Turkey: Day IV (Istanbul)

Tuesday, March 22^nd:

The Black Sea from a Distance:

            What an adventure today! We woke up intending to go to Topkapı Palace, but discovered that it was closed on Tuesdays. We also had wanted to go to the Princes Islands in the Marmara Sea for a day, but discovered that the ferries there don’t run from March 20^th to March 26^th (literally the one week all year that they close, and the one week that I am here). So after eating the hotel breakfast, we decided maybe it would be cool to visit Rumeli Hisari, one of the Ottoman forts on the Bosphorus, and if we had time, possibly get up to see the Black Sea. We took a 45 minute bus ride north to Sariyer before discovering that we had travelled far passed Rumeli Hisari and were still a ways from the Black Sea. At least I can say that I saw it, however, as we could see the hills where the Bosphorus ended and the vast sea in the distance where all of the large shipping vessels were headed. We hopped in a cab to head back, and had our first serious problem with the language barrier. I had told the cabbie that we wanted to go to Rumeli Hisari, however I handed him the address to it and he did not know where it was. Mistakenly, I had also written down “Anadolu Hisari” on the paper, which is the matching fort on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, and he saw this and thought that we wanted to go there. After a long and painful cab ride (this cab was awful and lurched so bad we both almost threw up), we got to Anadolu Hisari. This mistake was very annoying, as the Anadolu fort is far smaller and not a museum like, and it cost us 47TL one way and another 23TL coming back after a few pictures. But besides being annoying, this was the first time in my life that I had set foot in Asia!

Rumeli Hisari:

            So we took a cab back to the other side and walked around the 500 year old fort for about an hour. It was built at the narrowest point in the Bosphorus to match the Anadolu fort and defend the Ottomans. We also met a friendly tourism policeman who played a funny joke on Jen, locking her behind a rot-iron gate in one of the towers for a few minutes. It got pretty cold in the wind walking around right on the water, so we took a bus to Taksim Square to look for the Church of St. Anthony of Padua. On the way, we discovered a beautiful Greek Orthodox Church and took our time strolling down Istiklal while hopping in a couple stores. One store was a very cool antique book store that was filled with old art and Arabian maps of the world and old books. I purchased a small original watercolor of the Hagia Sophia here, and we went to the St. Anthony Church. This church is somewhat modern but in a very cool location as it is literally in the middle of urban Taksim which hosts the most nightlife in the entire nation.

Church of St. Anthony of Padua:

            All of this walking got us pretty hungry, so we walked down Istiklal to the Galata neighborhood and got Pide for lunch, the Turkish version of pizza, and more lentil soup (everywhere has this). Ours had peppers and tomatoes on them, and Pide comes without sauce, just cheese. We also walked by the old Galata Tower, built in the fourth century on our way down the hill towards Karaköy. In Karaköy we decided to hang out at a Nargile lounge, a Turkish hookah café. Inside there is food and drink services and you can sit in comfy benches filled with pillows while you watch a personal television and play backgammon. Jen and I got a melon nargile, and the waiters bring you fresh coals every ten minutes or so while you smoke the hookah tobacco in the same manner as the Ottomans hundreds of years ago. We played a full game of backgammon and tried to decipher the Turkish news about the UN missions in Libya before heading back to the hotel for a nap, showers, and to change for dinner.

Myself and Jen at a Nargile Lounge in Karaköy:

            For dinner we had wanted to go to the Kiki restaurant in Taksim Square, however we got going pretty late and the bus took long enough in the traffic that we arrived just after the kitchen closed. Instead, we walked through Taksim and discovered an old Italian wine cellar with a restaurant in it, called Pano Sarapevi, and ate there. We enjoyed a blended Shiraz with our meals, which were mostly Italian but with a distinct Turkish flavor to them. We had rice-stuffed grape leaves for an appetizer, and I had a Steak with peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, and melted cheese on top of it. We knew we had a long day ahead again for tomorrow, so we headed back to Arnavutköy for bed around one in the morning.