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 hoste
l-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.
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