Winging my way into a new port of call, Edmundo Ros sat softly at my good ear – the one that gives me a little bit of hearing, the lyrics of his rumba swing song from the early 50’s, tickling me softly. I nodded my head to the catchy beat.

Istanbul, was Constantinople
Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople,
Now it’s a Turkish delight, on a moonlit night

Indeed, a harvest moon lightened even the Black Sea as we flew down the Bosphorus, to bank over the Sea of Marmara with its plethora of anchored ships looking like dark chocolate sprinkles, not unlike the approach to Singapore’s Changi. Captain Ataboy wished us hoskacal (goodbye), and landed at Ataturk airport, where we lined up to pay for visas, “$US, Euro or Sterling, no Lira thank you”, of which we had a bundle! We emerged into a frenzy of people, all moving to their own rumba beat, and for a while it seemed as though all of Turkey’s 75 million were there to greet us! Our taxi sashayed past a gasworks, which smelled as though a long lost Offo-man had just been unearthed, and we morphed into the traffic slug of an ordinary Istanbul night. With all the tooting and honking, the music of the street fascinated us as much as the taxi driver’s cursing, in what I took to be fluent Turkish! But then, like many of Istanbul’s 15 million Turks, he faced this driving ordeal every day.

We sat, not always patiently, in the queue, as our driver measuring progress in inches, often turning at unusual geometric angles to steal an additional foot, armed only with threatening, and at other times imploring, hand gestures! It gave us chance to admire some of the 22 kilometres of sturdy city walls, built by a series of defenders, pseudo Greeks, Byzantines, and Romans, Ottomans. In AD330, Emperor Constantine modestly called this place New Rome, before his aw shucks moment, when it became Constantinople. Then a year after “Columbus sailed the ocean blue”, the aptly portly, Mehmet the Fatih (Conqueror), conquered the city, made it the capital of the Ottoman Empire, but magnanimously kept the old name in the way that a chap taking over a bar called Chez Moustache finds it easier to grow one, rather than change the name and scare away all the old punters! So Constantinople it stayed, until the late C19, when most referred to it as Stamboul. In 1930, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, and the emergence of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Constantinople/Stamboul, officially became Istanbul. Ahhh … Istanbul not Constantinople now, Istanbul, Istanbul, the ditty accompanied us all the way to the ‘old city’ district of Sultanahmet, with its narrow streets and great monuments to a glorious past. This was the Turkey we had come to see.

Our “4 star” Maywood Hotel stood five stories upright and rigid, like a lad in a brothel, with a frontage as wide as our welcome, Juliette balconies rising, like a score of wide eyes. It was on a dinky little cobbled street, with a thong of restaurants, just covering the essentials of Turkish cuisine, assorted lamb and shish kebabs! Even while we dragged our cases to the Maywood, so that the wheels sounded like withering fire on the cobbles, a tout was at our side, a menu full of pictures, dishes all looking like recent ‘dumps’! You learn quickly that the touts in Istanbul have the eyesight and talons of an eagle, are as persistent as Aussie bush flies, praise clothing, looks, demeanor and your indubitable wisdom in choosing to eat at his restaurant which, he whispers fiercely, is a well guarded secret, for having Istanbul’s best cuisine! But fear not, for they do it with a friendly panache, which leaves both parties laughing, and a parting “enjoy your evening” , if your foolhardiness takes you elsewhere!

The Maywood is a ‘boutique’ hotel, that wonderfully enticing term that carries hopes like a push up bra, of quaintness, plushness, and abundant service, a veritable small treasure chest of un-girdled delight! The fin de siècle furniture in the foyer and surrounds, suggested olde wolde comfort for aging derrieres and limbs, while the little lift was more of a squeezebox and moved at the pace of Obama on the economy. Our room had obviously been crafted by a dollhouse maker, and the bathroom good for one person at a time, with a bath that resembled the conning tower of a U-boat and a shower that had been lifted from a decontamination unit! But the room was functional, even though the pile of our suitcases gave one corner a diving tower look, and the downstairs breakfast spread was as extensive as the Formula One starting grid, even with a rush of Germans pushing and shoving for position.

