Monday, January 30, 2006

Upon my return

I have not been abducted by aliens, nor have I run off with a handsome and mysterious foreigner, nor have I abandoned my friends and loved ones in order to find myself in the Nepalese mountains. I ignored the blog for a while, and then I went to Sri Lanka again, and now I have returned, yes, with pictures! Of elephants! Stay tuned.

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Hear ye, hear ye, my brother, he has a new blog. Go, read.

Monday, January 09, 2006

The Blue Mosque

Day 2: Wednesday, December 28: The Blue Mosque

First things first: Sore shoulders from the rock, er, I mean, pillow.  But a marvelous breakfast: tomatoes, black and green olives, salty cheese, squooshy bread, chocolate hazelnut spread, butter, jam, cherry juice, tea, freshly hard boiled eggs.  An excellent way to start the day.  And included in the price of the room, which, as I said, amounted to 22 bucks a day. 


We walked up pthe hill and to the entrance of the Blue Mosque on the Hippodrome.  As we entered the gates, we were approached by a nice-looking, persistent Turkish man who greeted us with the typical “You are here to see the blue mosque?” “Well…yes.” Obviously.  He proceeded to accompany us to the entrance, instructing us to remove our shoes and put them in the plastic bags provided there, to cover our heads, and we tried to tactfully get rid of him by insisting that, no, thank you, we really don’t need a guide, but we are grateful for the offer.  (I have been burned-financially-with the uninvited guide before, at the Muhammed Ali mosque in Cairo.  Once burned, twice shy.)  “I don’t want you to pay me!” he insisted.  Turned out that all he wanted was us to visit his shop after our stop at the mosque.  Hmm.  “I’ll meet you at the exit!” he proclaimed.

We pulled the thick curtain back and stepped in. 

It was incredible.  Pictures don’t do it justice, but here you go:

View from the courtyard:


Views of the courtyard:


The interior domes:




The women's section:


Vacuuming:



Sure enough, at the exit, our friend was waiting for us.  After we put on our shoes, he gave us a guide to the courtyard.  “You know why the mosque, it has 6 minarets?”  We look at each other blankly.  “No…we don’t know…”  Well, the Sultan, he wanted one gold minaret, but the architect, he misheard and built 6 minarets.  When the sultan saw the completed mosque, he said, ‘why did you put six minarets?” and the architect (apparently a very quick thinker) said, “My Sultan, there is no other mosque that has six minarets.  Two, yes.  Four, yes.  But this is the only one with six minarets!’ and the Sultan was pleased with this.  You know, the word for gold in Turkish is altın, and the word for six…” Lisa and I perked up: we had memorized our numbers 1 through 10 on the plane.  “Six! altı!  Hahaha!”  We were quite pleased that we understood the joke. 
 
Our friend accompanied us to his cousin’s shop, and his shop, but we declined the offer to be the “first customers of the day” and made our way across the street to the Hagia Sophia, which, thanks to the highly efficient Turkish ministry of culture, cost 15 lira.  Or ten dollars.  Or whatever.  The exchange rate is sort of … flexible. 

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

(But first, a word about Christmas)

We decorated!


And had a fire in the fireplace!


And opened presents!


And played Scrabble while eating chocolate!


Because my parents were generous and opened their Goshen house to us four ragamuffin kids, only two of which actually belong to them. (Wait, I take that back--those two are the only ragamuffins!)

Good times had by all. Merry Christmas!

Istanbul: Day One

Tuesday, December 27

We descended into Istanbul as the sunset illuminated the green minarets and glassy water. It felt foreign and enchanted- all of a sudden all the things in the guide book were just a few minutes away.

Of the three airports, Istanbul's Ataturk was by far the most user friendly. No thirty-five mile walks. No lines that make you feel like you're in a communist country. No suffocating buses. Just a visa line (an easy $20) and a passport control line (also easy-peasy.) Then, a quick ATM stop, which confounded us since we had no comprehension of the exchange rate--it seemed to have changed since the time our much-pored-over guide was published. And then outside into the evening.

We muddled over our transportation options for an excessive amount of time. Should we take a bus? A taxi? The metro? We looked at the buses that supposedly took us into the city. They all had different names. We had no idea what they meant. Did I mention that we don't speak Turkish?

A taxi driver approached us. We glanced at each other and figured, hey, taxis are easy-right? Maybe we'll get ripped off. But, since we had no hotel, no idea how to use public transportation, and no comprehension of Turkish...we took the taxi. "Where are you staying? Which hotel?" "Um...well...we don't know yet. Somewhere downtown...?" "Oh, I know place. You want old city or Taksim?" This was easy. "Old city." He then described to us the various types of hotels we could choose from-pension hostel types (one bathroom, many people) cheap hotel types, fancy hotel types. Well...the cheap hotel types sounded good to us. As cheap as we are, the idea of sharing a bathroom with 12 other people was definitely unappealing. Plus, a co-worker had warned me about Turkey in the winter: Be careful. Some don't have heat. This, of course was not an option. Heat is a necessity.

