No where near enough time to explore a city so historic, so beautiful, and so packed with delicious things to eat! Fortunately, food plays such an important part in the street culture of the city that you never have to look very far for it. More often than not, the food actually finds you... Ten minutes out of the airport, already stuck in the infamous Istanbul traffic, I looked out the taxi window to see a vendor sat casually behind a folding table piled with baked goods in the centre of the four-lane expressway. I spotted the sesame-encrusted simits that I had read about amongst the breads, but, as luck would have it, the traffic finally lurched forward, and my first simit was going to have to wait another hour or so...
First stop, Sultanahmet via open deck ferry from Ortaköy docks. Whatever happened to all the open deck ferries? I have such fond memories of these wooden boats chugging slowly between Hong Kong's outlaying islands. Nowadays these routes are serviced by high-speed hydrofoils, windows crusted with salt on the outside and fogged by the sub-zero air-conditioning within. Such a luxury then, to be cruising down the Bosphorus on a crisp and sunny Autumn morning, Europe stretching out to the West, Asia just metres away to the East, and on every hill-top a bright red Turkish flag flying in the breeze.
Turkish men are in far too much of a hurry, it would seem, to wait for a ferry to dock before disembarking... Still over a metre from the pier, and with not a rope yet attached, passengers crowd the edge, and take wide-legged leaps across the water to land confidently on the dock. I step forward to do the same (when in Rome etc.), but then a gang plank appears very suddenly, right at my feet. An activity reserved for the busy locals clearly, and not wide-eyed female tourists lugging too much camera equipment.
Two steps from the ferry, in the direction of the Grand Bazaar, another simit seller, and finally, breakfast!
Strolling up the narrow lanes towards the Grand Bazaar, mini-precincts appear and taper off ; clusters of shops each devoted to the sale of one type of good - fabrics, jeans, fake flowers, store after store piled high with kitchen wares (I forced myself to keep walking past these lest I lose too many of my precious few hours inside, not to mention the detriment to my 'hand luggage only' situation it might cause).
At the entrance to the Bazaar itself, a smattering of little carts serve as portable kitchens. Delicious roasting chestnuts (kestane) and char-grilled corn throw up wispy plumes of aromatic smoke ... frankly, it would be impolite to walk past without sampling.
Chestnuts are one of my favourite things, and such a quintessential street food - I rarely eat them at home nowadays, though remember being tasked with pricking them as a child before they were roasted on the fire. Perhaps it is this memory that makes chestnuts carts irresistible to me wherever I find them, from Covent Garden to Constantinople...
Wandering the labyrinthine Grand Bazaar is fantastic for the appetite - the only problem is finding the exit that will lead to my next stop - the Spice Baazar...
Fortunately, after she'd obligingly posed for the camera, this charming (mind-reading) cat leapt down from her bath-towel perch to trot alongside, escorting me to the correct exit...
The afternoon call-to-prayer reverberating in the air, I pick my way alongside the rapidly-appearing pray rugs, downhill towards the Spice Bazaar. Preferring to rely on 'intuitive' navigation as opposed to Google Maps (also a lot cheaper from a roaming perspective!), I know I am nearly there when tubs of olives, stacks of cheese, piles of fresh fruit, and towers of Turkish Delight proliferate in the open shop fronts. Store-holders too generous with their samples and unaware of my olive addiction keep offering up differing options until I am left with a pocket full of pits, threatening to overflow, and not a bin in sight into which I might decant them...
Once through the enormous, metal studded doors of the bazaar itself, stalls compete for attention with beautiful pyramids of colourful spices, teas, dates, and yet more Turkish Delight towers. A good deal more sampling later, I over-turn a life long prejudice, and purchase three long logs of powdery red Delight. Turns out that, like a lot of foods, this stuff does taste a good deal better if you go to the source, and I'd certainly never encountered a pistachio flecked rosewater variety before...
Not customary to follow dessert with a Turkish kebab, I know, but I hadn't had lunch 'officially,' and a kebab-seller in a Fez is one cliché that, on my very first trip to Istanbul, I thought it kind of necessary to indulge.
Stomach bursting, it was time to take in some of the sights...
Back up the hill and east towards the famous Aya Sofya - a Byzantine church, consecrated in 537, later converted to a Mosque in 1453 by Istanbul's first Ottoman conqueror, Mehmet II. The story goes that Mehmet's final obstacle to taking the city of Constantinople were the thick walls that surrounded it. Bombarding these with canon fire all day, Mehmet would wake each morning to find that the walls had been patched and re-built by Byzantines who had worked furiously overnight. The solution to Mehmet's problem was to come from an unlikely source - a Hungarian cannon builder called Urban. Having arrived in Constantinople with the purpose of helping the Byzantine Emperor defend Christendom against the invading Ottoman, Urban was quick to abandon his religious convictions upon finding that the Emperor's vaults no longer contained the treasure with which he was expecting to be paid. Instead, and for adequate reward, he offered to build Mehmet the largest canon ever conceived, and with it, the Ottoman's finally breached the walls to take control of the city in May 1453. Meanwhile, the impoverished Byzantine Emperor died fighting on the walls...
