Sitting at 879 feet above sea level, Çamlıca Hill looks down over the Bosporus strait from the Asian side of Istanbul. From the top of this hill, over the rooftops of Üsküdar (I’ll talk about this neighborhood in the next post), there is a nice view of the Bosporus Bridge. Off in the distance, the Prince Islands are visible. The day that we visited, however, the visibility was pretty poor. It was a grey few days that I spent in Istanbul, but I didn’t mind.

At the top of Çamlıca Hill is a little park, with places to eat, and a large outdoor patio to sit at. Here there were families spending quality time together. There were young couples canoodling. There was a wedding party – enormous white dress and all – sitting at a table having a few ice cream cones. There was a group of men sitting together, one of whom was wrapped in bandages, which were covering a pretty gnarly and fresh-looking head wound. Around the periphery an old Syrian women begged for money. There were a lot of interesting stories happening here at once. I would love to come back and spend a longer time in Istanbul so that I could hear these sorts of stories.

During our cab ride down the hill, I had a moment of panic when I saw a young boy throw himself in front of the moving vehicle in front of us. Thankfully, the vehicle stopped in time, and the boy was fine. This boy’s friends then came and surrounded the car, knocking on the windows, asking for money. It was the most aggressive instance of begging that I’ve ever seen. My local friend told me that these boys were also Syrian. There are a lot of Syrians in Istanbul whose only chance at staying alive is begging. There is a apparently a large refugee camp south down the coast from Istanbul.