Istanbul Trip Part I: Sunny Istanbul

It was a auspicious beginning to our Istanbul trip. Despite having woken up at 3:30 in the morning -- which in Paris means that the streets are for once eerily calm, with no one about but the sorry chaps whose task it is to clean the metro and the taxi drivers who won't stop for us -- to make it to our 7am flight to Zurich, while boarding our connection flight we were told we’d been bumped up to business class. “How lovely!” I exclaimed happily and sleepily, that being my first coherent sentence all morning. We were occupied during the two and a half hour flight by a four course meal, Swiss Airlines style, complete with as much wine as we wanted (though we prudently contented ourselves to one glass, it being only 11am Paris time). We arrived in sunny Istanbul full, happy and ready to explore.

After taking some time to look our hotel, whose address we’d forgotten but which a nice man at the airport provided me with without pushing his airport shuttle service on us too much, we discovered it in a lively local shopping district near the end of the new metro line. While Robbie left me with my luggage to look down another side street for our Best Western, I had time to observe a couple of café servers, trays in hand, zigzagging to various shop entrances retrieving the empty tea glasses which they had previously brought to the shopkeepers. (Tea is a big thing in Istanbul, which sans sugar goes perfectly with the super-sweet baklava we tasted later that afternoon.)

We made it to the Sultanahmet district by sunset to witness the magnificent Blue Mosque (which is not in fact blue) outlined by the cloudless sapphire-colored sky at dusk. Afterwards we explored centuries-old stone streets between the mosque and the Sea of Marmara, from which other tourist were conspicuously absent, it being February and the off-season (why February is the off-season, we were soon to discover). We saw kitschy pink and white hotels, ramshackle wooden houses sure to collapse in the next big earthquake, and a pair of large white ducks swimming in a round plastic tub being filled by a man with a hose.

Two things we learned on our first evening in Istanbul. First, don’t start walking next to the highway rounding the outside the walls of the Palace of the Sultans. You may get a nice view of the Bosphorus, but it’s a long, windy way around, and Istanbulis are crazy and horn-loving drivers. Second, if you’re a pair of conspicuous tourists, don’t fall for the tricks of the desperate shoe-shiner who drops his brush next to you so you’ll pick it up and give it to him, proceeding to a brief conversation in which he convinces your husband to get a shoe shine and wheedles 12 lira ($7) out of you.

By now it was dinner time, and I have to interrupt my story to explain what it’s like choosing a restaurant in the tourist areas of Istanbul. Istanbul restaurant workers do not stand passively by waiting for you to chose from the dozens of inviting restaurants lining the streets of a particular neighborhood. Oh no, there is in fact an active contest between them to pull in the tourists who may not even be hungry, who may be walking half a block away on the opposite side of the street. Calls of “Please, come, sorry!” “Lady, look!” and “English menu, see the menu!” resound on all sides as you walk down the street at dinnertime, with picture-filled menus being pushed at you from all sides. (Keep in mind that it’s February, so there aren’t nearly enough tourists to fill the many empty restaurants.) Don’t catch anyone’s eye or, even if he is inside, he will exit his restaurant and follow you half-way down the street with his menu in hand, making promises of special deals which, once you succumb, are sure to be absent from your bill. If the waiter is especially able, he may try to guess which nationality you are by calling out one of his token phrases in a collection of foreign languages. (With Rob’s very Parisian-looking scarf , we got a lot of “Monsieur, Madame!” and “Bonsoir!”, but also the occasional “Guttentag!”) Don’t get me wrong, Turkish food is fabulous and we never had a meal we didn’t enjoy, but the over-attentiveness can be a bit annoying at times. Pleading did not bring us in that time -- that night we had an excellent dinner at a charming, though touristy, fish restaurant recommended to us by our guidebook.

Stay tuned for Part II: Istanbul in the Rain