Abby compared Istanbul to Disneyland today, and you know, from a cleanliness perspective, she was right. Everywhere you go, there are perfectly manicured gardens - even for miles along the highways. Every street is either clean or being cleaned. Every morning sidewalks are swept of leaves and garbage by shop owners that care. I love it.
We set out in the morning, first checking in at an art shop we had spotted some nice pieces at yesterday. When we went there last night, the younger guy that was manning the shop and that did t seem too interested in serving us, but he promised that his "master" would be there today. We thanked Gollum and decided to deal with the boss today. However, when we got to the little shop, it was still closed. It was Election Day today, so we thought maybe he would be opening late.
The streets meandering away from the hotel were quiet, but always picturesque.
Our mission today was to get some walking in before going for a Turkish bath (figuring going on a full stomach may not be the best idea!). We had a checklist of things to get done... First up - the Versly lookout. Alex had found a great lookout over the Golden Horn and Bosphorus that he had found, so we were going to try and find it, but it would be hard as his information was vary vague....
If you knew Alex, you would know I'm kidding of course. In my google drive folder shared with Alex, he has a special folder called "Istanbul - secret lookout near Suleyman Mosque" with four files to help us.... A picture of their family on top of the lookout, a movie documenting how to get there from the nearest street, a screen cap of a Google dropped location and a screenshot of a website for a business that is near the place!!! If I couldn't find it based on all that info, I would have to bury my head in shame. Beth always says Alex and I are perhaps the most compatible travel partners.....
Well, it was pretty damn easy to find and it was a great view. Here it is looking back up to Suleymon... I love the contrast with the mottled sky.
Here you see the New Mosque in front of the confluence of the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus.
Thanks uncle Alex and the rest of the Versly gang!
We wandered. Finding new streets, new alleyways. You can't really get lost in the old city. It's all built on a giant hill and the tram splits the hill. Go up hill and you're heading to the commercial heart. Downhill you're either going to Sulthanamet (sp) or towards the Golden Horn. Most of the shops remained closed in the morning for the election.
After we'd burned a significant amount of calories, it was time for a bath!
The plans to do a Turkish bath didn't work last time we were here, and although there were Hamami at pretty much every city and town we visited in Turkey, we wanted to come back and do it in Istanbul. It's funny when you read the Trip Advisor reviews of a Turkish Bath experience. I compared the description of the package at Cemberlitas Hamami, where we visited today, with the experiences from good and bad reviews in Trio Advisor, and they pretty much all detailed what the experience was all about. It shows how much an experience can be judged based on preconceptions. Many people think the Turkish bath will be a sensual "spa-like" experience, and I guess with some extensive packages, it can be more spa like, but at its core, the Turkish bath is about "bathing".
There were a few "family" (mixed male and female) friendly baths in town, but they sounded a little less authentic, and the girls were not impressed with the potential of having a large, hairy Turkish bath attendant working them over - fair enough!
So we signed up for the "standard" package and split up. I was guided upstairs by a gruff dude that showed me to a little cubby room with a glass door and he barked "change!". I felt like I was right in the middle of Seinfeld's Soup Nazi episode. The place was not for shyness - the change room was all glass and I could look down below to the waiting area. So I changed into the towel wrap they give you to wrap around your waist, and I walked downstairs, into the waiting area and the gruff dude pointed at a big wooden door "bath". I shuffled inside.
Another big, hairy Turkish attendand wearing a towel just like mine, I will call him #11, pointed to an inner door and said "go inside, lie down". Alrighty, I went in to the main bath room. The room had a large marble slab in the middle of the room, made up of twelve, huge triangular piece of marble that sloped up slightly to the middle of the room. Around the sides of the slab were little metal bowls every few meters. Outside the walkway that surrounded the huge marble slab were some open stepped areas that had little marble sinks and faucets, and a few slightly enclosed rooms that has the same setup inside three marble privacy walls.
