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After our visit to Istanbul with the facebook group “Istanbul – The City of our Heart” I want to share with you our suggestions for the City that we all have deep in our hearts…

It has been called the crossroads of civilizations…. queen of cities…. capital of Byzantium and three successive empires… the only city built on two continents. Europe and Asia…….the city of the senses…..of endless legends….of the flavours of the East….of multiple memories… of its unique heritage and its glorious past…For the Turks Istanbul, for us Greeks Istanbul….a place full of contrasts, which certainly evokes mixed feelings.

It is the legendary city, which for more than a thousand years was a synonym of power, wealth and culture for the entire Mediterranean world of the Middle Ages. A city that from its birth has carried the glory of its ancient ‘mother’, Rome. The Turks conquered it and since then the famous Constantinople gave way to Istanbul. For all Greeks, not only in Greece but also throughout the world, Polis remains deeply rooted in their hearts and souls. So we come to know it…. to walk and feel it with all our senses…

As soon as you set foot in the City of sensations and hallucinations, its volume startles you. With 17 million inhabitants, it takes on the appearance of a monstrosity. On the tours that take place in the City of our heart, people usually head for the tourist spots of the City… so I will direct you to very beautiful places different from the ones where tourists go, so that you can get to know another side of our beloved City…

Tourists will walk two or three times along the most famous pedestrian street: they will stare at the picturesque red trams that cross it, with young stowaways sitting outside on the steps to avoid paying the ticket, buy baklava sprinkled with pistachio and shop in the Turkish department stores, which admittedly have better prices on the same brand names.

You, however, wander around Istiklal and get lost in its vertical streets; that’s where all the charm of the city lies… and don’t be afraid of getting lost. That’s the goal, aimless wandering that will relax you from the stress of everyday life. After all, time in Istanbul is inherently lazy. Each alley has its own unique character and distinct morphology. In some, the facing windows are so close together that only one person can pass between them. In others, shopkeepers will treat you to tea on a tin tray or you’ll hear gramophones playing oriental music.

Hidden galleries of French architecture with junk shops, restaurateurs frying mussels and serving them on straws, designer clothing stores with clever prints on short sleeves – “Some call it chaos, we call it our home,” wrote one commenting on Istanbul; stalls with all sorts of spices and nuts, tiny cafes where left-wing Turkish youth are forging their militant consciousness. Everything will unfold before you. Just get off the beaten track.

as noted in a Guardian analysis of the istanbul airport taxi drivers’ unknown war with the municipalities, being a taxi driver in Istanbul, a metropolis that spans two continents and is “washed by three seas”, is not easy. Unlike what is true of other metropolises, in Istanbul taxi drivers do not own their vehicles. Instead, the approximately 50,000 taxi drivers rent and share in shifts the 17,395 licensed taxis in Istanbul.

The problem starts with the fact that although Istanbul’s population, which in the early 1990s under Erdogan’s mayoralty was about 8 million people, has now almost doubled, the number of taxi licenses has not changed at all. This anomaly has led to the creation of a card of wealthy taxi license holders: the price of a taxi license fluctuates but is currently estimated at 2.6 million Turkish lira (over 250,000 euros).