Old places, new destinations

Istanbul

We have logged many miles but we have only traveled short cultural distances. Our adventures in France, England and Italy have taught us about our roots and daily life there is much like we know it in Canada. We quickly become aware that Istanbul is different. As we approach the city by air the first thing we notice are the minarets, across the horizon from left to right, more than any number of church steeples we have seen in any city. We know we are arriving in a Muslim country yet to us Turkey has a vast history and our thoughts wander to Ottomans and sultans and flying carpets among other things as we wonder what mysteries lie beyond. As we get closer, we see Istanbul as a vast and dense and modern city, with roadways and bridges and wide swaths of red tile roofs cutting across the hilly landscape in every direction. These are almost entirely apartment buildings. With anywhere from 13 to 20 million residents, depending on who is counting, Istanbul’s residents live in close quarters in the only major city located on two continents.

We land at Istanbul airport after an uneventful flight from Montreal. British Airways, who booked us with a brief transfer in Heathrow, London, deserve credit for their “Fast Track” program allowing us to switch planes in record time with enough time left over to pick up a few items at the duty free shop. Canadian visitors to Turkey require a visa to enter the country. These are easily obtained at the airport, where the visa counter is just in front of the passport check. The visa agent apparently knows three words in English “sixty”, “dollars”, and “each”, sufficient to help us negotiate our colourful passport visa stamps. At the passport check counter, the agent, without a word, rubber-stamps the visa, and we are admitted to Turkey. (Since our visit, the $60 visas are now available on-line.)

We have opted for a night at an airport hotel to recover from the flight before heading into Istanbul. A shuttle bus takes us to the Airport Marriott Courtyard – as we pass the gate to the hotel parking an agent inspects the underside of the shuttle bus with a mirror. At the hotel door, we pass through metal detectors and all bags are x-rayed. We suppose the idea behind all this security is to make us safer; however, it raises questions about the overall risks travelers may face in this area. Our subsequent experience tells us there is nothing to fear. We dine at the hotel and enjoy our supper of mezze (known to us as Greek appetizers), and grilled sea bass and veal tenderloin, both beautifully prepared and of superb quality. We enjoy a glass of Turkish wine, a name we do not recall, but as fine as any moderately priced dry white wine we have had.

The next morning we take a taxi to our awaiting cruise ship. The address of the dock is a series of Turkish names and words, unpronounceable to these North Americans, but instantly recognizable to the hotel porter. However, it seems the young taxi driver does not know where the cruise port is. Thankfully, his GPS speaks Turkish and provides him direction. We spend 80 minutes in thick traffic, watching drivers cut each other off as we move in an endless bumper-to-bumper snail’s pace. The taxi driver speaks very little English and when a car cuts him off in a daredevil three-lane crossing from the left to the right (recall that the traffic is not moving) he lifts his hands off the wheel and raises them in disbelief, turns around to us and says with a smile “Ee-stan-bull!” We arrive at the port and the driver shows us he is capable with his English numbers as he reads the meter.

The ship will remain in Istanbul until tomorrow night, so we have time to explore. We take the tram from the port to a central area where the Spice Market and New Mosque are located. Now, we are fluent in French and English, and capable of reading signs and menus in several other European languages, yet we never succeed in making any sense of the Turkish language. Some have compared it to Finnish, however since we do not speak any Finnish, we cannot comment. Fortunately, there is sufficient English signage to allow us to buy our tickets and orient ourselves on the tram system. The trams are full of people, but we never feel crowded. Somehow there is room for everyone, a sentiment we will feel over and over again in this busy, international metropolis.

The Spice Market is a grid of narrow streets where vendors sell everything from saffron to animal food to animals. We presume these latter are sold as pets, however, when we come to the leech vendor (medicinal) we realize that nothing here should be assumed. The streets outside the Spice Market are lined with merchants selling all sorts of personal and household items. Mercantilism is a way of life in Istanbul which has a millennium-old tradition of commerce at the crossroads of the major trading routes of Europe and Asia.

We stop for a break in a little café on a busy street outside the Spice Market. At one point we hear a wailing – it is a tenor voice, calling all to late afternoon prayer. For a moment it seems that the sounds of the city have vanished and the only sound we hear is the muezzin’s call, pure as a bell and trance-like. The call to prayer finishes and we realize that the commerce has continued unabated and the din of the city takes centre stage once again. Turkey is a Muslim country, but it is also a secular country. Women wear head scarves, but mostly like kerchiefs. It is like a fashion accessory. Overall, we feel very comfortable wherever we go. And the calls to prayer, echoing from mosque to mosque, are a normal part of the soundtrack of the city.

