A LONG FAREWELL TO İSTANBUL

Nov. 16, 2000
Hotel Park, İstanbul, Türkiye

We got up at 5:30 so as to make it to the service bus on time. There was no hot water, in fact no water came out of the hot tap at all. Without showers, we were ready quite early. Fortunately, Mel Gibson did not forget us and he drove us to the main road where we were eventually picked up by the airport service bus. Denizli airport is 60 kilometers away from Denizli and is actually not any further from Pamukkale. The bus ride took about an hour.

The flight to İstanbul took less than an hour. We took the Havaş bus to Aksaray and then took a cab to the Hotel Park. The first person we saw was Idris, our friend from the hotel next door, who was very glad to see us and carried our bags into the hotel for us. We got our old room back for the still outrageous price of $40/night. Our friend, Selim from Iraq, brought our bags up and his face broke into a wide grin when he saw who we were. We were both tired and went upstairs and slept until 14:30.

Deanna was hungry when we woke up, so the first thing we did was to go to the Karasu Restaurant and have kebap with sesame seeds. They remembered us there, too. It was market day and Deanna went off to explore while I ducked into a travel agency and bought a ticket to Paris via Austrian Airlines for only 123 million lire (about $200) , a whole lot better than the $448 I was quoted in Marmaris. Deanna ran into our friend, Serdar, from the bookstore. He was glad to see us because he was about to take the tourism department English exam and wanted our help to study for it.

From there, we went over to Doğan’s and visited with him for a couple of hours. Then we went back to get the laundry, which was closed, and pick up my plane ticket. We chatted with Serdar for a couple of minutes, but still could not decide on a time to meet. Then we went up the hill to get money and stopped at the Sultan Pub for a couple of overpriced drinks. We spent 9 million lire for four Efes darks and a dish of pistachios. Then we went back to the hotel and discussed reincarnation with Doğan and Refik until it got late and I passed out.

Nov. 17, 2000
Hotel Park, İstanbul, Türkiye

It was very cold in our room that night and we didn’t sleep well, so we didn’t get up until 8:00. We ate breakfast and then we went to the internet café for a couple of hours. We picked up our laundry and then went out to lunch at the Indian restaurant.

After lunch, we went to the Grand Bazaar. On the way, we stopped at a ceramic store near the Indian restaurant where we bought some tile coasters and I bought a square tile for my roommate and a plate with the Turkish star and crescent on it. At the Grand Bazaar, we looked at every large-stoned ring and every pair of gold earrings in the bazaar. I bought a tanzanite ring with a 15.3g stone and an 18 karat gold, hand-made setting for my mother. She wanted a big ring. I hoped it was big enough for her.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at an optician’s and Deanna ordered a new pair of glasses. Then we rushed back to the hotel to meet Doğan for dinner. We were joined for dinner by Doğan’s friend, Muğteran. Muğteran was from Malatya and he turned out to be the friend of Orhan’s who had introduced Orhan to Doğan. The world is very small. The four of us took the ferry over to Üshkadar for dinner at Doğan’s favorite restaurant, Kanaat Lokantası. The ferry ride was very beautiful. We could see the Dolmabahçe Palace, many, many mosques with lighted minarets, and the Maiden Tower. We had a very nice dinner and Doğan treated us. We had an interesting discussion with Doğan about why is was only interested in foreign women. He thought he had more in common with them, which could have been true, but mainly he wanted to be able to live with a woman before getting married. We walked to the ferry and back, which I really enjoyed. It was nearly midnight when we got home.

Nov. 18, 2000
Hotel Park, İstanbul, Türkiye

Chora

We got another late start and didn’t get out of the hotel until noon. We went up to the Aya Sofia to get money and Deanna spent an hour or so picking out eleven prints of Istanbul. We went up to Divan Yolu to pick up Deanna’s new glasses and then took a taxi up to Chora. By the time we got to Chora, it was 14:30. We got an incredible deal on god’s eyes from a merchant up there. I got five for 700,000 lire.

Mosaic at Chora

Chora was very beautiful. The church and the inner narthex were built in the eleventh century. They were decorated with panels of every imaginable color of marble, arranged in complex patterns. The church was englarged in the thirteenth century and it was then that the famouse mosaics were executed. An outer narthex was added across the front and a chapel was built along the southern side. The chapel was decorated with frescoes, including frescoes of faux marble on the lower walls. (The congregation must have fallen on hard times or spent all of their money on mosaics.) The upper parts of the walls and ceilings of the two narthexes were covered with golden mosaics. There were also three mosaics in the nave, but they seemed a bit isolated in that big expanse of ancient marble. Most of the mosaics were in good repair and, even where the tiles had fallen away, you could see the original designs because they were first drawn on the walls and then filled in like paint by numbers.

Walking Through the Jewish Quarter

It was too late to go anywhere else by the time we got out of Chora, so we took a walk along the city wall, where gypsies were grazing their horses in the park, and across the old Jewish quarter to the Bosphorus. We didn’t see any Jewish people (Kamil said they had moved to more prosperous areas.), but we did see lots of old Ottoman houses, some of which were falling down. The neighborhood was built on the side of a ravine and there were some nice views of İstanbul, although it was too smoggy for taking good pictures.

