On July 1st, C and I took a cab to the airport in the morning. Since we had left our keys behind, closing the front door to the house wasn’t done without a small amount of worry that we might have left an important item for the trip behind. Such was not the case. We checked in, made it through security, and arrived at our gate in plenty of time for a flight that was due to arrive on time. Last minute calls were made, and we boarded the plane. All looked good. Or perhaps not.
The captain informed us that due to storms around New York City, our first stopover, we would have to get back off the plane and wait for approximately 3 hours to re-board after they received clearance to depart. This not only annoyed us, since we were impatient to make the first leg of our journey happen, it rather alarmed us, since that amount of time would have almost surely caused us to miss our connecting flight to London. He gave us a glimmer of hope when he came back on and said that someone was on the phone with the control tower hoping to work something out (a bribe perhaps?), though he knew from past experience that this didn’t look good. We crossed our fingers, toes, and every digit we could find. Surely enough, the pilot took the mic once again and told us it was our “lucky day” and that we’d be departing shortly.
Approximately five and a half hours later, we were at JFK, in an indecisive search for food, which was not a good approach, as it was nearing 10 PM, and most of the eateries were already closed or in the process of readying themselves to lower the gates. We found some pizza on focaccia bread just in the nick of time, and we soon got on a plane headed for Heathrow.
Much like the previous flight, this was generally a smooth, albeit long, ride and mostly uneventful. Each seat had its own television, which looked pretty great but still meant we were stuck with the same paltry choices as everybody else: mediocre in-flight movies and sitcoms and a few radio options, a great deal of the music being colorless sound, as heard through staticky headphones that seemed to be on the verge of shorting out. I watched I Love You Man, which is not something I would’ve bothered with in any other context, but it turned out to be a mindlessly pleasant way to spend about 100 minutes of a six to seven hour ride. There was also an option to view the plane’s flight path, with number of miles, time remaining, etc. I had to fight the urge to compulsively watch this channel, since doing so surely wasn’t helping our progress along in any practical way. Also, because we were nearly as far north as lower Greenland for a portion of the flight, the sun was a bright orb in the sky as early as 3AM. We were in the “land of the midnight sun,” which impeded sleep somewhat.
We arrived at Heathrow close to noon and took the Tube to Earl’s Court, in search of our hotel, the Windsor House. It seemed that no one, including a travel agent and a police officer on a walking beat, had heard of the place. When we finally got there, we had an inkling of why the lodging is not widely regarded. The building looks OK from the outside, and I suppose the place is at least clean. It was without a doubt, however, the most uncomfortable hotel I’ve ever stayed in. The desk clerk’s office was basically a small desk in the middle of the front hallway. We were shown our room, which was at the top of a long series of steep, rickety stairs. Throughout the trip, we became aware of how different physical space is in a lot of other countries. We became used to more diminutive rooms than what we’re used to in the U.S. Still, even based on these standards, this room was tiny! The water closet was literally just that. The room just barely managed to house a toilet and a shower together. Bring a human into the situation, however, and things become much too cozy. All of this was compounded by a lack of AC, on what proved to be the hottest day of the year in London, and a bed that can best be described as brittle. I slept very little that night, in spite of our best efforts. We set out on a walking tour of London, partly to see as much of the city as we could and partly to tire ourselves out to get a good night sleep before our flight to Istanbul the next day.
We got off the tube around Scotland Yard and walked along the Thames, past Parliament and Big Ben, and then left the Thames to walk through a park and then by Buckingham Palace. For the record, we also passed a pub in which scores of folks, mostly dressed like business people and bankers, were drinking like absolute fish! They were spilling out of the pub, 6 or 7 deep into the street, with pint glasses stacking up on the pavement. I’d never seen anything quite like it.
The night passed slowly and uncomfortably, with off and on rain and occasional pounding noises from the nearby factory, none of which were helping in my quest for slumber. We later packed, had the hotel’s breakfast in the basement, which was surprisingly good for such a dive, and headed back to Heathrow.
Another bad movie and some staticky music later, we touched down at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul. After we’d gone through customs, while waiting for the city’s light rail system to take us to our airport, we realized we were the only ones speaking English around us. We were clearly in a very different place!
Our first hotel proved to be far nicer than the previous one, nearly posh in fact, though once again, the room was on the small side. This hotel, like every other hotel we stayed at in Turkey, served breakfast buffet style. I’ll never forget how amazing it was to arrive on the top floor, with a magnificent view of the buildings and waterways of Istanbul, and see the gorgeous spread of food. Breakfast in Turkey was a lavish feast. There were the requisite eggs and sausage, as well as bread, cheese, honey, olives, tomatoes, yogurt, cakes, and fruit. Oh, and they serve Tang and Nescafe, which I could forgive them for doing, since everything else was so delicious.