On our way into town, Murad (for he had introduced himself by this time) discribed for us what we were seeing as we drove along the waterfront. "This is for the leather. All the time they are making leather clothes. if you want it and it is not fit, then they are making it fit for you, no problem, maybe one hour." ... "Here, all the fish restaurants, many good fish restaurants. If you want fish then you come here." ... "Across the water, that is Asia, you can do to Asia by boat ... " Except in Turkish, it's not Ay-zha. It's Aaah-see-a. It took us the whole taxi ride to figure out that Aaseeya was Asia. "Oh!" the light bulb went on above my head. "Asia!"

He brought us to a corner hotel very near the Blue Mosque. "Here," he said, "you go in, you check price, you see if you like it, then maybe we look at a different one. I have three I show you." We went in. We admired the rooms, which, though small and sort of hostel-y, were clean and private. "Usually" the manager (who looks really quite a lot like Onslow in the BBC's Keeping Up Appearances, except much more tidily dressed) said, "it's 70 per night, but if you stay then, pff, maybe we do less. You stay five days? Then 60 lira a night." (This amounts, we discovered later, to 22.50 dollars each.) We took it. Murad seemed a little surprised that we didn't want to see his other choices. But we told him thank you very much, this will do nicely, and our taxi fare amounted to a little less than 20 lira. We weren't really sure how much money that was. But we gave it to him. And we went up into our room. And collapsed on our bed. It was only 7 pm, and we decided that going to bed that early was a little silly and all we would do is wake up at an ungodly early hour, so we put on our jackets and left to see Istanbul by night.



We stopped at a little restaurant not far from the Blue Mosque, sort of a choose-your-own, cafeteria style. Chicken wrapped in Phyllo. And Ayran, the yummy, yummy thick yogurt drink. Lisa doesn't so much care for it, which is good, because it means more for me. We then took a stroll, which felt really long, but since we had no map, we have no idea how long it was, through the streets of our neighborhood, past a few grocery stores, shops closing for the night, restaurants trying to tempt us with their culinary delights. And then we returned, paid our hotel bill, and slept on the hardest pillows known to man, which gave us both stiff, sore necks.

Here is how we got to Istanbul

Monday, December 26.

We left our humble abode in Goshen for the Big Apple, and we spent the morning looking at the diamonds in the diamond district, admiring Rockefeller Center's Christmas tree, and eating enormous pastrami sandwiches. At 3 we returned to our car, parked right across from Penn Station, and retrieved our luggage-Fatema headed to Newark and off to Minnesota for a much-deserved vacation. And Lisa and I navigated through Penn Station to the metro to JFK, Turkey-bound.

It sounds easy-get on the metro, go to JFK, get on a plane. But it's not so easy. It's: buy ticket for metro, find correct metro, get off at correct stop, get on another train to the airport, realize that you don't know which terminal you are supposed to be at, get off at the correct terminal, get boarding pass, wait in THE LONGEST LINE IN ALL OF NEW YORK to go through carry on security, find a spot on the floor next to your gate because it is SO crowded that there are no seats left and the air temperature has reached a suffocating level. Then board flight. Fly to Heathrow. At Heathrow, which is the most absurd airport in the world, walk about thirty-five miles to your connecting flight. Lisa and I stood in front of the flight connections directory and found the British Airways information: UK/Ireland: Terminal 2. Other European Destinations: Terminal 3. Intercontinental flights: Terminal 4. Hmmm...Istanbul. Is Istanbul European? Or Intercontinental? We stood there scratching our chins staring at the directory. Welllll, it's probably European, right? No, no, it's intercontinental. Right? It's not *technically* a part of Europe. Right? We boarded the (stuffy, crowded) bus to Terminal 4.

Wrong. According to British Airways, Istanbul is a European destination. This, I think, should settle the debate once and for all.

So we got back on the (stuffy, crowded) bus and went to Terminal 3, which was the correct terminal. And there we sat in a Euro cafe next to a big window and bought a latte and a croissant and some toast and looked like the bedraggled travellers we were. And then, after being adequately fueled and armed with new camera batteries, we walked another thirty-five miles to our gate.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

So I Went to Sri Lanka

And this is what I saw.

Couples in the park next to the beach, cuddling under umbrellas. They are big on umbrellas.

Children of all ages playing in the ocean.

Men selling beautiful fruit on the beach.


Men selling spicy fried shrimp-and-lentil cakes on the beach. I didn't try one (although I was tempted) because the guide book warned that it makes you smell like spicy fish. For a long time.


Here are more pictures!