London to Istanbul – Epic Rail Journey : Day 12
On all of our trips it is Mrs MA who is in charge of cultural excursions. She does the checking and lets me know the places that she really wants to see. On the whole I go along with her suggestions as they are very rarely wrong, although I tend to draw the line at Art Galleries as they invariably do nothing for me, and on these occasions I go for a beer and we meet up again later. For today I was informed that we would be going to see the cistern. Exactly! More precisely the Cisterna Scufunadată Acces, the underground water storage system of ancient Istanbul. Yet again Mrs MA came up with goods as the place is amazing, and not only because it was incredibly cool down there, temperature wise. You descend down to a vaulted cellar area that is basically a reservoir, and it is big. The architecture is amazing, the lighting sets everything off perfectly and I even enjoyed the sculptures that had been placed throughout.
After finishing here we grabbed some refreshments and then fell back on an old favourite on these kind of trips, the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus tour. We invariably never Hop-Off but do find them a good way of seeing large swathes of a city without the accompanying walking. This tour also took us over the bridge so we could say that we had also done the Asian side of Istbanul.
By late afternoon we headed back to the hotel where we follow the previous days routine, siesta for Mrs MA and a trek out to the suburbs for me where I had a bar and a brewery tap earmarked to visit. Google Maps told me that the first bar, the furthest out, was a tram, bus and 15 minute walk away. A fairly standard journey for me on my bar visits, but I hadn’t realised that the 15 minute walk would be up a vertical street! At the half way point I stopped and figured that my options were to either die on the spot, bail out, press on, or call a taxi for the last few hundred metres. I pulled myself together and pressed on to Sanayi 1A Nişantaşı, one of two branches of this bar in the city, the other being even further out. It is a smart, modern bar offering a great selection of Turkish breweries across its 16 taps although only a dozen were on today. The first beer didn’t touch the sides as I struggled to both stop sweating profusely and get as much oxygen back in to my lungs as possible. I followed this up with two flights of four and enjoyed the pleasant company chatting to the barman and locals.
Sanayi 1A Nişantaşı, Teşvikiye, Ferah Sok. No:15/A, 34000 Şişli/İstanbul, Türkiye
From here I made my way back to the old town, passing by the Beşiktaş Stadium on the way. The very heavy police presence in the area vindicated my decision to the bars around here the previous day. Buried in the labyrinthine streets of the old town is the very modern tap room, TaproomX, home of SomX brewery. 17 beers were available, 11 their own plus 6 guests. They do flights of 6 beers, and with 2 of their own beers sold out I managed to come up with a combination that got me all 9 of the SomX beers plus 1 of the guests from a new brewery. I sat inside because it was cooler, but everybody else preferred to sit on the terrace in the narrow street.
TaproomX, Asmalı Mescit, Jurnal Sk. No:4, 34430 Beyoğlu/İstanbul, Türkiye
It was now time for me to head back for another relaxed dinner with Mrs MA at the hotel.