Istanbul Days 4-6

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Istanbul June 30-July 2, 2014

I'll combine the last three days, as things are winding down here for our visit in Istanbul. My most memorable event of June 30 was getting stuck in the elevator. Wayne was at his meetings, and I was heading out for a walk. I boarded the elevator, and it started down but stopped suddenly, and all the lights went out, as in pitch black. I had heard of this happening and always wondered what I'd do, and now I know. My first thought was that I could use my cell phone as a flashlight to see where the emergency telephone might be. Wouldn't it have been more sensible to use the cell phone as a PHONE? Anyway, before I had a chance to embarrass myself further, the power came back on, and I was saved. Phew! One minute was long enough, thank you.

Having seen most of the major tourist attractions, I thought about going farther afield by visiting Miniaturk, a park with scale models of meaningful sites in Turkey. It sounded quirky and fun, but sadly, it turned out to be too far away to walk to and not reachable by public transportation. I have heard enough complaints about Istanbul taxi drivers that I didn't want to risk that on my own, so instead I walked down the major shopping street, Istiklal, twice by myself and then again with Wayne, actually, and went to the top of Galata Tower, which has a commanding view of the city. Right in the area around the tower there are dozens of musical instrument shops. Also several good ice cream places at that end of Istiklal.

Here is an observation about "pedestrian" streets like Istiklal in Istanbul: even though they appear to be designed for pedestrians only, they are clearly accessible to vehicles, so you may very likely meet a taxi, delivery vehicle, or garbage truck heading right at you or hear a scooter zooming up from behind. Furthermore, there are no rules of the road on pedestrian streets, so you have no idea which side a vehicle might come from. I think it would be safe to admit that these are motor vehicle ROADWAYS and put in some sidewalks.

Across the Galata Bridge, I visited the Spice Market, which is fun to see with its mountains of spices at dozens of stalls. I'm not sure how they can all stay in business. There was also a pet shop area, and it included big gallon jars of leeches. Not sure if those were for pet or medicinal use - ? For whatever reason, I was not so harassed at this market as I had been at the Grand Bazaar.

We had a delicious meal at Faros Restaurant, near Taksim Sq., getting more adventurous and ordering lahmacun (pita with meat topping), abagannous (roasted eggplant dip with yogurt), a tomato-walnut-pomegranate salad, lamb "knife" kebab, lentil soup, and yogurt drink. It was too much food, but we enjoyed it all, and it was served with thick, hot pita bread. That was followed by a conference social event at one of the city's former cisterns, huge underground spaces built by the Romans with high ceilings and massive columns. They are used for weddings, parties, etc., and are very impressive in spite of retaining a bit of a wet-basement smell.

On our last evening in Istanbul, we finally got to use our rooftop jacuzzi for about 15 minutes before hurrying off to the closing dinner for the conference. It was a fair distance from the conference center, so we were to take buses from there, and it was very disorganized, so we spent about an hour in line but got to meet the people around us and commiserate about whether it would have been smarter to get dinner locally and watch the World Cup. However, the dinner was worth waiting for, or at least the setting was, and the food was quite excellent, too. The restaurant Portaxe is located right on the Bosphorus, and we had a great view of the bridge, the ships going by, the sliver of moon - beautiful!

After that, our last morning was pretty dull. It took so long to pack that our plan to climb a hill on the Asian side, and even our backup plan of ferry to Kadikoy, would have taken too long for safety in catching our flight. Instead, we took the quick ferry over to Uskudar and back and visited the Dolmabahce Palace, home of sultans and their harems from 1856 until it became the residence of Ataturk after the revolution of 1923. It was well worth the visit, although with our limited time we bought tickets only for the residential portion ("harem"). We were happy with that decision, because the grounds were the main attraction for me, and we barely had time to see those. The interiors were similar to what one sees at the Newport mansions, very ornate. There is also a clock museum in the complex (included with admission), and in some ways that is the most interesting exhibit, with clocks that show the seasonal tilt of the earth, phases of the moon, times for prayer, etc.

On to Ataturk Airport for flight to Geneva via Vienna!

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