I laid down on my back at the edge of the marble slab and stared up at the ceiling. The room was humid, at maybe 90 degrees, so not quite as hot as a sauna, but enough to warm the body up. The ceiling was domed, and had ever expanding concentric circles of holes that were capped with the familiar glass balls with nipples that we'd seen elsewhere from the outside. I laid there for maybe ten minutes - enough time to see that there were 150 holes with glass in the ceiling - a small ring of 6, two bigger rings with 12 and five outer rings with 24 each. Why am I writing that? I have no idea but just reading it will give you an idea of just one of the things you could think of while waging on the warm slab of the Hamami.
#11 came in and, with a sandpaper like pad on his hand, he began scrubbing the crap out of my skin. At first it felt really rough, then it got better, then it got really good!!! Then it was just ok.... (That's an SNL bit... That's all I'll say). #11 showed me the arm he was scrubbing - the layer of dirt he was getting was sickeningly delightful - I'm sure there was some dirt in there from Hong Kong!
He brought me over to the outer ring, had me sit on the one step there and he scooped warm water out of the sink repeatedly to rinse me off. Then it was back to the slab for some soapy substance that he slid all over the place (well, not quite all over....) in a kind of soapy massage excercise. He even leaned in with my arms crossed at one point and tried to crack my back. Ouch! The massage was pretty vigorous but didn't last too long. The it was back to the outer ring for a sit down and rinse.
The next step was to go to the room just outside, and sit at another marble ledge next to another marble sink setup. He proceeded to really wash and scrub my body and hair with some kind of soap. I had my eyes pretty much closed the whole time as there was a thick layer of soap from head to toe. A vigorous rinse and we were pretty much done. #11 showed me back to the inner bath area, saying I could chill there for however long I wanted and he made sure I remembered his number (got it.... #11) for the inevitable tip solicitation later, I assumed.
I sat down on the outer edge and relaxed in the heat. While I had been alone in there when I'd started, the place was starting to fill up, with locals and foreigners. After about ten minutes, I headed out. The gruff guy pointed down a hall and said "shower". I grabbed a towel and he grabbed it back "later!". Ok then. I showered up and came back to the gruff guy where he proceeded to remove the wet towel and apply a dry towel to my waist. Then, I was allowed to grab a towel. I headed out to the waiting room, up the stairs and back to my little glass room to change back into my clothes.
I felt.... great. I felt pretty mellow, like you'd feel after a half massage, half sauna. I also felt really clean - my skin felt really smooth.... Maybe I should try and bring #11 back with me.... Speaking of, he came out and made sure he caught my eye as I grabbed a drink, palmed twenty lira and shook his hand in thanks to perform the transfer of funds.
The girls came out twenty minutes later. I couldn't tell by their faces how the experience went, and got scant details while we were still in the confines of the Hamami. I will let Beth cover that one off
After buying a purse at a nearby shop.... Wait, wtf? Ok, that just happened. We walked down towards the Golden Horn. I basically picked up a downhill street with people, and followed the crowds. The streets got smaller and smaller, and more densely packed with people as we descended. I realized we'd gotten close to the spice market, which is where we wanted to be. The market was closed (as was the grand bazar....every Sunday) but we were looking for some riverside fish sandwiches to check off our list. First, Robin spotted some street snacks (actually, these guys are everywhere in the city!). First up, roasted chestnuts....
Then some steamed corn. Yum.
The fish sandwich places are little restaurants with tiny tables and chairs that have boats attached to the pier behind where they would grill and prepare the fish.
The sandwich was good, but no replacement for Oystens in Barbados. The fish itself was a little plain, though tasty. As Beth said, it needed a little less bread and some kind of sauce or something. Still, check.
We walked under the bridge crossing over to the Taksim side of the river. Halfway, we turned and enjoyed the view. Spectacular. You can see the fishing line right in the middle of the picture. Fishermen (yes, men, as Beth would say, with nothing better to do) line both sides of every bridge in town with their long lines sitting in the river looking for little silver fish.