Istanbul, curiously, is a city that has three flanks, so a very curious beastie, each with its own waterfront with docks and forts. Every inch of land is taken up with human habitation in palaces, houses, flats, mosques, markets and even the parks are always full of people. The European side is itself divided by the peninsula of the Golden Horn, which juts into the entrance of the Bosphorus, the aorta which divides Europe from Asia, and despite the bridges that cross both waterways, traffic, whether day or night, always seems to move at crawl place. All manner of shipping, from majestic white cruise ships, hulking tankers and freighters, belching ferries with a spot-light at their bow looking like Cyclops, bunty-ended car ferries, pleasure yachts, fleet pinnaces, and ducky rowing boats with fisher-folk and their wispy rods, all vie for the most congested water-space in the world. The area is pure noise and movement, pungent with the air of fish and seaweed, and at night, a darting of light on the dark surface, as though to suggest a meeting of miners in a coal mine. We sat two nights at a marvellous rooftop restaurant Imbat, far from noise and smells, marveling at the lights bouncing from a million window panes, as the setting sun showered us with its last rays.

The old town is built on seven hills, more Rome than San Francisco, with the main thoroughfare, the Divanyolu Caddesi, the ‘avenue of Empire’, and its derivatives, twisting like an intestine from Eminonu, through Sirkeci, to Sultanahmet, where Istanbul’s greatest attractions lie, the Topkapi Palace, the Haglia Sophia (Church/mosque museum), the ‘Blue Mosque’, and the Grand Bazaar. Then again, there are over one hundred historical sites in the old city alone, including a former Roman hippodrome, a Fourth Century cistern, palaces and the old wooden Ottoman houses, and of course, more places of religious observance than you could hope to see if you stood in one spot, turned through 360 degrees, and hummed Midnight in Mosque-oh! Mosques are everywhere on the skyline, their minarets like rockets ready for launching. And clinkered in between these sites, shops and restaurants selling every conceivable souvenir, apparel, household item, carpet, and foodstuff, scenting the air with spices, turmeric and cardamom, aniseed and oregano, and you have Istanbul in a capsule.

We wandered the narrow footpath along Divanyolu, the ultramodern trams plucking at our sleeves as though they were a bull-fighter’s cape, clanging their bell constantly, to avoid a squishy mess. Each tram, was packed in a manner that only a sardine could love, but each journey, no matter its length, on any form of public transport, cost a mere two Lira. As a result, public transport is efficient, and well patronized. It also meant that we were up close, and very personal with our hosts, on more than a few occasions!

The women generally have strong faces, ovalish, with prominent noses and dark eyes. Surprisingly, there are also many blondes. Many dressed in a “Western manner” with jeans or even short skirts, and reasonably modest tops, and during our time in Turkey, the advertising videos, even on street-side electronic billboards were of bikini babes, dancing provocatively a-la-Salome. Yet too, there were many women in head-scarves and neck-to-ankle type trench coats, who if concerned by their fleshier flashers, showed no irritation. The men, indeed, had the hirsute, swarthy, muscular and rounded appearance that we associate with ‘The Turk”, people with meaty necks and barrel chests, hatless and capless, who walked with the swagger of a gunfighter, yet were always approachable, enormously friendly with a self-deprecating humour, and a readiness to help. It was easy to identify with the Australian soldiers of WW1, who saw ‘Johnny Turk’ as a formidable, but honourable opponent, for we found them too, instantly likeable and disarming, trying to converse in whatever English they had, or quickly going to find someone who had greater fluency.

Which brings me to religion, and the observation, that Turkey “does Islam well”. Many, mainly younger Turks, feel that the legacy of non-sectarianism, in a country which is overwhelmingly Muslim, as initiated by Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, is being eroded by a move towards greater fundamentalism by the present leadership. In the main, Turkey is a tolerant nation, accommodating Islam, Christianity, alcohol and erotic dancing establishments, often on the four corners of one intersection. Consequently, tourism has boomed and leads Turkey’s economic sectors for revenue earning. The place is booming, the standard of living is improving daily, food costs remain relatively low, and the Turkish Lira is strong. Many fear that much will be jeopardized by any turn towards fundamentalism and greater restrictions, but there has been little reason to protest while the economy is doing well. Regulation is improving, and Turkey is increasingly attractive to investors. They only need to “look South” to see what they don’t want to become!

