I know you. You’ve been thinking about it.
Maybe someone mentioned it. Maybe it came up on a map and you let your eyes sit on it for a second longer than usual. Maybe you’ve been carrying a version of this trip in the back of your head for years — just never far enough forward to actually book it.
I was you. For longer than I’d like to admit.
This is everything that happened when I finally went.
Pictures below.
The airport took my bags.
That’s how it started. Hours in arrivals. Airline staff who were not especially motivated to help.
A city I hadn’t even stepped into yet already testing whether I was going to fall apart or stay functional.
I stayed functional. Barely.
And for the longest time I let that one bad hour write the verdict on an entire country.
I told myself I wasn’t going back. That the airport had told me everything I needed to know.
It had told me nothing. I was just tired and frustrated and looking for a reason to make the discomfort mean something it didn’t mean.
The city was waiting on the other side of that door. I almost never opened it again.
Istanbul is a walker’s city.
That’s the first thing you need to know. Not a city you observe from a cab or consume through a checklist.
A city you move through — on foot, with no particular agenda, willing to turn down streets that don’t have a destination attached to them yet.
My sister found us a spot right in the center of everything.
The kind of accommodation where the city happens around you. We walked every day. The energy at street level in Istanbul is unlike anything I can fully describe in a sentence — electric is the word I keep coming back to, knowing it’s insufficient.
Go anyway. The word will make sense when you’re standing in it.
Step inside a mosque.
I was not prepared. I’m a germophobe and I showed up in Toms and nobody warned me that shoes come off at the door, no exceptions.
I made it work.
We’re past that.
What’s inside those doors is worth every moment of barefoot discomfort.
High ceilings.
Clean open space.
Light falling at angles that feel deliberate.
No clutter competing for your attention — just architecture built to make room for something larger than furniture.
I’ve been inside castles full of priceless things and felt nothing.
Inside that mosque I felt everything.
Istanbul has several.
Visit more than one. Bring socks.
Drink the coffee. Flip the cup.
Turkish coffee is strong in a way that will recalibrate your relationship with every coffee you’ve had before it.
The kind of strong you’d rather smell than fully commit to. Drink it anyway.
When you’re done, flip the cup upside down on the saucer. Let it cool.
Find someone who knows how to read what the grounds leave behind.
Mine was read by a new employee who needed a colleague to help him finish the job.
Between the two of them, they told me things about transformation that were closer to accurate than either of them had any right to be.
I don’t know what to do with that. I’m telling you about it anyway.
Eat everything.
The baklava. The chocolate. Whatever is in front of you at any given moment.
Istanbul’s food does not disappoint and it does not give you time to be precious about choices.
The baklava specifically — walnut if you can find it, not just pistachio. I brought some for my family. They loved it.
Go back. Bring people you love.
The first trip is for you. The disorientation, the discovery, the fear dissolving in real time — that’s yours alone and you need to move through it that way.
The second trip is for the people who matter.
Something shifts when you watch someone you love encounter Istanbul for the first time.
The city does something to them.
Widens something.
Opens a door that wasn’t open before.
And you were the reason the door existed at all.
They won’t come back the same. Neither will you, watching them.
What travel does that nothing else does.
Every bad moment on this trip — the airport, the bare feet, the coffee that nearly took me out — built something that comfort never could have.
The gap between what happens and how I respond to it gets wider every time I move through something difficult in an unfamiliar place.
That’s not a travel benefit. That’s character.
Forged in fluorescent-lit arrivals halls and mosque doorways and late nights walking streets that don’t care whether you’re ready.
Epictetus understood it. James understood it. The testing produces perseverance.
The perseverance finishes its work. The work produces something that lacks nothing.
You don’t get that from staying home.
So here’s the invitation.
Istanbul is transcontinental — Europe on one side, Asia visible across the water on the other.
It is ancient and electric and layered in ways that take more than one trip to absorb.
The people are warm. The culture is rich. The performances will stop you in your tracks. The food will reset your standards.
Give it a week minimum. Expect to go back.
Say yes before you talk yourself out of it.
The version of you that walks those streets is someone worth meeting.
I’ll see you on the other side.
P.S. I’m not much of a shopper, but the fashion is on point. I’m sure you’ll want to indugle.
— Destiny
Today’s FL10 Minute Workout: Sinners Only
“The righteous rest. The rest of us rep.”
10 min · No gym · No equipment · 2 min each
- Bear Crawl
- Burpees
- Wall Sit
- Superman Hold
- Mountain Climbers