Merhaba from Istanbul we're Madison and Ivan and in today's madventure we are here in Istanbul
Turkey, it is our first time in Turkey and we're going to be talking first impressions.
We are already so in awe of just the historic beauty of this place, but also the incredible
modern aspects as well like some of the best roads and the best airport that I have ever seen.
And then all of a sudden you're on the winding cobblestone maze
of historic streets. It's so funny the blend of the old and the new.
And the people already day one, so friendly. I can't wait to dive deeper into this city,
and this country today. We will be eating plenty of delicious food, I have a feeling,
because the smells that you get walking up and down the street, they leave you mouth
watering. Absolutely we are so excited to take a big bite of Istanbul today, Let's madventure!
Istanbul is both on the continent of Europe and the Continent of Asia,
so it is just absolutely incredible this blend of cultures and history that has happened here.
this morning, we woke up and watched the sunrise over Asia. Not something we do
often because I'm not much of a morning person. Yeah, thank you jet lag! Yeah.
this is nice though. We never get to see morning stuff, the sunrise, because we're never awake.
See, you spin jet lag for your benefit. Woohoo jet lag! Yeah that's beautiful.
I'm hungry.
Funny to see a restaurant that's like older than most states in the U.S. since 1864
This is good stuff! I like the crispies. This is no doubt the best
Turkish delight I've ever had.
I am in heaven. We have made it to
Haviz Mustafa. Because we were walking around jet lagged and found this open bakery.
And this is just pages and pages and pages of delicious Turkish desserts. I am so excited.
Turkish Coffee with gum mastic
gum mastic is like a snap of a mediterranean shrub.
apparently had a resurgence lately. To help with your.
Your jawline and facial structure like esthetics
worth a shot. Are you going to get it? Maybe.
So Turkish coffee is actually a preparation of coffee. Like
cappuccino,
an Americano,
with a Turkish coffee, it's a very, very finely ground,
you mix that really finely ground coffee with water,
powder settles to the bottom, and then you drink the concentrated coffee that is lifted to the top,
I have got the Ottoman coffee.
an upgrade on the Turkish coffee.
adds to that some herbs and spices,
I just love that. Like you never get served a cup of coffee by itself.
In Turkey, there's always a little sweet. We've
got Turkish delights there and they give you a bottle of water.
Turkish coffee is always paired with a bottle of water
cleans your palate,
lets you really enjoy the coffee.
And coffee
dehydrates you so it's really nice to replenish with the water
wow so much
going on there.
coffee hits you right away. Turkish coffee is very strong.
very complex flavor.
like whole strands of saffron in there.
You do not get that everywhere.
that is a very rare ingredient.
saffron is more valuable by weight than gold. That is how rare of an ingredient it is
look at that jawline!
is it working? The gum mastic is already improving. My facial aesthetic. amazing
ooooh
to be honest with you, I'm not a fan of Turkish delight.
This is delicious. This is so good.
I got a nut one.
It's delicious very, very great.
So the clotted cream little bit of honey, the classic Turkish breakfast.
So good. This is full service. I love this. Good. Thank you!
The clotted cream is just like
aerated butter.
Like, so light.
if you bite into a stick of butter. maybe you haven't done it? I have.
too much fat on the palate. this
You can eat this with a spoon. It is so, so good.
the honey, is a very mild honey, but has a nice little bit of sweetness.
really good pairing because I could easily see, like,
a really strong, very, like, herbal honey, really overpowering the cream.
But this is perfectly balanced
This is a million times better than cereal.
turkish tea, everything that we've gotten in Turkey so far is always served so beautifully.
it just these little things that make me just already so in love with Istanbul.
And of course, the super friendly service
it's quite good.
Turkish coffee is famous around the world,
but Turkish tea is actually what the majority of locals drink.
it's our first Turkish tea
pinkies out. It is delicious.
Thank you. Oh, that's amazing. Thank you so much.
the hospitality here is just next level. I love this place.
this is a phenomenal way to start the morning.
Dang. I truly am so delighted. And we just wandered into this breakfast place like,
I just. Wow, this is just the perfect morning.
They say you can tell your fortune from the way the coffee grounds settle on the
bottom of a cup of Turkish coffee. Oh.
The fortune says the people watching will subscribe. Hey, good. Good news.
thank you.
If Ismail is a representative of what people in Istanbul are going to be like,
we're never leaving.
He was amazing. This is amazing. I can't wait to explore. And now we're waiting for hopefully
a free walking tour
it said reservations aren't really required just show up a little early.
So we did. And they said it's kind of full, but probably people won't show up.
So fingers crossed, people don't show up. And we get to go on this
free walking tour here in a few minutes. We'll see
We got in.
We learned so much on this tour. So here's a quick summary of some of the history.
Istanbul was colonized in the seventh century B.C. by Greeks. In the three hundreds,
it became part of the Roman Empire. And during this time, the Emperor Constantine declared it
the capital of the Roman Empire and named it Constantinople. It was part of the Roman and
then Byzantine empires for over a thousand years until 1453, when it fell to the Ottoman Empire,
where it remained until after World War One.
That was when the Turkish War of Independence took place and
this country became the Republic of Turkey.
we have this strange habit right now of showing up to places right when
they're celebrating a holiday and everything is closed. Thank you.
There are three restaurants that were at the top of my list to go today, and they were all closed.
But we found this restaurant that was very well rated. It was in a pretty touristy area,
and it has like a 15% service charge.