The Haglia Sofia, Basilica, Mosque, Museum

The Ayasofia or Haglia Sofia Museum, built as a basilica by Constantine in the Fourth century, and added to by Justinian in Sixth, is simply a wonder, one of the great buildings of the world. The 55 metre high central dome, which itself is 31 metres in diameter, is every bit as awe inspiring for the hugeness of the unsupported space, as St Paul’s or St Peter’s, yet it preceded them by over a thousand years! When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, they left the name in place yet again, plastered over the Christian mosaics, and turned it in to a munificent mosque, yet left in place the symbols of Christian worship, such as the pulpit, apse, narthex, and galleries. Various Sultans added bits, one a superb library building, one a loge so he could enter unseen and pray, with the unerring thought that people never knew when he was there, and listening! Sultan Suleyman, in the Eighteenth century, built a hamam for bathing and washing, separate facilities for men and women, of course, the famous Turkish baths for pummeling and massage. And in the Nineteenth century, a number of huge medallions with Allah, The Prophet, Ali and Abu Bakr inscribed in gold calligraphy, those worshiped by the Sunni sect, but unusually, others like Hussain who are worshiped by the Shites, were also displayed, something seldom seen sectarian in mosques.

In 1937, Ataturk commanded that the Haglia Sofia become a museum, and ordered the careful removal of the plaster that covered the Christian mosaics, revealing the magnificence of the artistry and the Christian motifs left by the Byzantines. Everywhere, we saw people craning their necks to take it all in, and like others, we climbed the ramped towers to view the marble floor from one of the galleries. And all one heard was the shuffle of feet, and silence. It was a place to stand and marvel, not to speak. But by now, the crowds were in their thousands, and we made our way out through the huge, bronze, Imperial door, once only used by the Sultan, and into a cool, tree be-festooned courtyard, for a coffee. I felt a little guilty as I passed a conga line of women, looking like the evacuation lines at Dunkirk, and turned my eyes away from their beady looks, as I strolled to the male toilets. I just thanked my God for the little wiggly bit!

Opposite the Haglia Sofia is the Sultan Ahmet I mosque, from 1606, and more popularly known as “The Blue Mosque” because of its thousands of wonderful blue tiles. The mosque is superbly symmetrical in its appearance, with huge courtyards and six minarets instead of the usual four. It is quintessentially what we think every mosque should look like. The mosque welcomes all comers, although a woman who came in shorts, got short shrift (what was she thinking!). While the interior of the mosque is still inspiring and the blue Venetian glass and the Izmir tiles give it a great serenity, I found its inside less grand than the Haglia Sofia, and the support for its dome, clumsier and more invasive. But outside, it was matchless.

The Blue Mosque at sunset

Temporarily ‘mosqued- out’, we made for the Grand Bazaar, but only after a meal in a pomegranate treed courtyard, of an old wooden Ottoman house, now called The House of Medusa. A dozen women with snake-like strands of hair, were at the table next door, possibly already stoned, a gaggle of middle aged Americans showing plenty of flesh and wrinkles. But even their loud, ‘taking over’ laughter, could not rob the restaurant of its laid back ambiance, the excellent Efes beer of its zip, nor the lamb kofta of its bite. Turks are born to eat, and around us, the mezes came by the armful, and the bread baskets looked like silos. Sofas are low to the ground for lounging and lingering, and there appeared to be little haste as people dipped and dunked bread into soups and sauces, drank gritty coffee between clenched teeth, and puffed pow-wow sized blue clouds into the air, because in Turkey, everyone seems to smoke! The mosque opposite called the faithful to prayer, while the drinkers paused only briefly, to see the men put their prayer mat on the footpath and complete their rituals. We left our Lira, and headed for the some of the 4000 shops in the Grand Bazaar!

