Istanbul

Istanbul (not Constantinople, though the Greeks still call it Konstantinopolous) is definitely an amazing city. Much, much more beautiful than any city in Greece - and, indeed, much more beautiful than any city of comparable size that I've ever seen, we arrived early in the morning and hoofed it out to our hostel, which was conveniently located in the tourist district of Sultanahmet, right in between the towering minarets of the Blue Mosque and the Aya (or Hagia) Sofia. We had bhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifeen recommended the Istanbul Hostel by three different people, but they had all been during the summer. When we went, it was completely dead - and strangely so; the rooms were full, but there was never anyone else there, besides Kate, myself, and our friend from home, Asher.

Asher, for those of you who don't know him, is completely insane in a completely awesome way. He arrived late our first night (around 4AM, after we'd gone to bed), but that was OK as Kate and I kept a pretty low profile the first day, with the big highlights being the New Mosque, a stroll up into the hopping Taksim area, and a nightcap at the Ali Pasha sheesa cafe, where we met some really friendly Turks, one of whom was named Aslan (which means "lion," in Turkish for you Narnia buffs) and one of whom gave me some cologne that he made himself, which was kind of weird, but pretty nice and a great example of the kind of hospitality we received in the land of the Ottomans.

Anyway, once Asher got in, we played tourists pretty hardcore (at least for us). We took him on the tour of what we'd just done (especially as the inside of the New Mosque is incredible - covered in tiles and draped with hanging lamps as you see here),
but we also stopped in a cafe for some backgammon, checked out the Blue Mosque (bigger, but not as impressive on the inside as the New Mosque), went back to Ali Pasha, and, of course, picked up some requisite doner and some really excellent Turkish baklava.

On the subject of baklava... the Turks really know what they're doing. They have about 20 different varieties of buttery filo layed with something creamy, stuffed with pulverized pistachios, and smothered with honey. Delicious. Though, some were better than others. Söbiyet ("shuh-bee-yet") was our favorite - the fine sprinkling of pistachios really did it. But even again, some
places had better söbiyet than others - our favorite in all of Turkey was the first place we went - a little stand in Sultanahmet, on the walk back from Ali Pasha's to our hostel. But as long as there was söbiyet, we'd eat anywhere. And I'm throwing in a picture of the sprawling indoor Grand Bazaar that's larger than most towns and filled with shoppers and hawkers galore...

The next day, we finally made it to the hulking Aya Sofia, which was once a basilica, then a mosque, and is now a museum. And it is huge. And 1500 years old. And filled with mosaics. And where the mosaics have been scraped off, there are more mosaics and paintings underneath (from the basilica days - it was the religious focal point of the Eastern Orthodox religion for about 100 years). We wandered through the vast interior - which has an open space which rivals St. Peter's in Rome - snapping pictures and treading the ancient marble floors for a couple hours before it was time to try to watch the Turkey football match that night. We scoured the town for a good pub that was showing it and finally found the North Shields Pub in between Sultanhamet and the train station. But it was RIDICUOUSLY overpriced. Don't go there unless you want to spend like 8 euros on a beer in a country where you should be spending about 2. Anyway, the game wasn't that interesting when you have to ration sips so we headed back to our (dead) hostel and got some rest instead.

The next day, it was time to check out the famed Topkapi Palace, residence of the most exalted Ottoman rulers for about 400 years. This place is stunning and sprawling. As we'd learned earlier - and as we would learn over and over again - the Turks always have a double tier pricing for their attractions where the
main thing is about 20 lira (10 euros) but the best thing there is another 20 lira - in this case, the harem. So we skipped that, but still saw the courtyards, a couple mosques, a display on the Qa'aba in Saudi Arabia, huge gates, the old kitchens, the Imperial treasuries, and the exquisitely tiled circumcision room and Iftar kiosk. We also happened upon an exhibit on decaying synagogues throughout