We still have a few hours before dinner on the ship, so we take a ride up the Bosporus on a tourist boat. This strait joins the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea and divides the European side of Istanbul from the Asian side. Along the waterside, particularly in European Istanbul, we see pleasure boats and tour boats like the one we are on. In fact, the waterside of Istanbul is a hive of boat traffic day and night as people cross between the Asian side (mostly residential) and the European side. As we ride along the shores of the Bosporus, we see palaces, large private homes, large restaurants overlooking the water, and little corners with smaller restaurants and places for people to congregate. The large homes belong to the wealthy, for the average Turk in Istanbul lives in a multi-family unit in dense communities revealed in the valleys as we pass the hills lining the Bosporus.

We learn that history intervenes in modern life in Istanbul. A transit tunnel under the Bosporus is being built to relieve the traffic congestion on the two bridges linking east and west in Istanbul. However, work had to stop because excavations uncovered historical artifacts which have turned the tunnel hub station into an archeological site. Engineers and archaeologists answer to different masters, and history won. Construction work on the station ceased as the world’s greatest maritime historical site uncovered a fleet of ships buried for over a millennium. We can only guess why, in the ninth century, a ship and its load of Italian wine made its way to Constantinople and then sank with its cargo for some reason. But while digging, the researchers find further evidence that people have been living here for many millennia BC in organized settlements, yet there are clues that the Bosporus was crossed even earlier. Archaeologists are meticulously going over every little item they find and the tunnel will just have to wait.

The tour boat docks are located at the mouth of the Golden Horn, a river that divides old Istanbul from older Istanbul. It is an area abuzz with people, tourists and locals alike. At the foot of the Galata Bridge, restaurant boats line the waterside, each decorated in traditional ornate Turkish style with domes, balustrades, dragons, and so on, all gilt-covered and bedecked with glass jewels. We are mesmerized as we watch the boats rock back and forth on the waves hitting the dockside, the chefs cooking on the open fire grills on deck, preparing their fish sandwiches as they have been doing for over a century. Beyond the restaurants, we see a constant movement of boats crossing the Bosporus in every which way. Beside the river, a large, open square holds the many visitors and passers-by out for their early evening stroll. Tourists take photos. Young lovers hold hands. Children run and play. Vendors sell street snacks – breads and roasted corn. Older men sell shoe-shines from their ornate portable stands. There is room for everyone.

An older section of Istanbul, across the bridge and on the other side of the Golden Horn from the Spice Market, is home to the Galata Tower and one of the oldest commercial sections of the city built up by Genovese explorers and Jewish merchants, and now home to many cafes and trendy boutiques. We will have to save our visit of this area for another time. But we cross the Galata Bridge, lined with fishermen and packed with pedestrians, and head back to the cruise port and our home for the night.

If commerce is the lifeblood of in Istanbul, it is the history which captivates us. Once the eastern edge of the Roman Empire, and then the Ottoman Empire, Turkey has a vast treasury of antiquity to share with us and we opt for a guided tour.

The original old walled city is still referred to as Constantinople. We visit the Blue Mosque, the largest mosque in Istanbul with six minarets. We are not alone – there are several thousand tourists in the mosque, which, apparently, receives over 2 million tourists a year. The mosque is fully carpeted and we must enter shoeless. There is a staff of people to assist us with shoe bags. We marvel at the beauty of the simple, large room, its spacious arches tiled in the intricate blue tile in wondrous patterns. Light streams in from the many windows in the domed arches, and large rings of electric lights are suspended nearer the ground from the lofty ceilings, as if enormous halos floating in the air above us. Areas are reserved for worshippers – there are some – and even with the crowds of tourists milling around the public areas, the serenity of the space is preserved. It is all breathtaking.

Our next stop, the Hagia Sophia (Aya Sofia in Turkish, literally “house of wisdom” in English) was the largest building in the world when it was built and remained the largest church for over 900 years. Built in the sixth century AD, it managed to do the unthinkable, cover a massive space with a dome. For some reason, architects were unable to replicate the achievement until Brunelleschi did in16th century Florence. When the Ottomans took over Turkey in the 15th century, Hagia Sofia was converted into a mosque, however, modern Turkey’s first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, believed that this historical building belonged to everyone and converted it to a museum which it remains today. Hagia Sophia retains elements of a church (paintings of Christ, angels, and the saints) and of a mosque (paintings in Arabic script). At every turn we see symbols of the strong secular society that Ataturk helped create, some Muslim, some Christian. Once again, the size and permanence (and the evidence of its multi-use past) of the massive structure overwhelms.

