Istanbul, bonus days

Airport Day – Sunday (Oct 28)

So, here I am on Sunday morning.  My flight tomorrow is cancelled. United Airlines does not answer their phone.  The United Airlines website times out on the pages where you book a flight.  Google does not list any downtown United office, and besides it is Sunday.  What to do??  I wanna go home!!  I am too upset to enjoy touristing, so I need to spend this day fixing this big problem so I can enjoy subsequent days.  The only useful thing that I can think of to do is physically go to the airport and find United and get myself re-scheduled.

All that research into the Metro system pays off! I could walk up the hill and across the square and take the shuttle bus to the airport, but I decide that it would be funner take the Metro. I buy my five jetons and head out. Funicular to the T1, past all my earlier stops.  My train is pleasant, but the trains heading past in the other direction taking folks into the city for Sunday afternoon are packed to the limit.  This stays true all the way out to the eastern suburbs, where I change trains to the M1, which terminates at Atatürk International Airport.

I do the security thing to be admitted into the international flight part of the terminal. There is a little United Air office window, and only one person in front of me. Sounds promising, but …this is where I will spend the next three hours. The one person was misleading, because folks kept running up with flight-is-boarding-in-five-minutes emergencies. The United computers were very slow. The United telephones were even slower. We pretty quickly identified a pair of flights that would work for me, but apparently the final step in these crisis conditions is to get a real person at the other end to verify that those seats are still available, so the nice lady sat on hold forever waiting to talk to that person.

This is Sunday, all flights for Monday are cancelled.  United does not fly out of Istanbul on Tuesday and Wednesday (awesome!). The bottom line was that there was no way out of town through the good offices of United until Thursday. I ended up booking flights that were the reverse of my trip to get here: Istanbul to Munich, then Munich to SFO. Leave here 2pm, gain ten hours in flight, I arrive on the same day in SFO about 9pm. It sucks, but there you have it.

Take the metro home, pay the Ar Palas another 300TL for another three nights, have a depressing meal at one of the Taksim cafeterias (the food in these places is good and cheap, ambiance, not so much!) and go to bed.

I should note on Thursday when I returned to the airport for real, the lines at United were full, implying everyone else had somehow managed to get themselves re-booked without going through my go-to-the-airport drama, but I do not know how they did it.  I did miss a couple of 800 number calls from United because my service was turned off, that was probably how – BIG sigh…

Island Day – Monday

I am NOT packing my suitcase this morning.  I am NOT catching the shuttle bus to the airport and getting the heck out of here.  Hurricane Sandy has trashed that plan, so I’m on to the new plan of identifying fun and interesting things to do for these three extra days.

Today I will take the ferry to the islands that looked so interesting in Sophie’s facebook pics, which I did not quite get around to last week.  So … breakfast, chill for a while, up the hill to the Metro, purchase only two tokens, for the Funicular down then back up the hill to the Kabatas ferry landings.

Same ferry building as for the Black Sea trip, but board the boat on the right rather than the boat on the left.  It’s a pretty different scene on this boat.  The Black Sea cruise was mostly a tourist thing, but the Princes Islands cruise seems pretty clearly to be a locals thing.  My fellow passengers were almost entirely groups of locals – packs of guys, young couples, families and extended families.  Looking at the pictures I am reminded that this a gloomier day than most, with a noticeable build-up of smog visible all across the Asian side.

This would be a good time to digress on the really interesting range of body coverage in women’s dress.  First I will note that little girls up to some magic age seem to get to dress like little girls everywhere no matter how covered-up mom is.  At first it was jarring to see a little cutie with pink shoes, green-striped tights and a hello kitty purse being shepherded around by a mom who was essentially a moving pile of black cloth, and to think five years from now this expressive little girl will disappear under her own pile of black cloth.  I’m not a fan of this.

• There’s what I’ll call Western style, normal to me – dresses, jeans, ranging from modest to not so modest.
• Next level is just a headscarf.  Lots of women go for that.  Of course on a windy ferry everyone has a headscarf – duh.
• Then comes the headscarf / housecoat combo.  The grandmas go for the all black look, but there are a lot of quite colorful scarves also.  The younger ladies may accessorize with nice pastel housecoats.  The really young ones manage to be pretty sexy in fine, hip-hugging housecoats.
• Next we have the black coat, black scarf and covering everything but the eyes.  There were a bunch of these ladies on the ferry.  Again, some of these seem to be pretty stylish women under there.  Their shoes could be just about anything – my favorite was blue low-top Chuck Taylors with white socks, most were expensive-looking low heels.  When the ferry got chilly, the pile of black cloth across from me busted out a bright red varsity jacket over her black robes to stay warm.  I can’t say I get the whole thing, if the point is to be modest in all black, what’s up with the bright red jacket?.
• Finally is the full-on burqa, where the eyes are covered with the face-veil.  These are pretty rare on the streets of Istanbul, the only place I’ve seen these are at Sultanahmet, visiting the Blue Mosque.