We didn't realize how long this move was going to take. She told us where she lived and we figured an hour ought to be about right to get pretty much anywhere from the city center. We were, however, emphatically wrong, with the entire journey taking about 3 hours in a mix of - in order - walking, metro, looking for buses for 30 minutes, taxi, metro, and bus. The final bus took another hour or so, most of which we were crammed next to each other with our packs on, unable to move anything more than our eyebrows. Then we got off on the wrong stop and walked back a bit, finally meeting our host, Ayshe, in front of a McDonald's in the neighborhood of Yenikoy, which is only apparently 14 km from where we started.
Ridiculous. And Ayshe, while very nice, was not someone who should have been hosting couchsurfers, at least not us. She was 42, working in the Turkish television industry, constantly busy, not speaking much English, and kept an immaculately clean - and rarely lived in - apartment. Still, the view was nice and were very materially comfortable... but we couldn't stay more than two nights due to general awkwardness (ie. she was very surprised that we stayed with her and I made a pretty big faux pas when she offered us macaroni and cheese [all she had to eat in the house] and I, meaning to get across something to the extent of "We don't want to inconvenience you," said "We don't want your food," which is the epitome of class, I know).

Anyway, we did spend a pretty pleasant day out in the boonies, walking down to the nearby fishing village of Istinye where Asher and I got long-overdue shaves/facial massages from a Turkish barber in between eating some borek, checking email, and going to a pretty chill sheesha spot. But we did go back into Sultanhamet to a different hostel which was marginally more interesting than the first. There, we met up with Sarah (Dutch) and Jetan (British) to go out partying in Taksim. Sarah had lived in Istanbul for her year abroad so she was able to lead us to the Joker Bar, where Asher busted out his party shades and really got the party going. First, he challenged the resident Street Fighter II champ at the arcade (and lost), then he formed circles of clamoring Turkish men around him who all wanted to wear the glasses, which ended up with a night of the entire club busting out with the most ridiculous dance moves known to mankind once the glasses took control.

We arranged a new couchsurfer in Istanbul but, as this one was also outside of the tourist center, we made sure to see the last few things we wanted in and around Sultanahmet as we didn't know if this was going to be another three hour trek. This was an excellent idea, as it was another three hour trek. But before we left, we went to the awesomely spooky underground cisterns dating back to Roman days. This is basically a huge underground well that used to provide water for the entire city. Now, you can walk along the pathways, check out the Medusa-footed columns, and play around with the crazy acoustics.

But we eventually had to bid goodbye to Sultanahmet again and make another three hour trek, this time in the opposite direction - and across the Bosporus, into Asia... in style. You can take the ferry across the straight for the same price as a metro ticket, but you get a 30 minute ferry ride views to two continents. So we were pretty happy with that part... but then we got to the Kadikoy terminal and had to find the correct dolmus (minibus) to take us to our host. This took about 45 minutes. Then we had to wait in line for the dolmus for another 30 minutes or so. Then we get on and tell the driver where we need to get off - he says OK - then takes us all the way to the end of the line, saying that we needed to tell him when to stop when we saw our stop. That took another hour or so. Then we negotiated a return ride with a different dolmus driver who took us back to our spot, which took another 30 minutes or so, so when we finally arrived to meet our host.

Our host turned out to be much better this time. He was an expat from San Diego going by the name of Harvey Wallbanger who moved to Istanbul a few years ago to start a microbrewery. So he had a keg of delicious beer - beer he had brewed himself - on tap at all times in his apartment... which meant all the free beer we could drink. We took this opportunity to give it "the old college try," which meant drinking beer and playing video games in our pajamas all day, every day. Though we also made some enormous and enormously delicious sandwiches, and, at night, we hung out with Harvey and some of his friends, which was pretty cool as we finally got to meet some locals who were a) peers and b) not trying to sell us something. One of these guys was Mehmet, who was actually an opera singer with the Turkish National Opera, though he never sang for us, unfortunately. Anyway, after whipping Asher repeatedly at Winning 11, it was finally time to say goodbye to our most gracious host and head down to the bus station to get out of Istanbul and get on down to Cappadocia...