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| Mmm baklava... |
I had scheduled a trip to Malaysia for Denise's wedding in late-June. I had booked the tickets ages before, planning on stopping over in Taiwan on the way home and taking time with some friends to plan out our Malaysian adventure.
Two weeks before I left, though, it became clear I was needed to attend a work thing in Ghana right before my trip to Malaysia. With that, I had to make a mad-dash effort to change my flight details going to Malaysia so that I could arrive from Ghana...somehow. Those two locations don't often connect (if you were wondering).
Last-minute international flights can sometimes be (crazy) expensive...especially when they're not exactly roundtrip. The short version is that I ended up having to book my trip to Ghana and Malaysia through Turkey (both ways) and I would literally make a lap around the planet. Since I had such an intense itinerary, I decided I may as well enjoy myself and take a 24-hour layover in Istanbul.
Preparing for a last-minute layover in Istanbul was interesting. US-Turkish relations were not great - only a few weeks or months before I went a travel ban to Turkey was lifted for US citizens. I received my Turkish e-visa and started looking for information about travel concerns (a.k.a. where should tourists avoid) only to find out that the US government still strongly discouraged people from going to Turkey at all. The US government site indicated that before I traveled to Turkey, I must write out my will and make plans with my family about what was to happen "when" I get killed or dismembered while touring the country (as if it was a sure thing). That felt a bit extreme; I knew plenty of people who had recently been to Turkey and lived to tell the tale quite happily. I decided to visit the French government website for traveling in Turkey, to compare... they expressed that one should exercise caution and not be an idiot when traveling in foreign countries. It seemed more reasonable, so I heeded the French government's advice.
As I was boarding the plane in Accra to Istanbul, however, my newsfeed informed me that I was going around the day before a major election. This often spells bad news, and tourists are often encouraged to avoid areas with election, just in case there are demonstrations that could turn violent. I was anxious that I was getting myself into trouble.
I, fortunately, needn't have worried - apparently, elections are only a concern AFTER they happen, and no one seemed concerned about it on the plane nor in the city while I was there.
So I landed in Istanbul and made my way to the old town area and checked in to a hotel where I could shower and nap, The hotel felt like a French hostel, with an old building's charm and creaking floorboards to anounce your presence. The guys running the hotel were extremely sweet and warm, too; I was very early for checking-in, but they invited me to go upstairs and enjoy the breakfast.
I left my luggage behind, crept up the spiral staircase to the roof with a sunroom, and found myself staring at a Turkish breakfast buffet. If you've never seen this, know that it is colorful - reds and greens and yellows and purples. Everything is freshly cooked - eggs, cheesy dishes, sausage medleys. And everything tastes satisfying to the soul. I was starting to doubt that the Turkish food so often eaten from NYC street carts would not hold a flame to the real thing, here.
After being nourished, I walked around the old town to the Blue Mosque. This is a huge mosque that appears to be blue (there you go) and is still a working place of worship. I threw a scarf over my head and made my way into the mosque. It was indeed lovely to look at, and rather simple...but there was also a feeling of overbearing sacredness that I can feel in places where people invest so much time praying.
I was approached by a pleasant man - a Kurd - who wanted to sell me rugs. I thought to myself, you know what? Why not? I'll go look at rugs for a little bit. And I totally got sold - not for a rug (that was way too far out of my price range), but for a tablecloth. It is a gorgeous, hand-woven tablecloth that is both heavy and delicate. It could have been a fake or poorer in quality than the "real deals", but I honestly don't care - it took my breath away. And now, it may be one of the most expensive things I own.
After dropping a healthy amount of grocery money on a rug, I made my way to the cisterns (essentially an old underground reservoir). I'm a water expert, so of course, I'd want to see an underground Basilica Cisterns - especially one with ancient columns that are decorated with heads and Corinthian pillars. And it was the coolest thing! I walked down a staircase into the dark cavern of cisterns. The pillars were lit modestly, which makes it feel like the water and pillars are lit by candlelight. I walked along the soggy tourist path and found the famous Medusa heads at the end of the path. How did people carve heads into poles for underground water storages? I'm mystified. Something also nice about visiting the cisterns was how few people were there enjoying the damp, magically-lit site when I was there. It almost felt like a secret.
Probably where all of the people were really, though, was across the street to view the famous Hagia Sophia.
The Hagia Sophia is a ginormous domed building that has a patchwork history - during Byzantine times, it was a huge church. Afterward, it became a mosque. It's now a museum. Really, there isn't much that has to be said by the museum curators with any placards, though, because the building inside and out is majestic and jaw-dropping enough to distract even the most adamant historian buff from some painfully-written narratives. The whole place just felt simple yet magical - I don't know how else to describe it. I went in to see what the mammoth building was holding, and I was surprised to find a bunch of large, rather-famous-looking Jesus-related mosaics. All were impressive.
But let me emphasize - the building is very large. Very large. There were some times where I found little pockets where there weren't a lot of people hanging around and I would see something small, simple, but beautiful to look at. Like mossy water jars in a little nook by the crypts. And a cat bathing in some light coming through a window.
A note: This is well-known to many, but Istanbul has a lot of feral cats hanging out all over the place. They're everywhere, minding their own business,
I felt dizzy with the sights after walking through the museum, so I decided to take a break for lunch at Cafe Rumist. I had something amazing and delicious, but don't ask me what because I don't know what it was (I just pointed and said, "yes, please.").
After, I made my way to the Grand Bazaar and went to a patisserie to have some baklava. Yes, I'm still gluten intolerant. My rationale for contaminating my gut with the honeyed, flakey pastry was because (1) the stuff in Turkey should probably be a million times better than the stuff I had as a kid in New England and (2) it was in memory of my mom, who loved baklava to a point that it caused family drama on some occasions. Was my experience worth the pain, in the end? Was it delicious enough to justify the outcome? Absolutely.
I continued to walk around and went to the Grand Bazaar to buy some stuff. I wasn't there for long, but I can confirm it is indeed grand, and that the architecture is, once again, beautiful and graceful (like so many buildings in Istanbul).
After collecting some presents, I walked to the Bosphorus near Galata Bridge. I had read somewhere that fish wraps were tasty and were freshly-made under the bridge, so I went to get myself a wrap. The white fish was roasting on a little outdoor open grill by an old man, and I asked for one wrap. He smiled and quietly started to pull it all together, dousing it with sauces I didn't know and stuffing the wrap with veggies I didn't see coming. I took the wrap and bit in. There was sumac mingling with warm fish and veggies. I am pretty sure I saw God at that moment.
After my small holy experience with the fish wrap, I hopped on a (very cheap) boat ride so I could enjoy the river and look at the rest of the Istanbul coasts that hug the Bosphorus. I saw that different areas of Istanbul looked really different from each other - I was concentrating mostly on an old area with lots of mosques. Other chunks of the cities were more modern and had taller, glassy buildings.
My boat ride ended and I was tired. I walked back to the hotel (it took a while) and grabbed some snacks before I took a nap and watched a FIFA game before getting back in a cab to go to the airport.
Istanbul is beautiful. It isn't entirely European - it does indeed have characteristics unique to Asian cities I've been to. It's also very old. I felt like it had an ancient feeling like if Paris, London, and Bangkok had a similar Great-Great-Grandmother...that would be Istanbul. I admired the mosques dotting the city and the peacefulness I felt while roaming the city.
I've already told Mr. CT Lawyer that it's not a matter on if he'll ever visit Turkey with me someday, but when. Because I fell in love with the place in under 24 hours.
