Istanbul: Day 3 (23 May 2008) - the Bosporus and Uskudar

We took a metro from Sultanahmet Station to the Eminonu Station. As my hubby said, the metro is very clean and convenient but it's always packed with passengers. We used Akbil instead of token. Akbil is very convenient and easy to use (can be shared). You can purchase Akbil at the Akbil booth, and it costs you 6 lira (refundable if you can present the receipt). Also make sure you have sufficient fund inside your Akbil. We put about 44 lira to cover our 3 days expenses using public transportation (metro, bus, ferry, tunel, nostalgic tram). We boarded a ferry to Uskudar (located at the Asian side of Turkey) around 9:30am.
The trip to Uskudar is about 15 - 2o minutes. We really enjoyed the view. Istanbul is really a beautiful city.



We visited two nearby mosques around the ferry port - the Mihrimah Sultan Camii (constructed in 1547 and designed by Mimar Sinan) and the Yeni Valide Camii (constructed in 1710 and designed by Kayserili Mehmed Ağa)

The view from the walking path near the sea is beautiful. We could see Blue Mosque, Aya Sophia and Topkapi Palace from here. The Galata Tower and the bridge that links Asia and Europe side were also visible from here.


We took a small bus to reach Harem, another ferry port. Instead of boarding a ferry to Kalabatas, we boarded the one going back to Eminou.