Turkish Delight on a Moonlit Night

Merhaba,

Well it has been 9 or so months since the last real travel email came from Mel and I. We have left our jobs again, packed all our worldly belongings into our backpacks and are on the road again. So sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee or a cold drink because 12 pages of dribble are coming your way.

Already London feels like a distant memory, even so whilst driving to Heathrow airport. We looked out the car windows on the early morning London scene and said our last goodbyes. Our flights were the usual, on time and smooth. A change of planes in Brussels and we arrived in Istanbul Turkey early to a beautiful day of 25 degrees. Istanbul’s airport was nice, always a good indication of how pleasant your stay will be in the place you are visiting. If the airport is cold and the people unfriendly then that doesn’t bode well, well customs people are never friendly. I don’t think they have any emotions at all. Istanbul’s airport was airy and bright and clean and busy. We collected our bags eventually after finding the correct conveyor belt that they were on and sat down to wait for a friend or ours, Tegan, to come through customs. Tegan worked with Mel in London and by pure coincidence just happened to be flying into Istanbul for! a week’s holiday at the same time as us. Her flight was 30 minutes later than ours so we had to kill some time so we could share our shuttle with her into the old city of Istanbul. While we waited we changed some money, I only had 15 pounds in cash on me so I decided to change that into Turkish lira, so we could buy some drinks and tip the driver etc. I exchange for my measly 15 pounds in cash I was handed a wad of notes that totaled 30 or so million in Lira. ‘I AM RICH’ I screamed and danced around the conveyor belts. The only problem is the lira isn’t too valuable compared to other currencies. Strike off the last six zeros and you get closer to its actual worth. Turkey has a surprisingly high inflation rate which can be anywhere from 70 to 130% at any time. The currency is so unstable that you find the shops advertise their prices in the German Deutch Mark or the US dollar. This saves the poor shop keeper from running around with his labeling gun everyday repricing everythi! ng in the store.

After the initial shock of my new found riches we waited and watched the people coming through, the terminal looking for Tegan. No Tegan. We all thought this might happen so after a while Mel and I went through the gate to the arrivals lounge to catch our shuttle driver before he gave up on us. We shared our shuttle with an eccentric American man who was more innterested in talking to Mel than he was with me. He ranted on about his travel around Greece and Italy and how he prayed to the god Appollo or someone and looked down to his feet and saw a bronze spike and a piece of pottery. Loonie tunes won’t want to try the same thing in Turkey as they lock people up for taking thier national treasures. Anything older that 100 years can not be taken out of the country by a foreigner. You get locked up if you try. While he told Mel of his travels I looked out the window at the moving scenery that is Istanbul. I was surprised strangely! enough at what I saw. Mainly because I had no actual expecatations of what to expect from Istanbul, or the rest of Turkey for that matter. Turkey is one of those places that you just seem to overlook and forget about. Outside mosques dotted the landscape in between old houses covering the hills and the occasional castle or old city wall would blend in like it belonged there. Modern European cars choked the roads and in the harbour container ships and fishing boats zigzagged in between each other. Istanbul’s history goes a long way back, to when it was Constantinople and beyond. 1000' s of years of history influenced the city that is there today.

We pulled up to our hotel and said goodbye to our temporary friend in the minivan. Our hotel was quite convenient, right in the middle of the old city close to all the sights that one would like to see whilst in Istanbul. We dumped our bags and went to explore Istanbul, mapless and only an incling to lead us by. Our incling took us quite far, to the Blue Mosque, famous because of its size, beauty and the no longer existant blue tiles that covered its domes, the Hippodrome where they used to race their chariots, the old palace where the Sultan kept his harem and the Grand Bazaar where you can always get a bargain if you are after a rug or leather goods. We only did a whirlwind tour of the sites as over the next couple of days we would be back over them with Tegan the following day, and all of Mel’s family and thier friends who were also to join us in Istanbul to do a 2 week tour of Turkey. There is nothing worse that doing the ! same sites 3 or 4 times in just as many days. So we left the sites and headed down the hill that old Istanbul is situated on to the harbour to be reunited with the smells and sounds of the shore. We wandered through winding lanes till at last we walked out of the old city walls to the sound of waves on rocks and fish smells from fishermen casting from the shore. We wandered along the shore for a bit watching the fishermen on the rock and the boats in the harbor. We wandered until we found another road leading through the city walls and up into the town. It was at this point our inkling and our lack of map let us down. As always I was official navigatior so I said push on. The wall must end soom. Memories of Kata Beach, Patong, Thailand came flooding back to me where the wall of death seperated us from the beach. This time a much larger and imposing wall sepeartes us from the city. We walked and walked and walked, 5 or so kilometeres later we happened upon the outskirts of! the modern city and the tram line that I remembered from a map ran through the old city. We followed it up the hill and found ourselves at the exact same point we decided it was a good idea to pop down to the harbor for a quick look. With tired feet and worn stamina we stumbled back to the hotel. Only stopping to have conversations with wandering carpet salesmen.