I wanted to walk along the Bosphorus, but Deanna was in one of her hunger rages, so we jumped in a cab and came back to Sultanahmet to eat something. After dinner, we rested for an hour or so and then Zakir came over with our carpets at 19:00. He was carrying them on foot (bless his heart!) and had to make two trips. We had intended to take him for dinner, but he was studying for his exams and didn’t have much time. We went out for tea and baklava, instead, and had a nice visit, most of which we spent trying to reassure Zakir that he would do fine on his exams.

After we said goodbye, we came back to the hotel and spent the rest of the evening talking with Doğan and Refik in the lobby.

Nov. 19, 2000
Hotel Park, İstanbul, Türkiye

We got another late start, yesterday. Deanna spent until 13:00 packing her suitcase and carpets. For some reason, she was obsessing about it. She obsessed every time we got on a plane. I didn’t understand. By expanding my bag, I was able to get my carpet in.

Of course we had to eat before we could do anything and of course we couldn’t get anything quick. We ate in a restaurant above the Hippodrome.

We had planned to go to Dolmabahçe Palace, but settled for the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, instead, since it was 14:30 by the time we finished lunch. The Islamic Art Museum is housed in the former Ishak Paşa Palace. It contains something like 40,000 pieces of art, but the most amazing pieces were the carpets. There were some dating back as far as the thirteenth century. The designs had not changed much over the years. There was also a stunning room filled with huge carpets that were really mind-blowing.

The Blue Mosque

Downstairs, was an exhibit outlining a plan to turn Sultanahment into an archaeological park because it was once the site of a huge palace. How would they have decided what would go and what would stay? The Blue Mosque sits in the center of the proposed site.

From the museum, we went to the internet café for a few minutes and then to Serdar’s bookstore to sell our excess books and say goodbye. We went back to the hotel to read for awhile before dinner.

We went out to dinner with a friend of Deanna’s cousin, Larry, and her husband. They took us to a restaurant near where they lived. It was a large, upscale place that served Turkish food, but seemed to have a very cosmopolitan clientele. The mezes were very good. After dinner, Nesli and her husband took us on a drive through Taksim Square. The traffic was terrible even late on Saturday night.

Dec. 28, 2000
Sunnyvale, CA

Doğan at the Ferry Terminal

On our last day in Türkiye, we went to the Princes’ Islands with Doğan and six of his guests. We took the ferry and it was a long ride to Doğan’s favorite island because it was the last stop. The island featured lovely, Victoria era villas and lots of horse-drawn carriages. There was a quaint downtown shopping street. We went for a walk to look at the houses and then ate seafood in a restaurant near the ferry landing. We were very sleepy on the ride home.

Villa on Princes' Island

Princes' Island

Doğan had us over for dinner on his terrace overlooking the Blue Mosque. Bruce and Karen (from Hendersonville, TN) joined us and we had a lovely evening. We stayed quite late, and might have stayed longer, but I had to rise at 4:00 to catch my airport shuttle.

The Ferry Ride Home

I took the airport shuttle at 5:00 and caught an Austrian Airlines flight to Vienna at 7:00. When I got to Vienna, I was disturbed to discover that there was no 10:25 Austrian Airlines flight to Paris, but eventually discovered that the Air France flight at that time was the same plane. I managed to negotiate the Vienna airport entirely in German.

The Paris airport was more difficult. I came into the EU terminal (essentially the domestic terminal) and was leaving from the international terminal. I had to take a bus quite a distance to get there. I had two hours and I made it in plenty of time, having managed to handle all enquiries in French. I was feeling pretty good about my language skills by that point. My luggage didn’t make it from terminal to terminal in time, so it didn’t arrive with me.  I was a bit concerned about the duty I might have to pay on a $2200 carpet but it was delivered to my door without any interaction with customs.

The flight to Los Angeles was long, but uneventful. I arrived on time. Because I had no luggage, I got through customs without having to pay any duty. My friends Joe and Diane were there to greet me. Diane brought my birthday and housewarming gifts and I gave her the Diana pin I had purchased in Ankara. We visited for awhile and then Joe and I tried to go to Marina del Rey to get the bag I had left at Deanna’s. There was a sniper incident going on in the apartments near Ralph’s and the police weren’t letting anyone closer than Jefferson. I had two bags of clothes and neither of them were doing me any good.

Michelle and Sophie met us at the El Torito in Pasadena and I had my first meal of Mexican food. I was in heaven, complete with margaritas. I stayed three days and spent Thanksgiving with the Futerman/Markman clan. Joe lent me his car so I could retrieve my bag from Deanna’s and I had a nice visit with my friend, Peter, while I was there. I flew from Burbank to Oakland the day after Thanksgiving and my mother and Uncle Fred met me and took me back to Benicia.