Nearby in central Constantinople is Topkapi, once a Sultan’s Palace and now a museum of the Sultans’ crown jewels, welcoming many thousands of tourists a day. The ticket lineups for entry to these three historical treasures can be very long, but we avoid the waits by booking through the cruise line.

In the afternoon, we head up the hill behind the Spice Market. The web of streets is lined with shops selling every imaginable household and personal item. The streets are full of people from every part of the globe and there is not a vacant store window in the area. We note a shortage of eateries and public toilets on these streets. However, we see men darting in and out of narrow alleyways bringing trays of hot tea and snacks to the shopkeepers. We wonder what hidden infrastructure serves this phenomenally historical and effective system. On the street, movement is everywhere is every direction. People shopping. Tourists taking photos. Porters carrying boxes of merchandise on their backs on streets too busy for cars to pass. The feeling must be like an ant in an anthill.

At the top is the ultimate covered mall, the Grand Bazaar, consisting of over 50 interlinked streets lined with little shops selling gold, silver, precious stones, leather goods, clothing and much more, all under one roof. There are many sweet shops selling a vast array of “Turkish Delight”, that sugar-nut confection so well known world-wide. Turkish Delight is made in every colour and texture, and some of them are displayed with provocative English names like “Turkish Viagra” (with walnuts, apparently an aphrodisiac).

The shops in the Grand Bazaar are tiny and the vendors are virtually all men. They politely approach Denise, often asking her if they can help her spend her money. When she says no, they ask if they can help her spend her husband’s money. Business is cordial -- we never feel threatened and are comfortable to bargain with them as we pick up some sterling silver baubles for the grandkids and some embroidery. The Grand Bazaar pre-dates today’s covered malls by half a millennium.

We leave from the other end of the Grand Bazaar and find a Turkish rug shop. We are welcomed into a large square room with benches lining the four walls. Apple tea and wine are offered to us and then the salesman begins to talk about the rugs, all of which are still made by hand. Helpers bring in rolled up rugs and unroll them one after another in the centre of the room as the salesman calls them out, until the floor is covered with a mosaic of luxurious rug of every style and colour. The salesman explains the types of rugs, techniques, materials and so on, with all the exuberance (and facility in American English) of an infomercial salesman on late night television, to the point of asking one of his helpers to twirl one of the rugs, saying he used to work at Pizza Hut. Nevertheless, the rugs are stunningly beautiful with excellent workmanship and represent good value, even if purchased in Turkey and shipped back to North America. Resisting the temptation to buy yet another rug for our home, we do walk away with a small tabletop rug, the kind used in Belgian taverns.

Our brief visit to Istanbul has left us with a thirst for more. But our cruise ship will be sailing tonight and we must be on it. There we meet Denise’s sister Elaine and her husband Mike, who will be our travelling partners for the remainder of this trip.

Cruising

Our itinerary will take us to a variety of Turkish and Greek ports on the Aegean Sea but first we will have supper and meet our dining companions for the trip. We join two retired couples from Long Island, New York, whose non-stop repertoire of Catskill jokes will keep us laughing for all of our shared dinners on the trip. (We will stay in contact with these delightful people and will discover serendipitously that one of the couples winters in our neighbourhood when we buy our Florida home several years later.)

Our first cruise stop is Kuşadasi, where we board a tour bus to the ancient city of Ephesus. Once a seaport, it is famous for the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and as a home for St Paul, who built the city up as one of the most powerful centres of early Christianity. Today Ephesus is several kilometers inland and slowly being excavated from the silt that covered the city. We can see the Library of Celsus, where Paul addressed the crowds, and built to replace the ruined one in Alexandria. We visit the entrance gate to Hadrian’s temple, remnants of old terrace homes, and the amphitheatre, one of the largest in the ancient world. Signs point to the house of the Virgin Mary, who apparently lived to her death in Ephesus. Today, taxicabs with “Taxi to Virgin Mary” written on the side, are testimony to the touristy flavor of the site.