The Grand Bazaar was a Byzantine shopping area that ‘kinda grew’ in the Fifteenth century under the Ottomans, and was eventually closed over, to become a sort of haggling mall. It simply sells everything that you can carry away, a veritable maze of streets and alleys, Turks, tourists and touts, restaurants and coffee shops, mosques and police stations. It reminded me of an ant farm that my brother once had, calm on top, but amazing activity below at its various levels. We ventured only partly into the forest, but far enough to snare an antelope leather coat, a Turkish light for our porch, a swaggle of pashminas and assorted ceramics, before we were beaten by our baggage allowance, and turned back. The whole place is well set out, clean, and even the incessant carpet sellers are friendly. Tea, either the red Turkish chai, or the aromatic apple tea, flavours many a negotiation, and throughout the Bazaar, tea bearers, carrying their tiny glasses of tea on a ‘scales of justice’ tray, brush nimbly through the crowds. It simply is a ‘must visit’ place.

One of the ‘main streets’ in the Grand Bazaar

Later, we went to the Spice Market, dating from 1660, a far more local establishment, full of the pungent aromas of spices, cheeses and cured meats, roasted coffee beans, and the sweet smell of Turkish Delight. We moved forward slowly, like the crowd at the Grand Final, peeling off occasionally to bargain and buy, bursting out of the old stone gates like water from a faucet, and into the Eminou docks area. There it seemed as though all of Turkey was going home, and the hawkers of roasted corn and plaited bread, were doing a brisk trade.

On another day, we did a city bus tour, going up Istanbul’s Pierre Lotti hill by cable car, and through the smog we looked down past an old Ottoman graveyard, to the stilled waters of the Golden Horn. In the misty distance, minarets looked like power pylons. Then it was on to the Kariye Muzesi, the Eleventh century Byzantine Chora church, with disputably, the best preserved, most complete, Byzantine mosaics in Turkey, many featuring scenes from the life of Christ and Mary. Whereas in the Haglia Sofia, the mosaics were distant, here they were but a few feet away, and the tiny tiles still dazzle as they presumably did, a thousand years ago. Again, my bargain hunting mate returned from the Museum shop with a cartload of ceramics, while I merely gulped and thought, silently of course, “how will we carry the bloody stuff home!” All decorative to be sure, little plates and bowls, “Look they have a tulip motif”, playing on my Dutch heritage, although to me they looked more like chilies! I didn’t have the heart to tell her, that the Dutch stole the tulip from Turkey, centuries ago, and that the opprobrium still rankled. I merely smiled, and took the bag! Fortunately, at our next place of call, the stark Castle of the Seven Towers, there were only breastworks and turrets, dungeons and the remains of the Golden Gate, a Roman portal through which Emperors and dignitaries entered the city, and not a shop in sight!

Now I am a morning bounder, up well before the sun, while my wife sleeps on, and I headed towards the harbour, already busy with commuters, despite the hour. There I found the Sirkeri Station, the end of the line for the fabled Orient Express on its trans-European run from Paris to Stamboul, which started in 1883. It was full of faded glory, a marbled platform, a large, still plush looking restaurant, with big windows and stained glass uppers, an old station clock with Roman numerals and large hands, and a first or last, rail-side bar with a frieze of long  ago popped bottles of Moet et Chandon. It was easy to imagine the smoke and the smell of coal, men in black tie and spats, or dazzling uniforms, elegant women and flappers, with hats and furs, the clicking of heels on the marble, the ringing of the golden bell that signaled imminent departure, the final whistle, and the hiss of steam as the serpent stirred and glided along the sea shore, under the eye of the Topkapi Palace. The romance might have faded when the rail service ended in 1977, but its waft, was still in the air.

The Sirkeci station entrance for the Orient Express

Later, we took Morning Tea at the exquisitely refurbished French Patisserie at the Pera Palace Hotel, the hotel of choice for the rich and famous, for they all came – crossing the Golden Horn by ferry, a coach or motor up the steep slopes to Beyoglu, with the Sultan travelling in a sedan chair. Agatha Christie wrote her Murder on the Orient Express there, Hemingway part of The Snows of Kilimanjaro. The Sultans, Ataturk, the Emperor of Austria, the King of England, Garbo, Bernhardt, Hitchcock, Greene and Jacqui Kennedy, are some of the names that spring to mind. When it was opened in 1895, it was the only building to have electricity, apart from the Sultan’s palaces. It had the first (wooden) electric lift, in all of Turkey, and it still works! The hotel is elegance personified, its grand ballroom and tea room full of Italian marble, its black and white urinals looking like a grand piano! I sat in the Agatha Christie sedan chair while dissecting my éclair as carefully as she did a murder, and dearly hoped that some of her inspiration would rub off! Like Garbo, we just wanted to be left alone, provided it was at the Pera Palace!