These very friendly people will stop you on the street with a smile and ask about you and where you are from, welcoming you to Istanbul. It is only 10 minutes into the conversation that they bring up carpets. Very friendly although very sneaky. I however enjoyed talking to them very much, even after we discovered their motives. They are people and once you make it clear you are not interested in carpets they are quite happy to shoot the breeze with you. It is quite easy to ignore all the approaches from people on the streets and keep on walking. But they are harmless and it is not like we had to be anywhere in a hurry. We met Hasan who told us about how the carpets are made and what to pay for a good carpet should we be interested, Haman who directed us to some internet cafes and some good restaurands off the beaten track and a shoe shine boy whose conversational skills were limited to ‘shoe shine one brush free’. The shoe shi! ne boy was the most persistant, following us up the street with an undying desire to clean my shoes. I bid him farwell with the promise that I may want my shoes shined tomorrow, all lies of course and he knew it too. Especially when I bumbed into him every day whilst I was in Istanbul giving hime the same empty promises as the day before.
Back in our hotel we collapsed and went to bed early.

The next day we cought up with Tegan and visited the sites again, stopping at a great garden cafe nextdoor to the Palace, down from the Hippodrome, where we reclined on cushions and drank Turkish coffee. We passed through the Grand Bazaar again and decided we required some lunch. Wandering down a pedestrian lane towards the harbour I was stopped by a very small man in uniform instructing me to eat at the restaurant adjacent. He had stars on his shoulder and a whistle and my first impression was that he was a police officer. Not one to argue we promptly sat down and ordered some beers. He was, he explained, the 5 star general (manager) of the restaurant. He turned his photo id badge around to show us the words ‘Sherrif of Istanbul’. Once we placed our orders he was blowing on his whistle coordinating the efforts of the waiting staff to bring us our beers. He was quite the character. Across the lane was a turkish sweets sho! p and upon our enquiry he was over the road ordering us some Baklava, a turkish sweet, to sample. ‘The general’ as we called him told us his stories of all the places he had been to before. Five years in the French Foriegn Legion, 10 years in the Netherlands and 5 years in the US army. Some tales were taller than he was, which wasn’t hard.

We bid ‘Gule Gule’ to our firendly host and to Tegan who was leaving Istanbul that evening also. It was nice to share a day with a friendly face in a strange country. That night Mel and I had an interesting dinner at the southwest base of the hill in a restaurant community of old Istanbul. 50 or so restaurants crowded around a square and the lanes extending from it. We sat down at the first restaurant by the fountain and enjoyed some of the nicest seafood we had had in a very long time. It is hard to get good affordable seafood in London and we savoured every bite. The evening was warm and the heavens beautiful with twinking stars that one by one went out. Unbeknownst to all, huge dark clouds were creaping over Istanbul in the cover of darkness. One drop, two drop, I felt on my arm. As all the restaurants were open air, hoards of waiters stood in the square staring straight up at the skies looking for any indication of rain. I! don’t know what they were hoping to see but they soon got their answer. The heavens opened and waiters and tables were flying everywhere. Mel and I moved in under the awning that was rapidly being extended from the eaves of the restaurant as tables and chairs were piled up around us. One restaurant across the square could not be seen for the pile of tables and chairs in front. The rain stopped and the tables were returned to the square. The rain returend and the whole procedure was repeated again. Mel and I paid our bill and left on one of the outgoing tides of furniture.

We retired early again as the rest of our party would be arriving tomorrow and we wanted to be bright and full of energy for their arrival from all points of the globe. It would be the first time Mel had seen her family for over a year and it was quite exciting for them all to be coming to Istanbul. Everyone was leaving on their last leg to Istanbul on the 11th of September. A date that would not be forgotten for a very long time. Mel and I were unaware of the events that had occured in America while we were dining and had gone straight to bed that night. It wasn’t until 2am when we received an urgent fax from New Zealand that we thought something was up. We thought it strange that when we returned to the hotel that night that everyone — staff and guests, were sitting in the lobby watching the TV with grim looks on thier faces. The fax informed us that Trish, one of our party was delayed in Boston due to the tragic disast! er in America. We quickly flicked on the TV. The first image was of the second plane hitting the World Trade Centre and vanishing in a ball of flames and smoke. Initially I thought we must have had the movie channel on, the images were too unreal to be true. Our hearts sank and we sat on the bed in silence. For two hours we sat there watching the events as they happened. It slowly dawned on us that everyone we were expecting were either in the air or would be boarding their planes shortly and we had a very sleepless night that night. Mel and I rose early with only a coule of hours of sleep behind us and went down to reception. We waited there hoping someone would arrive soon. Talk of airports closing all around the world left us fealing nervous. But one by one Mel’s family and friends arrived. The only exception was Trish who was till stranded in Boston. We organised rooms and caught up on the news from around the globe.

That is all the time I have right now before I get kicked out of this internet cafe. We hope everyone is good and that the horrible events are over for good. Mel and I and the rest of the gang are off to Marmaris stopping at various places on the way . Expect another big email soon. Don’t forget to pass on the website address to anyone that might have been forgotten from our list of emails. www.somerock.com
As always we hope you all can write back soon. Don’t assume we don’t want to hear from you cause we do. Our email inboxs are very empty.

See you all soon one day,

Mel and V.