Istanbul 1

  

Our next country of choice is Turkey. Neither Calvin nor I have ever been. I was a bit hesitant about Turkey at first but so many people I talked to back at home and while travelling had such great things to say about the people, culture, food, water pipes, belly dancing and the landscape. We plan to spend about 5 weeks here traveling to very different areas. Starting in Istanbul and ending in Ephesus with much ground to cover in between.

So let’s get to it…Istanbul - home to approx.… 18 million people or 15 (depending on who you talk to). Either way it’s a heavily populated, sprawling city. Rome to Istanbul was a pretty pleasant flight on Turkish Airlines.

 As usual we bought our sandwiches and fruit ahead of time to eat on the plane only to be totally surprised when the flight attendant delivered our tasty hot meals soon after takeoff – for those of you born prior to 1975, you may recall an Air Canada era where food (actual food not those ham sandwiches) was served.  After being in the air for 2 ½ hours we touched the ground in Istanbul.

The owner of the apartment we are renting arranged for a driver to pick us up at the airport so when we collected our bags and walked through the exit doors we were faced with many people holding up signs with names and a large crowd waiting for people to arrive. We scanned the crowd from different directions so we wouldn’t miss our driver and finally found him with a sign for Clavin McIInns (Turkish for Calvin MacInnis). The ride to the apartment took about 45 minutes and gave us a chance to see the city a bit. Lots of cars on the road and traffic jams that would make Torontonians go a little crazy. We were so thankful that Calvin didn’t have to drive. We will be without a car during Istanbul as our apartment is located close to a tram line, the metro and Taksim Square which is a main center.

The apartment owner and manager were waiting for us when we arrived at the apartment and showed us up to our 3^rd floor apartment. They were extremely helpful and we felt like we were in really good hands. The place had 3 bedrooms and a really spacious living room and kitchen. We have a balcony for hanging the laundry and a view of Asia. Did you know that Istanbul straddles 2 continents? Yes it does Europe and Asia. We are staying on the Europe side but you can cross a bridge or take a ferry over to Asia.

After unpacking and relaxing a bit we ventured out to get some dinner and pick up the groceries for the week. We took the instructions that the manager had given to us to find the grocery store but within a couple of streets we were lost. I saw a couple walking with grocery bags and approached them to ask where the store was in very slow English and I may have used some sign language pointing to their bags and of course they gave me directions in perfect English. I was embarrassed that I assumed they couldn’t speak any English but it was my first interaction with Turkish people who I found out throughout our trip were always eager to help and usually spoke some English. We soon came upon a busy main street with many supermarkets and restaurants. We stopped at Kafe Klimit and shared some main courses of grilled meatballs (popular dish in Turkey), chicken and lentil soup. This started my habit of ordering lentil soup before every meal in Turkey. It was always different but always delicious.

The boys have grown to love lentil soup since we arrived in Turkey as well.  After a great first meal in Istanbul we headed to the grocery store and in typical Devin fashion he had to go to the bathroom while we were shopping. I asked one of the staff and found they were one of the few who didn’t speak English but he finally got it and led Devin and I down many stairs to a dark and nasty basement where the bathroom was. Devin took one look at the hole in the ground and said…”I can wait”. Can’t blame you kid, but if you have to go you have to go! No, he decided to wait until we got back to the apartment so we hurried to the checkout and quickly made it back home just in the nick of time.  

 

Over the next couple of days we caught up on some school work and laundry. Once we did go out to explore, we wandered the streets of Istanbul and were enchanted by the call to prayer. We went to a Café for some dinner and most of the local men and women were relaxing on bean bag chairs and couches either playing backgammon or puffing on a water pipe or both. The owner brought us over a pipe that had apple flavour in it with 5 filters for us all to have our own. I was surprised he brought them over for the kids but he assured me there was no tobacco. Noah is all about the experiences and was pretty eager (a little too eager) to give it a try. Calvin had used a water pipe on his visit to Saudi Arabia so he showed us what to do. The boys took a puff and passed it to me but it reminded me a little too much of smoking cigarettes (no really, cigarettes) so the boys experience was cut short.

Istanbul Tour Day

The owner of the apartment was also involved in a tour company so for the first time on our trip, we joined a tour group for the day. We decided to do this partly because of our lack of the Turkish language and because we would visit many sites that we would have wanted some details of the history and architecture. The tour started at 8am and the owner told us that there was an Australian family that was renting the apartment below us that would be going on the tour as well. We met them in front of the building at the 8am time and we all walked to the tour bus together. We quickly got to know the mother and father son Alvin, 12 and Jasmine, 5 (going on 16).