The following day, we took a boat trip up the Bosphorus, first along the European shore passing huge white cruise ships, mosques, and the Dolmabache Palace, the showpiece palace to where the Sultans moved in 1856, after abandoning the Topkapi Palace, for a life by the sea shore. Ataturk spent time there, in the harem we were told, and when he died on 10 November, 1938, of liver failure from a lifetime over-indulgence of Raki, the aniseed flavoured Turkish aperitif, all the Palace clocks were stopped at 9.05am, the moment of his death. Next door there was the Sultanahmet gaol, built in 1918, abandoned in 1969, and infamous as the gaol in which much of the movie Midnight Express was set. Ironically, it now serves as the luxurious Four Season’s Hotel, while next door, the Ciragan Palace built for Sultan Abdul Aziz in 1867, is now the luxurious Kempinsi Hotel.

 

Part of the Dolmabache Palace on the Bosphorus

We travelled under the Bosphorus Bridge, the seventeenth longest single span bridge in the world, making our way along a shoreline full of swank marinas and restaurants, to the ultra expensive suburb of Bebek, with its magnificent waterside wedding-cake-like, Egyptian consulate. Then we pointed our bows toward the Asian shore, to give us a superb rear view of the mighty Fatih Sultan Mahmet Bridge, and the huge Rumali fortress, built in a few months in 1452, before the taking of Constantinople. The Asian or Anatolia shore also had its share of great buildings and palaces, but somehow it has always been seen as a lesser shore, and that is reflected in the price of real estate, although only marginally so. We stopped briefly at Kizkulesi, The Maiden’s Tower, a Fourth century lighthouse but one greatly modified by the Ottomans in 1509 and 1673. Its title comes from a legend of a Sultan who was told by a seer, that his daughter would die of snake bite, before her eighteenth birthday, and so he put her on the tiny, tennis court sized island. So pleased was he on her 18th birthday, that he gave her a bowl of fruit to celebrate, but hidden in the fruit was a deadly asp! It a-pears that the moral of the story is never accept fruit from a big banana! I made an as-p of myself by missing a step on the way down, and sprawling at the base of the l-adder, feeling rather snakey about looking so undistinguished amid a whole group of tourists!

The ‘Fortress of Europe’, built on the Bosphorus in 1492

We never did get to see the Topkapi Palace because I was sick on the day. I did wander through the wonderful gardens early one morning and saw many of the stone lions which symbolized the real lions that a Sultan had kept there, and also saw the place where he took tea while surreptitiously watching parades and other activities. There were more palaces, forts and mosques to visit, dinners to have in stately restaurants, delightful kebabs from various doners to down – so we will be back. We didn’t visit a hamam or a harem, although at times my heart leapt up when I saw in large letters GIRIS, which in my visual confusion, I took to be “Girls”, rather than the ‘entry’, which it announced.

We saw LOTS of stray cats and dogs, and stole our bones from restaurants, to help feed the unloved. Most however, looked reasonably well fed, and as Istanbul is a relatively clean and tidy in a grubbiness-of-the-centuries sort of city, with lots of street sweepers, I can only conclude that someone was feeding them. Then again, if you are superstitious, many of the cats are black, and one is sure to cross your path! Also likely to cross your path, are barrow-men, pulling or shoving all manner of goods down the narrow streets, to supply the tiny shops where the goods spill out on to the street.

Yes, Istanbul, not Constantinople now, is a Turkish delight any day or night. We can’t wait to go back!

Fine Flapper in the Agatha Christie Chair, at the Pera Palace Hotel

Winfred Peppinck is the Tales of the Traveling Editor for Wandering Educators