As I said before, I arrived in Istanbul five days ago. As we drove into the city for the first time just before midnight, the dozens of minarets from mosques on the hills around the Bosporus were thrown into high relief against the night sky. I couldn’t help pressing my nose against the taxi window like a child.
Our hostel turned out to be a clean and nondescript townhouse just off of Taksim Square. Taksim, and the long street that runs from it, Istiklal Caddesi, make up the heart of “new” Istanbul – where thousands of people pile into the streets at all times of day and night to shop, eat and drink until their livers scream.
Sensory overload is inevitable when walking down this street. The hordes of people, motorbikes, trolleys and taxis that are all in a hurry to go somewhere; the smells of roasting chestnuts, kebab and spices I couldn’t identify… and oh, the sounds! Honking horns, violins, traditional Turkish songs and pop music, the speakers from the tops of minarets calling Muslims around the city to prayer, all mixed together at once. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced.
I’d like to think I’m a seasoned enough traveler to not grin like a child or stare openly, but it seems I’ve been doing a lot of that here. The diversity of things to look at makes me gawk, and for the first time in a very long time, I can’t understand a thing that’s going on language-wise, which makes things more confusing and a lot of fun. Luckily, Jon speaks enough Turkish to help us both get by, so I'm content for once to stick out like a sore thumb and just let this new world soak in.
In the four days that we spent in Istanbul, I saw none of the important sights that everyone sees. We’ll have time enough on our return trip on the way home. This time around, we slept late and just wandered, through the late afternoon and into the night, through the streets that curl around this side of the city.
[Jon looking like a badass while smoking a hookah at the beanbag bar under the bridge that he once described to me was his "favorite place in the whole world."]
If our time here had a theme, it was perhaps seeing cityscapes from all directions. Rooftops have more importance here than anywhere else I’ve been, and any apartment building or business could be hiding an amazing terrace just five or six floors above.
Jon took me to 5.kat, a beautiful rooftop restaurant and bar with a leafy terrace that offered some of the best views I’ve seen, perhaps ever. As we ate, the bridge across the Bosporus, strung with lights, changed color every few minutes. The next day we decided to make a night of poking through Taksim’s incredible array of pubs and bars. Each building has five or six bars or restaurants that take up individual floors, and if you make it to the roof of any of these (no mean feat once you’ve got a bit of a buzz on those small windy stairs!) you’ll be treated to a living diorama of the city. Rooftops nearby and restaurants with retractable roofs are lit like dollhouses so that you can look out across the sky and see people dancing, drinking, kissing and smoking. From each of our perches we watched the other rooftops to pick our next haunt. And so we hopped from roof to roof, finally ending up, flip flops and all, at arguably the most popular of Istanbul’s clubs, 360.
There were other things we discovered too – back alleys stuffed with antique shops, “French Street”, a narrow and steep passage of Parisian cafes with cobblestones and lights imported from Paris… All the tiny things - you know how I love tiny things - like tiny chairs that men sit on and drink tiny cups of Chai from. Oh, and perhaps only a discovery for me – ice cream so thick it was actually chewy!
[Pictures of a Chaihana with teeny tiny chairs and grown men sitting on them! Note my delight.]
When we packed up our things at 4am this morning, I didn’t want to go. But since I know I’ll be back in just a couple of short months, it made it easier to speed over the Bosporus once more, as Istanbul’s skyline twinkled across the water.
No comments:
Post a Comment