We were headed towards the Galata area, landmarked by the really cool Galata tower that we'd seen close up a few times at night.
We did a bunch of wandering around Galata. There were some really cool areas - small streets with cute little shops and cafes, funky looking boutique hotels and lots of people chilling out. There are a few universities in the area, and Robin stated she will be going to Istanbul for part of her University education. Alrighty then!
Even the areas that had graffiti (the pic below was in a very artsy area) are done in a neat, orderly way. We loved this little area.
We noticed an "impromptu" leather jacket store that was running out of the back of a car... It reminded Beth and I of a story about Gram and Banka obtaining cheap leather jackets out of the back of a car in Rome many years ago.
The street food continued - some kind of donut substance drenched in honey and lightly dusted with powdered sugar....
The New Mosque on the old town side of the bridge doesn't get enough attention - it's just one more beautiful mosque in the city.
We made our way up the crowded alley next to the spice market. The kids wanted a snack and Beth wanted baclava. We chose a place with a charismatic salesman who gave out lots of samples and cajoled us, in a nice way, into buying more than we wanted. It's pretty amusing watching the whole process go down.
Instead of going up and over the hill on the way back, we walked around the hill on the Bosphorus Side of things. It was another cool walk where we encountered all kinds of cute little streets full of shops and cafes, and every once in a while the street would open up to a huge older building like the old Turkish Postal building that would certainly make it in an architectural tour of the city.
We made it to Starbucks on Divan Yolu and sat down for a break. We'd walked a ton today, but everyone was in good spirits.... Even "Crain" who was sitting admiring his wife and her new.... mood ring? The thing changes colours enough it must be a mood ring.
D'oh! Abby stole my phone for another cat picture. The girls sometimes seem re interested in all the cute little cats in the city over some of the finer points of Istanbul history, but that's just fine, I guess :-).
Cutting through the road that runs between Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, we followed the road right where we discovered another great little alleyway, though this time it looked to be filled with overpriced tourist shops. We spotted a little art shop that had great little oil paintings, but after noticing pictures of president Clinton buying art there and getting a couple of exorbitant quotes on small pieces from the curt owner, we bailed.
The road continued until it got right near the base of the road that lead to our hotel. We came upon the art shop we liked from last night, but it was closed! Argh. We asked around and a young guy from a restaurant down the street helped us poke around a small gallery across the street that he thought might help us connect to the closed shop. Sure enough, a man and woman poked their heads out of a second floor window and when they saw us, they made their way down, The man was the owner of the shop we were in, and the woman was his apprentice.
Abby ended up buying a watercolour of the Galata Tower by the woman, named Jasmine. I give her credit - she has bought a lot of nice memories on this trip.
We still had a predicament - the painting we wanted was locked in the store of the friend of the guy we were talking to. Sensing he might take some time to come around to solving the problem (call the guy and get his ass here ASAP!), I kind of stood there in silence, scratching my head and asking "what if" questions. The owner lived on the Asian side, so he couldn't come today. He usually opened at 10 or 11, so we would miss him as we had to leave by 8:30 for our flight tomorrow... Dude, call him.... I waved my hand performing a Jedi mind trick. "I will call him!"
By the end of it, the owner agreed to come in and open up for seven the next morning. Awesome!
We ate at a nearby Kurdish restaurant which was recommended by our hotel. It was a quaint little place with a waitress that was full of beans. During talk about the election, she either said 50% of Turks or 50% of government representatives (we couldn't tell which, but we assume the latter) needed to die. Yikes. But it did really reflect the disdain by the Kurds of the current president of Turkey who recently had taken military action against Kurds in neighbouring countries.
However...lol... the food was great! The Kurdish style chicken kebap was amazing - I love when they serve it like this...
The beef moussakka was also really good.
Cheers! We celebrated our last night in Turkey and our last official night in Asia, even though we felt very European in Istanbul. Turkey has been a favourite for sure - we have a ton of memories from our trip here and I know I will be back to explore some more.
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