I Visited Istanbul With No Plan 🇹🇷

Four days in Istanbul, and the most straightforwardly enjoyable video in this part of the backfill. Harry is upfront in the first sentence that the Turkish tourism board invited him on a free trip.

The spine of it is craft. Coffee boiled in sand in a minute. A barber’s treatment that runs to ten stages and includes burning the hair off his ears. A baklava shop trading since 1864. A hammam operating since 1720, with the furnace room preserved so you can see how the floor was heated. And the Grand Bazaar, where the sellers are better negotiators than he is and he says so.

Obs: this is a hosted press trip and the video also carries a commercial sponsor segment. The pages built from it record only the travel content.

Key moments

• [00:00] The disclosure: the Turkish tourism board invited him, free of charge.
• [00:34] Turkish coffee brewed in hot sand — a method he has never seen.
• [01:39] It boils in about a minute. 80 lira.
• [02:45] Why the water comes with it: it cleans the palate, and it rehydrates you after a coffee that dehydrates.
• [02:45] The Ottoman rule — drink the water first and you’re signalling that you’re hungry, and the kitchen starts cooking.
• [03:23] His verdict: very strong, an acquired taste, and he likes it.
• [04:28] Galata Tower, a former Byzantine lighthouse, now the city’s viewpoint. $20–25, and worth it.
• [06:37] The history: founded 660 BC, Constantinople under the Greeks, then Byzantine and Ottoman, now 15 million people.
• [07:12] Turkish people as the most extroverted he’s met — all-day talking, long dinners, and open passion about football, food and work.
• [07:45] The barbershop, at 550 lira, about $20.
• [08:50] The shave comes first, which he has never had before a cut.
• [08:50] Eyebrows, which he didn’t know was part of it.
• [09:29] A facial that stings badly.
• [10:01] The cut and the facial happening simultaneously.
• [10:32] Nose wax.
• [11:03] The ear hair burned off with a flame, which he does not see coming.
• [11:42] Ear candling — and the wax visibly coming out into the candle.
• [13:52] His verdict on the whole thing: the attention to detail is unbelievable, and he can’t see why barbers elsewhere don’t do any of it.
• [14:23] Tonic, head massage, styling and cologne.
• [16:05] A chicken döner wrap, 45 lira, from a place with almost no English.
• [16:36] The observation about it in England: everyone eats this at four in the morning after a night out.
• [18:20] Better here — and better sober.
• [18:53] Döner is the cooking method, not the meat. Vegetable döner exists.
• [20:14] A baklava shop trading since 1864, where the free taster is the sales technique and it works.
• [21:54] A small box, 300–600 lira. Pistachio and walnut.
• [24:20] The Grand Bazaar, and his own prediction that he’ll get outplayed.
• [24:46] One of the oldest and biggest markets in the world — clean, well lit, and effectively a town inside the city.
• [25:23] A seller refuses to be filmed.
• [25:54] Harry’s reading: the goods are counterfeit and a camera creates a problem — and some people just don’t want filming, which is fine.
• [26:58] A fake watch, asked at 650.
• [28:01] He offers 400, and settles at 450.
• [29:11] The seller’s own pick for the city: the food and the nightlife.
• [29:41] Galataport — the working port where a wall goes up along a line to create a customs hall for passport checks, then comes down again.
• [30:16] Hagia Sophia, formerly a church and now a mosque, and the city’s number one site.
• [30:46] A 40-minute queue, so he skips it for the Blue Mosque and the Basilica Cistern.
• [31:20] The hammam, and the two kinds — the traditional version where a large man scrubs you, which he has done and calls traumatising, and the modern one.
• [32:27] The külhan: a man whose whole job was keeping a fire burning under the boiler to heat the water and the floor above.
• [33:35] Light came through glass domes because you couldn’t use fire for lighting in the steam. Pigeons live in some of them.
• [34:42] Hot enough inside to work as a sauna, with a heated marble slab.
• [35:48] The scrub, which takes the dead skin off.
• [36:51] Salt spread over him, then a mask.
• [38:05] And then an enormous amount of foam.
• [39:04] His verdict: he expected a quick scrub and got the most relaxed he has ever been.
• [41:19] Turkish tea to finish — and the fact that Turkey drinks more of it per head than any country in the world.
• [41:54] A Bosphorus cruise, Europe on one side and Asia on the other, which he rates the best way to see the city.

Extracted pages

• Place: Istanbul
• Country: Turkey
• Tips: When people don’t want to be filmed