TOURING ISTANBUL: " Tanıştığıma memnun oldum"
Tanıştığıma memnun oldum (pronounced: Tah-neesh-tim-zah mehm-noom old-doom) means "nice to meet you" in Turkish. That took forever to learn!
Dear Foodie Fam,
It's an understatement saying Dutch and I dreamt of Istanbul.
In 12 years of dating, Turkey was the first country Dutch ever talked about bringing me to. Someone walked into the bookstore where he worked and wrapped Dutch’s heart up in these dazzling stories about Istanbul. Dutch came straight to me after his shift to tell me he was determined to take me there. Although in past years he knew he wanted to go there, himself, now he wanted to share that with me.
I didn’t know much about Istanbul before Dutch… except that it was Constantinople… and I knew a lot about Constantinople… I mean, at one point when I learned about it in 6th grade and another when I learned about it in college art history classes.
But before Dutch, I didn’t know Istanbul straddled two different continents… Istanbul had the oldest market in history… was home to 3,000 mosques... is a romantic place beckoning me back through the canals of my memory...
Then again, I'm horrible at retaining much about history in general. I got great grades in school but if I didn't keep knowledge in practice, I always lost what I learned.
Not so with Dutch -the guy who reads, listens to podcasts and lectures me about history for hours on end. His passion may be tiring to some but I love seeing him so passionate.
It was the immensity of our passion to get to Istanbul that made us anxiety ridden on the way there.
It was nerve-wracking traveling into Istanbul because Turkey had just placed a ban on Americans entering the country. Well, we bought tickets and visas before the ban... Online forums were saying those who already did that would be allowed in. Yet, I could see the desperation in Dutch’s eyes and feel it in my chest as we stood in the long line to security. The nice security guy in the booth looked over our papers as a married couple and sent us to this corner I think was a retaining area. Fortunately, we shortly returned to the security line and were allowed to enter the country!
It was a strange feeling leaving the airport in our arranged taxi. The interior of the van was lit in blue while the yellowish lights of the city raced by. I mean raced. The speed limit is 74 miles per hour in Istanbul but I’m sure the driver was going way faster than that. He was also on his cell phone. Then again, I was sleep deprived so maybe he was an okay driver...?
We were both sleep deprived- you could tell because we didn’t talk much and Dutch -usually attached to our camera- seemed zombie-eyed and didn’t lift the camera much. We were also just slightly underwhelmed by what should have been the magnitude of the fact that we were just where we wanted to be.
The best part of the ride -which I KNOW for SURE happened and I kick myself for not having footage of- was when our van crept up one of the quintessential narrow, cobbled restaurant-patio-lined roads on the way up to our hotel.
So at this moment... driver guy was no longer racing. He was inching up the hill. The van was moving literally less than a foot from the menu stands which stood at the entrances of the restaurant patios on either side. At one point, everyone on one side of the street seemed to wait with bated breath as our driver's side view mirror barely grazed a host’s podium.
This -as Dutch and I discovered- was a normal way to drive around this glowing, venerable city. I think drivers get so excited to speed at night because in the daytime, Istanbul is traffic-ridden.
We also discovered restaurant hosts and patios -in general- purposely bleed unto the streets, anyway. The seating reaches from buildings. The hosts circle the perimeter and like old friends who haven’t seen you in years, beckon you into their establishments with warm smiles and energetic words. I swear they made their restaurants look more enticing than any car salesman ever made a brand new car look.
Since Dutch insisted we stay at a beautiful place in Santorini (because I dreamt of Santorini for years), I insisted we stay at a special hotel in Turkey (because he dreamt about taking me there for years).
We stayed at the oldest 5-star hotel in Turkey- literally down the street from the two most famous Hagias in Turkey: The Sofia and the Sultanhamet Ahmed (the blue mosque).
The lobby of our hotel looked straight out of a movie- grandiose, covered in shiny gold ornamentation with a vaulted ceiling and walls of polished rose-colored wood. The place was very sultry and romantic. The man at the front desk was surprised I knew some basic traveler’s Turkish. (I didn’t get to display that I could also read it, although if I read it aloud I wouldn’t know what the heck I was saying, anyway).
A moment ago, we were ready to just get out of our stinky, "re-sweat" clothes and pass out but the room was so spacious and shiny we had to take it all in for a while!
And then... at the press of a button, a curtain nonchalantly rolled up the glass of a wide window, revealing a view that knocked the air out of my chest
We could barely do anything but whisper for some time after seeing the view...
It was unreal staying steps away from history. It was sublime being cradled in modern luxury while gazing out the window at two hulking examples of 1,000s of years of humanity.
Every night, Dutch stayed up to sit at the window as if he were trying to memorize everything. He was like that in Cairo with the pyramids. Maybe he was imagining or questioning all the scenarios he learned about in his books and podcasts? Maybe he was joining the generations of people who also stared in wonder of these monuments, turning over in their minds the most immense questions... like: what deities might be staring down at us, in turn?
INFORMATION ON OUR HOTEL:
Hagia Sophia Hotel İstanbul Old City
Alemdar Mh., Yerebatan Cd. No:13, 34122 Fatih/İstanbul, Turkey
check in starts at 2pm
Laundry Service/Dry Cleaning
Multilingual Staff
Minibar
Fridge
Hotel (and many other hotels) charge in euros