We got a lot of tourist attractions crossed off that first weekend: the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Basilica Cistern, the Grand Bazaar, and a whirling dervish show at a monastery. These were all things we’d wanted to do, but we also didn’t want to spend our entire time there doing the tourist circuit. We also wanted to get out and see what made the city tick. I think we accomplished both pretty well.
Although we were heartened by how friendly and open people in Turkey seemed to be, this could also get exasperating at times. This excessive openness included the various merchants who went far out of their way, sometimes following us halfway down the street, trying to get us to come in and look at their wares, especially anyone selling carpets. If we even looked at a menu along the street for a second, the restaurateur was sure to give us a story about the quality and authenticity of the food and how we couldn’t possibly conceive of saying no to it. However, it extended beyond just merchants. Many times, perfect strangers approached us, generally starting a conversation with a line such as, “Where are you from?” Again, our attitude was initially one of “Oh how nice!” but we quickly learned to be on our guard. Although it never happened to us, sometimes people who are approached in such a way later find their pockets relieved of certain items. More often than not, though, such folks' gift of gab was a way to bring the conversation around to a family business of some kind they were trying to inform us about. It could be really strange at times, and after a few cases, we found ourselves ignoring people, something I find very difficult. Also, meals could turn out to be more expensive affairs than planned. A few times, we were given items we never asked for, which seemed to be complimentary but were later included on the bill. As the people serving us were often not fluent in English, trying to argue our point sometimes seemed futile.
One of the strangest incidences in this regard involved a man who dropped his brush just as I was passing. I handed it to him, and he thanked me profusely. Minutes later, as we looked at a map, he came over and helped us find the place we were looking for. All seemed good and even Steven. However, he got out his shoe shining apparatus and strongly encouraged me to lend him my shoe-clad feet. I complied, and he lathered some watered-down muck on my leather sneakers. I thought what the hell. Even though I figured out his game right away, I decided I’d give him a couple lira, as he seemed nice and probably really needed the money. My warm feeling dried up quickly when he told us the amount of the transaction, 15 Turkish lira! We expressed our displeasure, but that seemed to anger him, so I figured it was best to give him the dough and cut our losses. The shoes looked slightly cleaner, if nothing else.
Our first stay in Istanbul lasted three nights. We were due to leave for Cappadocia, so we showed up at the Fez Travel Agency from which the bus was about to leave. The people at the agency, as it turned out, had been waiting for us. We had been led to believe by the travel agent here in California that we’d take our tour at Cappadocia, come back to Istanbul, and then take another trip to Pamukkale for our tour there. The words “day tour” had misled us. We found out that this would be an impossible schedule. We needed to book a night somewhere else, cancel a night in Istanbul, and arrange for another bus to Pamukkale. We left with a ton of uncertainty on what turned out to be the first of 3 all night bus rides in 4 days in Turkey.
We had disastrously had two beers shortly before boarding the bus, which is problematic on a vehicle which turned out not to have a toilet. A few hours later, we stopped at a Turkish equivalent of a truck stop, which included fruit stands and lots of Turkish Delight. My aching bladder was faced with the fact that I needed to get change to use the pay toilet—most public toilets in Turkey are pay toilets. These facilities are manned by people who take and make change at tables just downwind from the loo. This has got to be one of the worst jobs I can possibly think of. We also really needed an ATM, as we were hungry and had little cash for food. Such machines, however, are surprisingly absent from these facilities.
In the small desert village of Goreme, we got off the bus to find that we weren’t on the roster of any of the tour guides, though plenty of other drivers seemed more than anxious to obtain our business. I can assure you that being in the desert in the middle of a country in which you don’t know the language and aren’t accounted for on paper is a very frightening thing! One of the guides offered to give us a ride to our hotel, and shortly thereafter he stopped and another man got on and asked for us by name—always a good sign. We went to the hotel, which was lovely and had a pool, got showered, and then joined our two-day tour of Cappadocia.
All of these tours were given in English by guides from the region. There were roughly 8 to 10 people on the van, from various countries. Getting to know all of them was part of the fun. Although we rode from place to place on the van, we weren’t confined to it, as with some other tours. We did a lot of walking and interacting with people. Lunch was also included at restaurants with great food. The same tour guide was with us for both days in Cappadocia, and we had another in Pamukkale. In Cappadocia, the main physical attractions were the rather phallic rock formations called “fairy chimneys” and the cave dwellings and churches that are not recommended for claustrophobes. Also, we were told that we'd see a part of the region which was used in the filming of Star Wars (don't ask me which part), though disappointingly, it wasn't on our itinerary. We were also taken to a few production centers for a tour. These included a pottery-making studio, a carpet-weaving center, and a place that makes and sells jewelry. In each case, we listened to a spiel about the production and watched the artists at work, while being treated to the usual Turkish hospitality, which included a choice of a cup of Turkish coffee, apple tea, or if we were really lucky, wine. After the spiel had concluded, the high pressured sales pitches commenced, though they seemed a bit more refined in their approach than that of so many street hagglers. Nevertheless, we were put off by the jewelry place, which gave us a very short talk and cut straight to the chase: buy buy buy!
