5/19 – 5/21/17. Istanbul
There’s never much good to say about the first day of a long trip, and this was no exception. I had hoped to doze through at least part of the flight to Istanbul. As soon as I saw my seatmate, I knew that this was not to be. Spilled over half of my seat was an old, immensely fat, and – as it turned out – exceedingly ill-tempered Turkish gentleman. For the next eleven hours, whenever I threatened to fall asleep, this wretch woke me up. Even when the armrest between us was down – each time I went to the bathroom, he would flip it up – his bulk drooped over my whole left side. While he slept, he snored thunderously and his head drooped onto my shoulder; when he was awake, he shifted constantly, jabbing me with a sharp elbow.
This was my sixth time flying into Istanbul, so I was ready for the long lines and confusion at customs. The endless claustrophobic ride into the old city was equally familiar. My hotel room, too, had the usual problems – intermittent power outages, moths flying through the open window, constant street noise, etc. – but I collapsed instantly on the rock hard bed, and slept until morning.
Having already seen virtually all Istanbul’s major attractions multiple times, I felt no compulsion to do anything particularly ambitious the first day. I began with a long walk from my hotel in Sultanahmet past Haghia Sophia, through Gulhane park, and along the Golden Horn to the Galata Bridge. The cool and sunny weather was almost pleasant enough to make me forget the travails of navigating Istanbul. Since it was Saturday, the streets buzzed with locals going about their errands. They moved at two speeds. Driving, they hurtled forward at a reckless pace wherever traffic allowed. Walking, they dawdled, dragged, and clogged the sidewalks. As far as I can tell, there are three kinds of Turkish pedestrian: old men who dawdle from café to café, heavily-veiled women with vast and loosely-governed troops of children marching from store to store, and youths strolling arm-in-arm to nowhere in particular. Since any attempt to go around the shuffling masses entails braving the curb-hugging traffic, resistance is futile: one does not walk in Istanbul; one is towed.
Discouraged to find that Rustem Pasha Camii, my favorite small mosque in the city, was closed for restoration, I fought my way through streets already thronged with shoppers to the spectacular Sulemaniye Mosque. As on my previous visits to this building, I was struck by the massive symmetry of the exterior. Few architectural experiences are as impressive as the walk toward and then through the front gate of the courtyard. At first, the mosque is more felt than glimpsed: minarets gleam over the treetops, distant domes catch the sun – and then the whole building appears before you, looming impossibly. After such drama, the understated interior is almost a letdown.
I decided to spend the next few hours in the far northwest part of the old city, intending to visit two late Byzantine churches. Along the way, I stopped for a closer look at an even more impressive relic of Istanbul’s Roman past: the ruinous but still imposing city walls. I found a place to climb up between the inner and outer circuits. The space between the crumbling enceintes – roughly thirty feet wide and accessible for a few hundred yards to either side – felt miles away from the rest of the city. Wildflowers nodded in the breeze and knee-high grass whispered as I walked beneath the gaunt towers that guarded New Rome for a millennium.
The pleasure of my walk on the wall was almost equaled by the profound frustration that marked the next couple hours. Perhaps because most of the relatively few tourists who visit the northwest corner of the old city arrive by tour bus, street signs are virtually non-existent. So naturally I got lost. When I finally reached the Chora church, a highlight of my time in Istanbul four years ago, I was dismayed to find the best mosaics closed for restoration. I reached my other target, Fethiye Camii, just as it was closed by midday prayers. This was irritating – but my walk showed me a side of Istanbul worlds removed from touristy Sultanahmet and westernized Beyoglu. Most of the inhabitants migrated a few decades ago from villages in eastern Turkey, and they brought their conservative customs with them: the men wore heavy beards, and virtually every woman was shrouded in a black chador that left only a small portion of her face exposed.
Some powerwalking and a few streetcar rides brought me back to the Galata Bridge, where I grabbed one of the last available tickets for the Bosphorus cruise. This daily ferry, which runs to a series of points on both shores of the Bosphorus north of central Istanbul, provides stunning views of both the old city and its sprawling suburbs. I took many wholly inadequate photos.
On my return, I walked up and down the Galata Bridge, with its long lines of luckless fishermen, and then back toward Sultanahmet, stopping for a kebab along the way. Then to my hotel, and that rock-hard bed.
The next morning, a steady rain began to haze the Golden Horn as I ate breakfast on my hotel’s rooftop terrace. It drummed on my hood as I walked up slick cobbled streets, seeping gradually into shoes, socks, and purportedly waterproof backpack cover. And then I was inside Haghia Sophia, and nothing else mattered. Veteran readers will recall that this my favorite building on the face of the earth; and even on a fourth visit, it holds me spellbound.
The same dedicated readers (hi Mom!) who recall my love of Haghia Sophia will be aware of my visceral aversion to tour groups. Within an hour of opening, the place was too crowded to be borne, and I reluctantly left. My next stop, the Archaeological Museum, was a serious disappointment, since all the best galleries were closed for repairs. Things seem to have actually moved backward since my visit in 2013, when the “earthquake-proofing” now in progress was already well underway. I assumed (the Turkish Ministry of Culture being rather starved for cash) that “earthquake-proofing” would simply entail duct-taping all the statues to the floor. But since work is still underway, they must have decided to go with something more time-consuming and aesthetically pleasing, like sticky tack.
After lunch at a kebab place, I decided to stroll through the drizzle along the seaside walkway that wraps around the tip of the old city. Inevitably, as soon as I was far from any shelter, the drizzle turned to a downpour heavy enough to hide the freighters passing on the Bosporus. Desperate to get out of the rain (which was starting to work through my raingear), I sprinted across a busy street and into a ragged hole in the old seawall. I found myself in a substantial vaulted passageway roofed with Roman brick – probably the substructure of a long-vanished Byzantine tower. It was rather relaxing to watch rain streaming past the tunnel entrance, at least until a sodden stray poked his head through a gap in the wall and began barking furiously.
When the rain faded to drizzle, I resumed my walk. I paused at the ruins of the Bucoleon Palace, one of the few remaining traces of the vast complex in which a millennium of Byzantine emperors lived and worked. Little more than the facade survives, obscured by Ottoman masonry and overlooked by a row of nineteenth-century houses. Year by year, however, as the later stonework crumbles away and the houses above fade to nothing, the Byzantine building beneath reasserts itself.
I passed the rest of that drizzly afternoon in various acts of low-grade tourism – minor mosques, the Hippodrome, etc. Nothing to write home about. Emboldened by the dollar’s strength against the lira, I enjoyed a dinner with actual courses (a rarity for me, at home or abroad), and then went for a last walk along the Bosporus. The clouds were finally breaking, and coppery light streamed over the Asian shore, flashing in every window and kindling the sea. As I watched and waited, the sky blushed, the windows winked out, and night flooded into Europe.