However, we return to our tour bus to climb into the mountainside to visit a typical mountain village. “Typical” may be a bit of a misnomer for a town visited daily between 10AM and 2PM by busloads of tourists arriving off cruise ships, nevertheless, the trip turned out to be a pleasant adventure. The road from Ephesus climbs the steep mountainside in a seemingly never-ending series of curves and hairpin turns. We are on the outside edge of the road and cannot see any shoulder from our bus window, only the depths of the valley below – we have to trust the bus driver’s skill to stay on the twisting road. At the top, the town of Syringa stages a market day for the visitors that make their way up there. We ask a food vendor for the price on two figs – he gives them to us (we presume because people buy them by the kilo and not the unit). Women in traditional turbans and pantaloons sell hand-woven materials and Denise picks up a few as souvenirs.

After lunch we return down the mountainside towards the boat. This time we are on the inside edge of the road and at one hairpin, we meet a bus coming up face to face. Now, there is only room for one bus to make the turn and neither bus moves for several minutes. The standoff ends as the climbing bus starts to inch backward to allow us room to pass. We can only imagine the fear this must have caused in the passengers as they moved backwards on an invisible road at the edge of a steep drop. But we manage to make the turn without incident and return to the boat.

Or ship stops at two other Turkish resorts – Bodrum and Marmaris. Both cities have large marinas with pleasure boats set against the mountains and are lovely walking cities in their own right. Each city has its Grand Bazaar (enclosed multi-shop centre, tiny by comparison to Istanbul’s), restaurants and boutiques. Turkey has a thriving textile business so there are many shops selling high quality fashion and decorator items, many exported to North America.

In Marmaris, we find a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in the maze of streets on the hill behind the port. The owner tells us that he is closed and only opens for supper, and does not get many tourists because of that. We do manage to engage him in conversation and learn that his wife, who is preparing food behind the counter is of Russian origin. Barry, who speaks about five words of the language, greets her in Russian and we are suddenly welcome for lunch. The owner asks us what we want – we say whatever he wants to make, and proceed to feast on salad and Turkish cheeses and eggplant cooked five ways with some Turkish wine. Everything is fresh and delicious. No wonder he is busy at night.

Our Greek stops include the port of Athens. We arrive in the middle of the demonstrations around the financial crisis. This includes a garbage collection strike, so the streets are lined with bags of garbage – not a pretty welcome to Greece’s main city. We visit the Parthenon early and see demonstrators preparing to block several central avenues of the city. Our fellow travelers who go later are delayed getting back to the boat because of that. A trip to the Temple of Poseidon takes us through the countryside an hour south of the city. Our general impression is disappointing – the residents in the rural areas do not seem to take the pride in their homes’ gardens or orderliness as we are accustomed to seeing in France and Italy. This is confirmed in a later ride on the island of Rhodes, where we also take the opportunity to visit the ruins of the old Greek city of Kameiros outside the suburbs of Rhodes and observe the complex infrastructure of reservoirs and temples developed to support the city. (The guide at Kameiros bemoans the slow progress on expanding the public washrooms – she says they should have called in Romans to build them.) We finish our tour by visiting downtown Rhodes where, because of the limited time on the tour, we do not get beyond the tourist shops and mediocre restaurants.

We arrive in Santorini and are taken in by the beauty of the caldera (volcanic crater) where the boat arrives. The island is the partial rim of the crater and we are anchored off the city of Fira. After a 45 minute wait in the port, we board a funicular that takes us up to the city, its whitewashed buildings clinging to the rim 400 metres above the sea and overrun with tourists. We do not opt to visit the more scenic corners of the island such as Oia because of our limited time; however, there are many vantage points in Fira to enjoy the beautiful sea vistas. Once again, the selection of restaurants for lunch in the tourist centre is mediocre, one of the pitfalls of a cruise port.

We learn later that many of the cruise passengers ate in one particular restaurant in Fira and brought the Norwalk virus back to the boat. They had all drunk beer from plastic glasses in the restaurant. Credit goes to Celebrity Cruises for containing the spread of the virus on the boat without compromising their fine service. Thirty-five passengers were afflicted – if there had been over 50, we would have been barred from docking in any other ports.

Another stop takes us to Mykonos, which, off season, is a delightful maze of white stucco buildings against the azure sea, picture postcard perfect for quiet exploration. The port setting is more conducive to terrace restaurants than Fira and we enjoy a fine lunch of grilled fresh fish and Greek salad in a seaside psarotaverna (fish tavern). A fine Greece experience does not need to be complex. We understand that in season, Mykonos is a party place and are pleased to see it without the crowds.