Emerging from the moody, cavernous interiors of the Aya Sofya, you are presented with their culinary opposite - pressed pomegranate juice, and freshly prepared syrup lollipops in an array of colours. (Although these stalls are located physically next to one another, I'd caution against being so greedy as to need to try both at once - especially white wearing white jeans. The pomegranate juice you spill on them while trying to balance a full cup with a stick of hot, rapidly melting candy wont wash out. On the other hand, if these same jeans have recently suffered a serious guacamole incident, and are well on their way to no longer fitting anyway due to the day's activities, perhaps it is no great loss...).
The pomegranate juice was delicious - refreshing, tart, and sweet all at the same time. The candy, while very pretty, was mainly just sweet, dizzyingly sweet... So with head spinning, teeth hurting from sugar, hands (and legs) covered with sticky juice, I call it day, and join in the long, slow traffic crawl back to Ortaköy.
Day 2 - (9 hours left...)
It takes a pretty special sort of breakfast to tempt me out of bed in the morning - I am usually more than happy to take a little extra sleep over the usual cereal and toast options. So, after making the effort to be present and correct at the abhorrent hour of 7am (!), I was delighted to find the brekkie spread at House Hotel focussed firmly on savouries - olives, mini-boreks, cheeses, salmon, strained yoghurts (suzme) flavoured with crushed coriander and orange zest. This left me with only one problem - how to get it all on one plate.
The beautiful morning light and views across the Bosphorus from the open terrace of House Hotel may also have been worth getting up for.
With precious few hours left before the flight home, it was on to the serious business of shopping! If yesterday had been about looking, today was going to be about buying... straight back to the Grand Bazaar.
Housed under a series of elaborately painted high brick domes, the Bazaar has been Istanbul's bustling centre of commerce since 1461. Different areas contain different wares, with large spaces devoted to gold, leather goods, pottery and Iznik tiles, copperware, carpets, textiles, and, in the very centre of it all, in the old market, selling antiques and jewellery. Ensconced deep in the heart of the bazaar, the old market has always been home to the most precious goods on sale, and, until the mid-19th century, was also where slaves could be bought and sold. Nowadays, the emphasis is largely on the sort of gold jewellery favoured by Arabian brides, window after window heavy with elaborate necklaces, gaudy rings, and ruby studded cuffs, looking like the lost riches of an 16th century Spanish Galleon.
My much more modest shopping list focussed mainly on painted pottery and copper cookware. Epic amounts of bargaining resulted in what I thought were substantial discounts, but, in the end, when the vendors opted to throw in a small extra dish, or spoon free of charge, I had reason to doubt my newly acquired skills... Or perhaps, they were just very good-natured - I have certainly never had more fun haggling prices, or experienced more hospitality from stall-holders than in the Grand Bazaar. If it hadn't been for the hand luggage problem, I am sure that many more things may have found themselves on their way to Qatar. Next time, one of these beautiful lanterns... If only I had somewhere to in my hotel apartment hang it!
Hours now spent in the bazaar, I am navigating its lanes like an old hand, and this time round manage to find the right exit without feline assistance. Outside, I walk further up the hill towards the final stop of the trip, Topkapi - the opulent complex of palaces, pavilions, and gardens, build by Mehmet the Conqueror. On the way, I am waylaid watching chicken Testi Kebab being prepared in the street. Getting the contents in (presumably via a hole in the top of the pot?) seems kind of laborious, but watching the pot being bathed hot ash and flames and then shattered is great fun...
Through the enormous palace gates, Topkapi sprawls across the edge of the Sultanahmet peninsula offering views across the Bosphorus to Asia. In its heyday, the palace grounds were home to the ruling Ottoman sultans and housed up to 4,000 people at a time. Amongst these were 300 or so concubines, guarded by African eunuchs and inhabiting the most beautiful and intricately decorated rooms - those of the harem.
I might have strolled the tiled rooms for hours more, but with the final two hours of the trip put aside for negotiating airport traffic, all too quickly it was time to leave. Taxi hailed and back on the slow-moving motorway, my eyes were peeled for any brave vendors weaving between the cars in order to offer an unhappily departing tourist one final snack...
33 hours in Istanbul. Such a small sliver of time, but nowhere I can think of better able to breathe such colour, life, history, and deliciousness into every second.
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