Back to today:  My intention was to go to both islands today, but the ferry captain tricked me by stopping at the first island for about one second!  I was heading down the stairs to disembark, and by the time I got to the bottom we were pulling away.  Well, alright then, no Heybeliada for me today, on to Büyükada.

Büyükada is the big island.  It has been a resort for Turkish jet-setters for the last couple of centuries.  This was the first place to which Leon Trotsky was exiled from the new Soviet Union, before he ended up in Mexico to get assassinated.  As one might expect, it gets less tourist-y in proportion to how far one gets from the ferry dock.  I am hungry and eager to repeat my google maps success from the Black Sea trip.  A nice cafe with tasty food and wifi to freshen my phone map would be just the ticket!  Sadly, this was a FAIL.  I did get a nice table at the biggest cafe in the main plaza, which was … nice … but their wifi was useless, and I continued my streak of poor food ordering – very average fried mussels, while the food of my neighbors looked much better.  I think I’m just not paying enough attention to th food thing.  The other spot was a fishing port where fresh shellfish was a local delicacy.  This is just a holiday island with no noticeable indigenous fishing, the mussels were probably brought over from the city.  duh.

The square was cool though.  Today is a holiday, Ekim 29, the 29th of October (Ekim), Republic Day, the celebration of the day when Kemal Atatürk declared Turkey a republic.  I realized something was up when they started setting up a bandstand in the square.

There are no regular cars on the islands; it’s horse-drawn carriages, pedicabs, bikes and good ole shoe leather to get around.  There are delivery vans and emergency vehicles, so you still have to keep an eye out on the street.  I spent the next three hours walking up the hill and along the coast-side avenue, until I got tired, then I walked back with the idea of making the 4:30 return ferry.  The big homes were very pretty and it was an enjoyable walk.  Lots of them were draped with Turkish flags and flags of Atatürk.

It’s a good thing I gave myself plenty of time, because I stood in three different lines – get in line, look around, notice that everyone else’s ticket looks different from my ticket, show my ticket to someone helpful-looking, get sent to another line, do it all again.  Third time around, I just walked on the boat, my boat, because the line had already boarded.

We stopped at the other island on the way back also, hung around for twenty minutes this time.  I coulda gotten off and caught the next ferry, but it’s basically dark and I’m over it.  The trip home was stormy and windy and pretty exciting.

Aqueduct Day – Tuesday

I’ve been kind of obsessed with Valens Aqueduct since my first night in the city when my shuttle driver from hell drove through it. On Saturday when I was taking pix on the Atatürk Bridge I noticed the silhouette of the aqueduct in the distance to the west, which meant that it was closer than I thought, in walking distance!

I identified its location on the map, and further identified that the metro I took to the airport has a stop a mere four blocks away!  So today’s plan is to metro to the Aqueduct, explore the ‘hood, then spend the rest of the day walking back, and maybe go to the Modern Art Museum if I have the energy.

Pretty nice day!  I am again glad that I pick up the M1 train at its first stop (starting stop?) at Kabataş so I can get a seat.  Seats are always full by the third or fourth stop.  For the run up the hill from the Galata Bridge to Sultanahmet the train is always a sardine can on wheels, and so it is today.

This plan works great!  I unpack myself from the sardine can at the Aksaray stop (three stops past Sultanahmet – can I fight my way out of the crowd before the doors close?) and head north.  As I’m walking up Atatürk Blvd I am surprised to find that I walk right past the spot where my hospital shuttle pulled over and gave me my introductory Istanbul trauma two weeks ago.  Istanbul is smaller than I thought!  The aqueduct is really very close.

I have a delightful time here.  I cross under to the east side of the aqueduct, follow it to the north till it peters out.  There is a really pleasant little public square and a funky tea service under the arches.  I go up hill, duh, till the ground is level with the top of the aqueduct.  There it disappears, so round the corner back to the west side and down the hill.  As I mentioned last post, every neighborhood seems to have a specialty, and auto body shops seem to be the thing here.

Back to Atatürk Blvd where some kind of monument is under construction.  Cross the Boulevard, then follow the aqueduct as best I can as it heads off towards Sultanahmet – where, back in the good old days (300-500AD) it refreshed the Basilica Cistern.  I ended up in a couple of really obscure back-alley dead end situations. It was mellow and everybody was friendly, but it was kind of an adventure.  I went through a gate in the wall, down some narrow streets whose only exit was into a mosque courtyard (Sehzade Mosque).  It was very pretty and restful here, but I could see no exit in my direction, and I felt uncomfortable here. Totally my thing, nobody was giving me funny looks or anything, but I worred that I was doing something wrong, so I this retraced my steps all the way back through the winding alleys to the avenue.   Also, there was no place to sit :)

I am at the edge of Istanbul University – very busy and kids everywhere.  The actual campus is under some kind of lockdown, one must show a picture id to get past the gate.  Doesn’t much matter to me, I would’ve strolled through to see what it’s like, but the street is just fine.  I find myself in a triangular plaza with a 30′ outside wall of the University on one side, Suleymaniye Mosque on another, and a little row of cafes on the third.  Everybody was eating beans and rice.  They looked mighty good I so settled in and ordered some. The were very good and satisfying and it turns out that it filled me so I didn’t need to eat any more that day!

