Istanbul: Day 3

An overall excellent day, with lots of pictures to post!

We started out with a breakfast that was pretty delicious but not quite as good as yesterday's. The cafe was very cute, though.

Noms.

Noms.

After breakfast we proceeded to Galata Tower. This is an ancient tower (built in 1348) that overlooks the eponymous neighborhood. Lots of great views. A funny thing about Istanbul (from an American perspective) is that there just seems to be so many historical buildings that no one is too precious about them. In the USA, it seems like any building predating the 20th century is considered historic and cannot be altered in any way. Imagine our surprise on reaching the top of the tower and entering a cafe that could easily pass for the interior of a Starbucks, complete with loud pop music playing. Unsurprisingly, the tower provides quite the view of the city, although it was a bit hazy out.

I thought all the activity on the water was neat, so took a short video.

The view also demanded at least one panoramic shot.

I told you there were a lot of mosques.

We didn't spend all that much time at Galata Tower since we had to get to our next adventure: a tour of the Bosphorus Strait via ferry. The Bosphorus Strait, as part of the boundary between Europe and Asia, splits Istanbul in two. It connects the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea (which, eventually, connects the Mediterranean Sea), and is apparently the narrowest strait that sees international traffic.

Despite it being very cold out on the water, the tour did not disappoint. I took a ton of pictures but will try to restrict myself to posting only the best (well, only the ones I like the most, which is pretty subjective).

After the Bosphorus tour we headed over to Ortakoy, where we were meeting my brother-in-law's brother for dinner. I'm not really sure what that relation is called. Is he just another variant of brother-in-law? I'm sure both Chinese and Bengali (among many other languages, perhaps predominantly Asian ones, though) have specific names for the relation, but I'm not sure English does. Anyway, we went to Ortakoy to meet him. We arrived a bit early to explore the area, as we had heard it was interesting. There were a lot of cool little shops, a beautiful (and beautifully lit) mosque, and a whole bunch of baked potato stands offering all manner of toppings. Apparently a local (very local - pretty much restricted to that neighborhood) specialty. We were pretty hungry and very tempted but decided to save our appetites.

Dinner was great, though we were foolish and took no pictures of the event itself. It was nice to hang out with a larger group of people and get to know my brother-in-law's family a bit better.

Istanbul: Day 2

Okay, so I wrote half this post and then lost all my progress. So the first half may be a bit brief due to my frustration at having to rewrite it.

Today was our first experience with Turkish breakfast. I meant to take a picture, but didn't have a sufficiently wide-angle camera lens to fit in the cornucopia. I can recall (most) of the foods present, though:

  • Four types of cheese (fresh and aged kashar, a mozarella-like string cheese called chechil, and some herbed cheese)
  • Black and green olives
  • Tomatoes and cucumber slices
  • Clotted cream topped with raw honey (divine)
  • Tahini mixed with grape molasses (delicious)
  • Almond butter
  • Nutella
  • Some sort of tzatziki variant
  • Olive tapenade
  • Hard boiled eggs
  • A mix of wheat flour, walnuts, and honey called kavut
  • Some other things I'm blanking on or can't describe well.

All this was accompanied by limitless tea and fresh bread. For less than $20 US for the pair of us. Phenomenal. Shout out to Van Kahvalti Evi. We ended up going back twice since it was so good and quite close to our apartment.

After breakfast we swung by a drug store on our way out into the city. For some reason, cats are everywhere in Istanbul. I guess they're technically strays for the most part, but they seem generally well-fed, happy, and happily tolerated by the city's primate inhabitants. Anyway, "everywhere" happened to include the drug store we stopped in, so I had to take a picture.

Sleepy kitty.

Sleepy kitty.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on a quest to find and explore the Besiktas market. It was enjoyable to just be able to walk around a city easily, and walk we did. We saw some more or less interesting things on the way, and I took a few pictures.

The market itself was quite interesting. Not quite what we expected. There was a large farmers market type area (as expected) but also a large area selling all sorts of household good, clothing, etc. Almost like a Wal Mart or Target but all consisting of individually-owned, outdoor stalls. The produce was more interesting than the knock-off Gap gear, particularly for those used to reduced variety and questionable quality and safety.

