Avoid these touts in Istanbul 🇹🇷

I planned on visiting 9 countries in March and April, but because of the dreaded thing happening in the world that may not speak it's name, I had to cancel flights to 8 of those countries, which left me with Istanbul only. Istanbul was literally meant to be an overnight stay to swap flights, but it turned out I now had the choice to stay in Istanbul for a week before returning to Manchester.

I visited Istanbul on my own, on a solo trip, which was meant to include other countries like Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan and Lebanon, but that didn't happen. I made the best of a bad situation by spending some time in Istanbul, where Asia meets Europe. Europe and Asia are separated by the Bosphorus, the most important strait in the world. The Bosphorus allows the Black Sea to connect to the Aegean Sea, which goes on to the Mediterranean and can go down through Egypt using the Tiran straight into the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.

In the video I checked out some of the old Ottoman Empire architecture, Roman architecture, Istanbul's mosques, including the famous blue mosque. I tried some local food, including Turkish delight, a Turkish pizza, a Turkish kebab and I tried a lot of tea, including apple tea which was recommended to me before I went by a friend. It was excellent.

I give some information about Turkey, the Turkish flag compared to the Ottoman Empire flag, a very brief history of the area regarding The Roman Empire, The Byzantine Empire and The Ottoman Empire which all at one point had control of what is now Turkey and Istanbul. Istanbul used to be called Constantinople, which you may have heard of.

I was collared by two touts I'll call them. They were both really nice guys, but obviously, ultimately, they were trying to get me to go to their friend's shops to buy stuff. I'm very tight with money and I'm extremely hard to persuade, but I was actually looking to buy some stuff for my mum for mother's day, so they caught me on the two times where it was possible to get me to buy stuff. When I got to the shops, their colleagues did try to sell me everything, sweets, tea, Turkish delight and even Turkish carpets, but I'm not scared of saying no, and I went away only spending about £10 in each shop. If you're in this situation, they will be friendly to you, but you need to pay clear attention to how much you're spending, because their currency is completely different to ours, so you may not know how much you're spending, and you're definitely overpaying any way no matter how much you do end up spending. These prices are tourist prices.

If you have never seen my videos before, I like to drop into a city, pick a few things to see, but I generally just walk aimlessly trying to find things and I usually stumble upon something I wasn't expecting to see, somebody to talk to, some food to eat, something to take photos of and the odd time I get into a bit of trouble.

I stayed in a hotel called the Sefa Hotel, and it was not good, I would not recommend it. I would recommend booking a nice Airbnb. If you use my link to sign up for Airbnb, you will get £34 off your home booking. And you will also get £9 to use toward an experience worth £36 or more. https://www.airbnb.co.uk/c/martinm15460

This video was taken during the coronavirus pandemic. What was it like in Istanbul Turkey during the coronavirus. This was what it was like during Turkey lockdown during the global pandemic.

Location: Istanbul, Turkey

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