If only I knew exactly what were in store for me, my negative attitude would have been completely turned around. However, I feel like half of the excitement was my mere elation over how well things turned out in comparison to my general hopes. While I googled as much as I could about the foreign city, I still felt that this Muslim nation in the near east would have been a complete lack of excitement for me compared to my previously epic spring breaks. (I spent first year in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico with my best girlfriends, and second year in Cuzco, Peru working with orphans.) Now, weeks after the fact, I can’t possibly express how wrong I was about the whole situation, or explain in a blog update how badly I would love to return to this impressionable city.
When we landed in Istanbul, I was expecting a typical city with skyscrapers shooting towards the sky and cars and people bustling through the streets. Instead, we were greeted with the glowing lights of some of the oldest buildings in the world that lit up the night sky without overwhelming the viewer and a few people here and there walking casually down the winding, cobblestone streets. As we rode to our hostel in a taxi, the sense of welcome I got from the city was unlike anything I’d ever experienced in any other country. The rows of little shops and restaurants that had outdoor terraces filled with plush, cushioned chairs, oriental rugs and water pipes gave the most inviting feeling, and I knew that there was no way I could have formed any expectations that would fit this trip.
While we were checking into our hostel that was two blocks behind the Hagia Sophia and right in the middle of some of the cutest bars and restaurants, the owners stopped midway to give us a special treat of hot apple tea, a Turkish specialty. It was my first taste of anything Turkish, and the start of what would become a long and emotional love affair with the best cuisine I had ever tried. Once we dropped our things off in our 8-person all-female hostel room, we decided to explore our street a little. After walking up and down for a little bit, and trying to have conversations in Spanish so the venders wouldn’t yell at us in English only to learn that they spoke every language in the world, we ended up at the bar across the street from our hostel. We wanted to smoke water pipe to initiate us fully into the Turkish culture, and as Pree (our Indian friend) had never tried it, we felt this was her moment to get in touch with her “brown” roots.
It was around this moment when the stars in the universe started to align, or something along those lines happened because after this point, we met some of the most interesting people that really helped shape our trip. At the same table as us was a woman we met who was working in Copenhagen, but was originally from Peru and actually spoke Quechua (a near-extinct language from the Incans)! We couldn’t keep up our act of pretending we were Spanish anymore because she could definitely tell we were Americans, but we were able to have an interesting conversation in English, regardless. Also at our table was a guy we met named Haci, who was from Istanbul and also just happened to be a travel agent/tour guide and was willing to make us a specialized itinerary for our four days in Istanbul. Instead of having to wonder what to do when, everything was taken care of since he told us what days certain places were closed and helped us fit everything into our schedule.
So Sunday morning, we woke up bright and early to visit the Blue Mosque. I had never seen a mosque before, and most certainly never been inside one, so it was definitely an exciting and new experience. We walked up to the beautiful building and got in line to take off our shoes, cover our heads, and enter the mosque. Once inside, we saw the walls and ceiling covered in beautiful Arabic script since Islam forbids any sort of recreation of religious figures, and circles of low ceiling lights that made the giant building literally just hug you. Between the plushy feeling of the carpet under our feet and the low, soft lights that filled the enormous room, the homey feeling was really incredible. Aside from the fact that the mosque was filled with tourists taking pictures (like myself), I’d still say it had the effect it was trying to give.
After the Blue Mosque, our itinerary told us to go to the Hagia Sophia, a church from the time of Justinian that was converted to a mosque in 1438 when the Turks conquered Constantinople. Now, it is a museum where thousands of tourists visit every day to admire the beautiful architecture and see the contrasting decorations of Arabic script and Christian mosaics. We decided to splurge and hire a private guide, just so we’d soak up all the history and culture this place had to offer, but our old man whom we called Dede was not that helpful. Aside from the fact that I couldn’t focus on what he was saying because I was so distracted by his moving dentures, he had a really thick accent and it was hard to hear anything. I was able to understand some of the high points, so I would say it was a success even though we were hoping to learn a little more. I did get to see where the sultan would pray (behind a golden gate so no one could tell if he went to mosque or not) and learn that the little door structure shows in which direction is Mecca. Overall, the size of the building is just overwhelming and it was much prettier than I could ever capture in a picture.
For lunch, we walked the streets for a little until we decided on a restaurant with outdoor seating, which included little booths with cushions for seats and a tiny table. Here, we had our first, real taste of Turkish cuisine, and I realized what I had been missing my whole life. After the humus, stuffed grape leaves, chicken kebabs, stuffed peppers, and the best Turkish pita, we were all in a serious food coma. We basked in the sun for a bit while listening to the afternoon call to prayer and had one of those moments where we asked ourselves if this was really our life. Then we set off again to find Topkapi palace, which only took us an hour after we missed the turn for the entrance the first time. We wondered around the ginormous area for hours, looking at all the rooms the sultans needed and staring at the priceless items stored in the treasury for guests to view.
The next day we embarked on a daylong journey with a tour group that our friend Haci set up for us. In the morning, we went to the Spice Market, which was a really cool collaboration of stands selling fresh spices, food, and other items. I bought a bag of fresh apple tea to bring back to the states. Then we took a boat trip down the Bosphorus, which is the body of water that separates the city into Europe and Asia. Lunch was included in the trip, and then we crossed the bridge by bus and went to Asia for the afternoon. It was my first time in the continent, and now I can say I have been to FOUR continents. Only two left for me to visit, seeing as how I hate the cold and would never go to Antarctica. During this trip, we met our good friend Luigi, an Italian guy living and teaching in London. He sat and talked with us while we had a drink, and we got to learn a lot about him. After the trip to Asia, the guide took everyone on the bus to a leather warehouse where they gave us a private fashion show that was probably the most painful thing I’d ever had to sit through. Afterwards, they made us all look around at these 1500-euro leather jackets that were heinous and clearly us college students would never afford. We were pretty sure it was run by the Turkish mob, so we had to get the heck out of there. Luigi and us girls peaced out and decided it would be better to just walk back to our hotel instead of wait out that terribly and scary experience.
Our last full day in Istanbul we dedicated to the Grand Bazaar, a collection of over 2000 stands selling literally anything you could ever need. It was really overwhelming, and being three American girls traveling along, all the male vendors could not stop yelling at us. It was actually exhausting going through it, but by the end I made out with some pretty cool souvenirs that I’m not going to catalogue here as many of them are presents for my family. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing and enjoying good Turkish food. Unfortunately we never made it to Taksim, the street where everyone goes out, but we were there at the beginning of the week when supposedly nothing was going on.
By the time we left the next morning with our little bags stuffed with souvenirs and our cameras filled with pictures, we were almost sad to leave the city. Even though we knew four days in Santorini lay ahead of us, we felt like the trip couldn’t get any better. So after our time in Istanbul, I felt that I had learned a lot about the city. The overwhelming influence of American music and Western pop culture was a big surprise, but I thought it contrasted nicely with the Eastern aspects the city maintained, such as the call to prayer that you could hear anywhere and the ubiquitous donors and water pipes. The city was unlike anything I expected, and for that exact reason I absolutely loved it.
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