We met our tour guide Ufuk (yeah, I know – it’s like we’re cursed with these distractions) across the street from the Blue Mosque. Ufuk was excellent and delivered our tour in English and German – we were very impressed as he also spoke French, Japanese and Turkish fluently….seriously, why is this guy not a spy? The Mosque gets its name from the mainly blue tile work decorating its interior. We removed our shoes and went inside. It was built in 1609 – 1616 by the Sultan Ahmet I. He commissioned 6 minarets around the mosque which was considered a sacrilegious attempt to rival Mecca (which had 6) so apparently he had an extra one built in Mecca. The inside is quite beautiful with the tiled domes and low hanging lighting. We snapped away while listening to our guide.

Next was the Hagia Sophia which is also an amazingly large building. It is more than 1400 years old and had great influence on Byzantine architecture in the following centuries. It was originally built in the 6th century as a church for the Byzantine Empire and then in the 15th century the Ottomans converted it to a mosque. It has frescoes and mosaics of Christian figures and then you see Islamic calligraphy and this is why it is not used as a religious facility but instead a museum. The interior is a staggering vast space that is covered by a huge dome reaching to a height of 184 ft. HUGE!  

We walked to the Hippodrome which was a stadium where chariot races took place in Roman times but we really couldn’t appreciate it as the actual Hippodrome is 10m below the ground we were standing on and we lacked the imagination or maybe it was lunch we lacked.

The Islamic Craft Museum was across the courtyard where we saw antique carpets, tiles and artifacts. It was a tiring day but it wasn’t over yet. For lunch the tour took us to a traditional Turkish restaurant that served us a tasty lunch that included a stew that is baked in a clay vessel and then they ignite the base of it on fire at your table and then they tap it in the middle and crack the lid off and serve it to you. The boys thought this was pretty cool. The meal was included in the tour price but the drinks are extra and very expensive.  After lunch it was a bit of a long walk to the next site, Topkapi Palace (which was great after the big meal). Topkapi

Palace housed the sultans and their harems for hundreds of years while the Ottomans were in power. We visited the treasury which displays many exquisite jewels including a 96 karat diamond (slightly bigger than my own). At the end of the palace tour we were all exhausted and the tour was supposed to then take us to the Grand Bazaar which we really wanted to go to but couldn’t muster up the energy. We could do this on our own. We would say that we are not very fond of tours in general as they pack too much in, in too little time. We prefer our own pace but our guide was very knowledgeable and taught us a lot about ancient Turkey and Muslim traditions and beliefs. We learned a lot.

By the end of the tour we were also chatting a lot with the family from Australia so they invited us to join their family for dinner at a restaurant close to the apartment. Jasmine the 7 year old girl took quite a liking to Devin and the boys and was stuck like glue for most of the day. We walked up to Taksim Square and to a restaurant that the family had visited the night before.  It was the first time we had explored Taksim Square and it was extremely cool.  There’s a pedestrian only street that dips down from Taksim towards Sultanhamet that is approximately 40 meters wide and many kms long and there were people moving in both directions for as far as you could see – we guessed closer to 18 million than 15 million.  Gap, Nike, Benetton and many, many other top brands lined the street.  

The restaurant was a traditional place that served Ottoman inspired dishes and their speciality was the Gozleme which is a savory traditional Turkish handmade and hand rolled pastry. Fresh pastry is rolled out, filled and sealed, then cooked over a griddle.  We had one with spinach, minced meat and cheese and it was really good. We tried most of their house favorites and it was all really, really good…and wait for it…affordable! Yeah! Good food at a good price was music to our ears.

After dinner the waiter brought the kids complimentary ice cream. The ice cream is quite different. It is made of goat’s milk and cow’s milk and is very sticky and stretchy. You can hold it on your spoon upside down for hours and it won’t fall off. Can’t say I liked the taste and neither did the kids really but we appreciated his kindness and I secretly welcomed the break from ice cream for a few weeks. 

After leaving the restaurant we walked slowly back to the apartment and really took in how vibrant, busy and pulsating this city is. We like it! It is the first country that really feels foreign. Of course Spain and Italy are foreign but Turkey is very different. The call to prayer that comes through the loudspeakers 5 times a day reminds us that Turkey is 97% Muslim. Most women (but not all) wear the hijab (headscarf) and many wear the burqa (the full cover-up).  Calvin had downloaded a diversity video produced by the Chicago police department on Islam that really helped the boys understand the Islamic religion and Muslims.  The boys have a great new perspective on the cultural differences and similarities between the world’s two largest religions.