Our final Greek stop is the port city of Chania in Crete. This is a larger city on a large island and we need to take a shuttle to the centre of the city and its ancient harbour. Less touristy than our other Greek destinations, we enjoy our autumn stroll through the old, colourful streets and alleyways of Chania and find a wider selection of quality galleries, shops and restaurants than we have seen on the other islands. We settle on a tasty and satisfying lunch of mezze in a secluded garden restaurant several blocks away from the old port.

It is time to head back to Istanbul. We have seen bits of both sides of the Aegean. Our Greek tourist guide in Rhodes explains that Turkey is nice except it is full of Turks. Oddly, in the Turkish resorts we hear that Greece is nice except it is full of Greeks. This is a paradox that we somehow understand, and like the Greeks and Turks, will live with.

Back to Istanbul

We disembark from the cruise ship and are soon back at the Airport Marriott for our last night in Turkey. The four of us head downtown for a final visit. Another taxi ride to downtown Istanbul -- at one point, we have to go from the crosstown expressway to the downtown one, so the driver steers onto the exit ramp. We see vendors with trollies in the exit lanes selling snack foods – bananas, simit (a round, crispy bread covered with seeds, shaped like but somewhat larger than a bagel). The driver stops and looks around at us asking us “bananas?”. He buys some bananas for all of us, and we continue downtown. Of course we tip him generously and this earns us blessings and gratitude.

We revisit the Spice Market and Grand Bazaar again, and every turn seems to reveal something we have not seen before. We have hardly scratched the surface. But it is soon time to get back to our hotel … we are leaving in the morning. There is a pedestrian tunnel under the boulevard and Barry ushers us across to get a taxi north to the expressway and our hotel. He hails a cab, and we all get in, Barry in the front and Denise, Elaine and Mike in the back. Barry shows the driver a street map provided by the hotel and points to the airport and the hotel. The driver looks a little uncertain. We understand, it is a fairly new hotel. Mike reaches forward and gives him a hotel business card. The driver makes a call -- we hear the exchange in Turkish – and he understands. He pulls ahead and makes a u-turn on the 6 lane boulevard, heading back to central Istanbul. Barry, in his limited Turkish, asks the driver “airport?”, pointing to the other way. The driver responds “traffic”. All is well, and we soon realize that we are just circling around old Constantinople which will take us in the proper direction. It was an interesting drive, and could be quite enjoyable, except that every time the cab driver moves slightly in his seat, another whiff of some kind of dung fills the car. Barry is glad to be in the front seat and can hardly imagine what it is like in the back seat.

We soon see signs for the airport and the driver heads north to the airport. He pulls off at the airport exit (Barry is sure we have to go further north, but the driver knows Istanbul best, right?) and stops at the underpass. To the left, is the airport, to the right, a string of hotels. The driver looks at Barry – “airport hotel?” Ours in not among them. So Barry shows him the map again. We need to go further north. There are two policemen standing ahead of us on the road, and the taxi driver proceeds towards them. He gets out with the map and asks them and they give him directions. Back in the car, the driver looks at Barry and asks “sigara?” It is quickly apparent that the police are repaid in cigarettes. However, we have none. Barry shows his empty hands, pointing to all four of us, and says “no sigara”. The cabby hits the accelerator and we are away from the police, back on the expressway. The driver says confidently “Halkali”, the name of the exit and district where our hotel is located. We are coming to the first exit and the driver looks at Barry and asks “Halkali?” Barry realizes that the taxi driver cannot read!

“No”, says Barry, and points left, to stay on the expressway. Indeed, Halkali is the following exit, and as we approach the exit we can see the hotel! With able hands as pointers, Barry navigates the driver off the exit and under the cross street overpass to take the proper turn into the clover leaf interchange. We pass through the security checks into the hotel driveway, and all eagerly step out to get some breaths of fresh air once again. A ride in a yellow taxi we will not forget …

Our Turkish adventure has come to an end. The language may be strange to us, but the warmth of the people around us makes us feel that the spaces between us are never really that big. Nevertheless, we have a large distance to travel and we make our way to the airport. Inside, signs point to the British Airways counter. We turn and we see a long lineup. But the people in line all have luggage carts piled high with cardboard boxes taped shut but bursting at the seams. It turns out that this is the line for Uzbekistan Airways, the counter beside BA, and these are buyers returning home with new stock for their local markets. Modern and tradition live in harmony. Istanbul is still, as it always was, the marketplace of the world.