The view from inside the funicular. I love the look on his face.
Jill and I love trains and subways.
It just makes life so much easier when you can let someone else do the transport and not have traffic.
That is one of the true benefits of Istanbul and other major cities in that we can just relax, cruise around, and see the sights instead of stressing out and driving.
Our plan, when we return back the USA, is to live carless and be as mobile as possible.
As I’ve written before, we stayed for a full month in Turkey and Greece with only one carry on luggage each.
We don’t want to stay locked down to one particular location and want to be as free as possible.
Jill’s business, San Francisco Tourism Tips, is one of the ways we can accomplish this endeavor.
Istanbul has a funicular underneath one of the major hills and it makes travel very easy.
The hill that it hides under is the same hill that has the Galata Tower on top of it.
It isn’t a terribly tall hill, but it is steep, and in the heat and humidity of the Turkish summer, it can be a nice little respite.
We ended up taking the funicular about 10 different times, in our 2 week stay, and it cost about 2 USD per ride and took only about 60-90 seconds. It travels about 2000 feet. If you see the hill we were able to remove from our travels, it was worth it.
By the way, make sure to watch until the end of the video as the gears that move the funicular are quite beautiful and painted by people that are very artistic.