We only spent one day in Pamukkale, after our second overnight bus ride. This turned out to be the worst of the three rides. Buses seem to be striving--though they fall miserably short--to be like airplanes in Turkey. An attendant walked down the aisle offering beverages and snacks. The coaches also included a television. On this ride, the driver cranked up a station featuring Turkish singers belting out monotonous songs karaoke-style. It was hell! C even fashioned some earplugs out of tissue paper that just barely staved off the racket. To add insult to injury, we stopped at a gas station in which they were spraying pesticides to kill mosquitoes, though we didn’t realize this at first. We were coughing and having difficulty breathing before we noticed that workers had cloths pinched over their faces. I’m still worried about this actually. I would have gladly suffered many mosquito bites to not have to be exposed to these chemicals. Fortunately, when we re-boarded, the driver kept the music off, and I got some blessed sleep, vaguely wondering if I'd live through the night.
We had paid a small amount to the travel agent to be able to check into a hotel room for a couple hours in the morning to nap, bathe, change, and have breakfast. Believe me, it was worth every penny! As with several of our other hotels, there was a computer in the lobby, with a somewhat different keyboard with different characters and recognizable characters in different locations. As you can imagine, this made typing a lot more complicated. In this case, the proprietor had to kick his son off the computer who'd been playing video games, so we could use it to look up flight info. Pamukkale has many well-preserved Roman ruins, some of which we paid to swim around in very warm and bubbly spring water. It also has a hillside covered in calcium bicarbonate. It seemed as if we were walking among snow and ice, although the temperature outside was about 35 degrees Celsius.
We had hoped to be able to take a relatively short bus ride from Denizli to Izmir to catch a flight back to Istanbul, but the prices were far too high on such short notice, so we reluctantly boarded a motor coach for another long, grueling night, this time back to Istanbul. This bus came equipped with headphones, which linked us to a similar TV station with bad music and several other radio options, all of which had about 20 minutes worth of music—much of it unlistenable—repeated over and over.
We had a little bit of a meltdown the next morning when we got back to the neighborhood where our hotel was located but didn’t have directions. The place is called The Sultan Inn. Seems straightforward enough. However, about a third of the businesses in the district of Sultanahmet have the word “sultan” in the name. We couldn’t be refunded for the night we’d paid for but hadn’t ended up using the night before, so we were desperately hoping to arrive in time to still eat breakfast. With our heavy backpacks in tow, I made several futile attempts to get directions from people on the street, which led us down countless wrong streets, even winding us up in an establishment called the Sultan Hotel, which we knew wasn’t ours because it looked far too nice for what we paid. We did in fact check in at our hotel minutes before they took the breakfast bar down, got nourished and napped and felt much better to face our last couple days in Turkey.
Later that day, we took a self-guided tour of Topkapi Palace, the most interesting part of which was the harem, though the kitchen section was closed, which was disappointing. We also splurged on an expensive and delicious dinner, which had the rather unfortunate name of testi kebab, which has nothing whatsoever to do what you think it does. The other unfortunate food name throughout Turkey is English in origin. They serve doner kebab, featuring doner (pronounced “donner”) meat, commonly found in restaurants throughout Europe, blissfully unaware of the connotations of that name for Americans steeped in wagon train lore. Many stands throughout Istanbul sell kofti, otherwise known as a meatball sandwich, which includes doner meat. The meat was good, and the bread (Turkey does bread incredibly well) and spices and veggies were delicious. They are usually sold for 4 Turkish lira and are one of the most cost effective things we found to eat there.
Our last full day in Istanbul found us on a boat cruise of the Bosphorus. It was inexpensive and a great way to see a large amount of the city, including many beautiful, old mansions along the water. The trip went nearly to the mouth of the Black Sea and really gave us some perspective of the enormity of the city, which, depending on who you talk to, has a population between 12 and 16 million. We got off and had a barbecue fish sandwich, which had been recommended in Rick Steves’ book (an asset on this trip), in one of many restaurants under the Galata Bridge, which crosses the Golden Horn. We went back to our hotel feeling that we had really seen all we had come to see in Turkey and were ready to move on to the next segment of our journey.
The next afternoon, back at Ataturk Airport, we were delayed slightly, as we had to change gates. What we found really frustrating is that we had to go back through security to get to the new gate, which was mere steps away from the other gate. We also taxied around the runway for at least 45 minutes—by this point, we were absolutely itching to get to England and the hospitality of friends who speak our language. At last we took off, due to arrive at Heathrow about an hour and a half late.
To be continued with a post about our week in England...
To view pics from the trip, you can click the link below. It's C's Flickr account, with albums of Turkey, England, and France. It should work for people without Flickr accounts: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sgninventory/
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