So it definitely is tourist aimed, but they have a lot of
the local dishes. So we're going to go ahead and give them a try, starting with
The lentil soup. Our tour guide on the amazing tour we just went on recommended lentil soup,
Dang
It's just so well seasoned, like the perfectly hearty, fatty,
yummy spices. And like today's actually a chillier day with, like, a it's quite overcast and, like,
a little bit rainy. So this is just perfect. And honestly, like, sleep deprivation is getting
to me, and this is just like a perfect kind of homestyle dish to, like, help you feel good again
You know?
of course, thanks to the jet lag, we've got another Turkish tea
Pinar told us on our tour that this glass, the shape of this glass, is actually shaped
like a tulip because tulips are originally from Turkey. So cheers to that fun fact.
And lastly, we of course, got kabob
kabob is like what Turkey is known for around the world.
tearing off some of the bread, getting a little meat getting some onions
so moist, still so delicious, but also, like, nicely grilled like this. Just like, I don't know,
you just take ground meat and you combine it with a bunch of delicious herbs and spices.
You cook it well and it's going to be phenomenal. And it truly is so delicious.
I didn't want to like the food here because of the location and it feels touristy.
There's literally a gift shop right there, but it actually truly is delicious. Like
Turkish food is just so good. I really don't know if you can go wrong. life giving
Well, the jet lag got to us, so we're going to take a bit
of a nap and then we're back to exploring beautiful Istanbul.
so we ended up taking a nap because of jetlag midday I was really nervous about
because we not napping people, but our tour guide on the free tour had told us
that The best time to come to the mosques really is at night and boy was she
right earlier today the line outside of Hagia Sophia was insane. Blue Mosque as well.
And just now we came at around 9 p.m. we got straight in and got to really enjoy
the peace and serenity. Like there. There were still a lot of people there, don't get me wrong,
the vibe in there. Like it was such a communal area. There's kids running around screaming,
there's people praying, There's people just relaxing and chatting with friends.
just to feel so surrounded by history.
Hagia Sophia was originally built in 360 A.D. by the son of Emperor Constantine. It was wooden
and it burned in a fire. But it was one of the earliest churches in the world. The second one was
made of stone and marble and about half the size of this one. But it also burned in a bloody riot
Against the most important emperor of the Eastern empire,
Justinian.
During the riot, he prayed. Give me the power to survive. If I do, I promise to build the biggest
church ever. And it was. It was the biggest cathedral in the world for over a thousand years.
After the riot, he changed his ways and
treated people equally. He is where the word justice comes from.
When the Ottoman Empire took over, they turned it into a mosque in only three days
so that they could use it for the next Friday noon prayer.
And they didn't even have to change the name because Hagia Sophia just means holy wisdom.
We really probably did it in the wrong order, I guess,
because we were like, in Hagia Sophia and it was so old and like you could just feel that
this has been around for thousands of years. The stories it could tell
then we go here to the Blue Mosque,
which Ivan and I have already been saying is like Disney World
because the minarets kind of remind us of the spires on the Cinderella's castle.
it truly was like it was so beautiful and, like, new compared to that one, but not actually new
older than my country.
This mosque was built in the early 17th century by Sultan Ahmed The first. usually the amount of
minarets around the mosque show the status of the person who built it. Typically,
four if it was built or converted by a sultan, there's four at Hagia Sophia, four at the Taj Mahal.
Legend has it that the Sultan asked for all gold minarets. Gold is pronounced
(gold in turkish)
And the builder misunderstood him and heard six minarets, which is pronounced. (six in turkish)
What a legendary misunderstanding. He might not be a good listener,
but he's a darn good architect. This place is stunning.
Wow, What a great city. What a great country. I can't wait to see what else Turkey has to offer.
Everything we
ate today has been delicious. Everyone we met today has been so amazing and sweet.
Everywhere we've seen today has been gorgeous.
It's just scratched the surface. We're off to an incredible start
My favorite part is that the old city where all these sites are the Hagia Sophia,
the Blue Mosque, all so very walkable.
What's so crazy here is that there's so much history seeped in everywhere you go that you
see these amazing, beautiful buildings and you're like, oh, this one must be famous.
And it's not. It's like, Oh, no, this is just a just a mosque from the 14th century NBD
No big deal. I love the layering of the history, the fact that there's been like multiple
civilizations that have come and and built on top of what the previous civilization had
built and retained many of the elements of it. I mean, we see Egyptian obelisks from 1400 BC.
carried over
from Egypt
by Constantine the Great.
And then
Hippodrome, the the chariot racing place has been replaced with a new kind of like social center.
physically layered on top of one another. Yeah,
that's so true the physical layering. And then also in the mosque, like it's so amazing because
Hagia Sophia is now a mosque,
it was originally a cathedral.
when the Ottoman Empire took it over and flipped it into a mosque,
they understood the importance of the history still and left some of the
Christian religious iconography,
it's so cool and interesting to see this
working mosque still today with Jesus and some of the apostles,
like depicted with the Angel, with the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus.
And
the blending of history, the blending of religion, the blending of everything. It's a great.
Sign of respect.
these are just two of the amazing historic mosques here in the city.
There are over
3000 mosques here, and all of them do the call to prayer at the same time five times a day.
when we woke up this morning at 4:30 a.m. to the call to prayer, we were a little bit like
4:30 a.m.. Seriously,
our tour guide told us, all of those people, all of the ones in Turkey are live,
they're not recordings. So like, I don't know,
I think I'm going to appreciate it a little bit more knowing that somebody.. it's a human connection
is a human connection. Like some man is singing a call to prayer to me at 430 in the morning.
But yeah, this has just been an amazing start to our time here in Turkey. Like
it's been so beautiful and fun and like it's just the first day exploring. Like
I cannot wait to see how much more delicious food incredible people,
amazing sights this time here is going to hold like it's going to be such an amazing adventure.
So please hit that subscribe button. Hit that like button, join us
for more incredible adventures here in Istanbul, and we'll see you on the next one.
There's a lot of jam.