I work my way on down the hill, along narrow sheets with really interesting shops for the tourists.  I catch the M1 at the Gülhane stop and take it to Tophane, to check out the Modern Art Museum.  I enjoyed the museum very much, and really enjoyed the deck facing on the Bosprous.  I had a museum beer which turned out be very expensive (11TL!).  Walked to Kabatas to catch the funicular to the top of the hill and home.

Museum Day – Wednesday

I did not start this day by getting on the Metro.  Rather I walked across the square and back up the avenue I wore out last week when I had to walk home to the Titanic.  Here on my last day in the city, I want to check out the Military Museum.  The first couple of rooms are about ancient history, about Turkish origins in the Central Asian steppe and all the Mongol invasions and Mongol/Turkic empires over the centuries.  I really enjoyed these rooms, and the large diorama in one room devoted to the Conquest in 1453.  The rest was pretty boring, rows of cannons, lifesize replica of Kemal Atatürk in militaty school (in this very building!), a depressing room where they presented the Armenian Genocide without calling it a genocide.

The other bad big news was that a few rooms into the tour I noticed that little gummy feeling at the back of my throat which my own personal early indicator that I am getting sick – cold or flu, only time will tell which, but I am going down.  How very, very depressing.   I must not have cleaned my hands well enough before one of those fish sandos a few days ago.  The good news is that it waited until my last day to show up, the bad news is … the trip home and the next two weeks.

I decide to cut myself a break and hop on the Metro at Osmanbay for one stop to Taksim, then the usual Funicular to the M1 to the Gulhane stop for the Archeology Museum.

The Archeology Museum was super duper interesting.  Here is a place where the fact of the Ottoman Empire really pays off.  Just as the British Museum has way too many of the treasures of Greece and India and other outposts of the Empire, this museum has a wealth of treasures from Syria and Iraq and the eastern Mediterranean because these places were run by the Ottomans for 600 years.  I had so much fun here that I now wish I had made time to see the Topkapi Palace next door.  But there are no more days, so that’s that.

My last night!!  I take the beautiful walk home one more time.  Now that I really, really am leaving tomorrow, I make myself slow down and savor the sights and sounds that I will be leaving behind.  Yesterday, all the crowds and noise were a pain in the ass, but tonight they are exotic – go figure.  Walk down the busy street to Eminönü, across the Galata Bridge for the last time to my favorite little fish sando stand.  Yum again – try to talk basketball with the lanky kid that works there.  Cross under the bridge to the south side to a colorful little section I just noticed from across the water.  I decide to have another fish sando!  Quite glad I did, a much more upscale vendor, nicer fixin’s, still 5TL.   Nice, final walk along the Bosporus to Kabatas for a final ride up the Funicular.  Even on my final night I’m not tempted to go sample the nightlife – go figure again!

Return Day – Thursday

The day from hell.  Final breakfast, final goodbye to the cool dude that runs the kitchen.  Stop by the pharmacy to get a month’s worth of my blood pressure med, then

• across the square to catch the Airport shuttle.
• Get there in plenty of time to spend an hour in the check-in line.
• Fail to buy anything at the duty-free, but at least I turned my remaining lira into dollars.
• The Istanbul Airport and the flight to Munich were pleasant enough, but the fun ended on touchdown in Munich.  We parked in the middle of nowhere the terminal and took buses to the terminal where we milled and jostled for a long time to get past security.  There was an extra level of stress because we all had connecting flights to make.
• Munich waiting room was unremarkable.
• I did not have good luck in my seat assignment for the next ten hours.  Not an aisle seat, second row back from the front of my section, which meant… babies!  This plane has nifty little bassinet thingies that attach to the wall of the front of the section, so this is where the kids are.  I could go into detail, but suffice to say it was a mess and would have made a good psychological study of how the social contract breaks down under extreme stress.

Epilogue

So, what’s the bottom line here?  Worth it, not worth it?  Hard to say.  In the last couple of years leading up to this trip my standard reply to “How’s the heart doing?” was “Well, I feel pretty good, but I don’t have any hard data to back that up.”    So now I have plenty of hard data.  Reading all this, it’s clear I had a very good time most days, so I’d might as well say yes!  It was worth it!