parking here is on ninja levels), and cab drivers are a mix of really nice to really shady.
✅️ On the upside, Su got to ride the subway for the first time and enjoyed it so much that on her second try said, “Can we pretend it’s my first time on the subway again?”
✅️ The drive home was a different story, because Koray wanted the scenic route along the coast of Çanakkale. We were almost 12 hours on the road with slow driving and pit stops, including a short walk around the old city of Troy, which deserves a proper revisit.
We weren’t in a hurry to visit everything (we knew we’d be back), so we just took in the city slowly.
Non-touristy Highlights for me:
🚶♂️walking around local neighborhoods, shops and malls AND being able to chat up people in English (yay!)
🍪getting our fill of non-Turkish foods and flavors including superfudgey brownies and cookies
🌉driving around the Bosphorus road at night
🇵🇭 visiting the PH consulate and talking in Filipino again
🏙 visiting the Anatolian side and seeing the street come alive with residents just enjoying their neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon
😎 just vibing with the city and its super friendly people, who are extra nice to children (Turkey is really known to be children-friendly)