After the market we hiked back to our apartment, with plenty of interesting sights along the way.

I forget what we did for dinner that night. There is a Shake Shack in Istanbul (actually, there are three!) and we definitely made our pilgrimage to it at some point, but I can't recall on which evening. Yay America(n food)!

On to Day 3! Hopefully with less gap than last time (I was pretty sick last week so didn't feel up to posting).

Istanbul: Transit and Day 1

Grace and I just got back from Istanbul, so obviously I'm already a little bit behind. I'll do my best to keep it at that, though.

Our flight left from Dhaka at 6:00 AM. Combined with needing to arrive early for checking bags and international travel, this meant leaving the house at 3:30 AM, which in turn meant waking up at 2:45 AM. Yuck. Worse still, travel generally stresses me out (what if I forget something? what if our checked bags get lost, stolen, destroyed, disapparated?) and I was particularly stressed since the last time we left home for more than a day trip we returned to a flooded apartment. All this meant that I couldn't fall asleep until 1:45 AM. So I got all of a single hour of sleep. Boo.

Checking in at the airport was actually relatively painless. We definitely didn't need to arrive quite so early. That was about the only painless part of the trip, though. The flight was delayed (because it's Dhaka), but not as much as it could have been (the same flight is regularly delayed 6+ hours because, again, it's Dhaka). It also featured a very high proportion of young children and one with apparent developmental disabilities. Now kids are great, and I wholly appreciate (well, no, I probably don't, but I can at least try to imagine) the trials of raising one with disabilities, particularly in a country like Bangladesh where resources, understanding, and sympathy for those such afflicted are close to non-existent, but it still makes for a pretty unpleasant flying experience. For the whipped cream and cherry on top, there were no exit row, bulkhead, or similarly space-advantaged seats available for this space-disadvantaged author, and none of the in-flight entertainment was functional. First world problems, sure, but still the least pleasant flight I can remember taking. Then again, we didn't disappear into some Southeast Asian sea, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.

Arrival in Istanbul was also a bit of a hassle. To start with, Turkey is the first place we've traveled so far where language was really a barrier. English is not very commonly spoken, and neither Grace nor I have a clue how to say anything in Turkish. We managed to get a SIM card, which was surprisingly expensive (prepaid SIMs are pretty cheap in a lot places, but apparently not in Turkey). Unfortunately, activation was not instant but took several hours. Smartphone-dependent as we are, this was a bit crippling. We couldn't call the manager of our rental (AirBnB-style place), couldn't show the taxi driver how to get there on GPS, etc. We tried to use a payphone with our credit card, but instructions were only in Turkish. We then tried our luck with a phone card purchased in another corner of the airport. Not sure what made the difference: the phone card or punching numbers randomly into the machine, but we eventually were able to call the manager of our rental who instructed us to just have our taxi driver call him for instructions. We did this, and finally made it to our apartment about 30 minutes or so later.

The manager of the rental met us when we arrived and was very friendly and helpful. I was a bit anxious about not going with a more traditional hotel, but it ended up working out quite well. It was definitely nice having the extra space and amenities (kitchenette, clothes washer and dryer, etc.) for a week-long stay.

After unpacking, the first order of business was getting a couple plug adapters (see aforementioned technology dependency). I went on this adventure alone, seeing as, for whatever reason, I can survive on one hour of sleep but Grace definitely cannot. I walked up to the nearby İstiklâl Caddesi, a long stretch of pedestrian-only street (well, except for the tram) flanked by all manner of shops that runs from Galata Tower to Taksim Square. Finding an electronics store wasn't difficult, although the prices were comically high. After spending around $15 on a pair of adapters of very dubious quality, I killed some time walking up to Taksim Square and wandering around a bit. Enjoyable, but maybe not too exciting to write about.

I rendezvoused with Grace and we repeated the walk I had just done, more or less, before getting some delicious mezze for dinner.

I'll close this post with a few initial impressions of Istanbul. The city is, to an American, insanely old. It seems like every other street has a few buildings that predate our country and every tenth or so has one that predates the discovery (by Europeans) of our continent. It also has enough history that it's somewhat taken for granted - brand new shops crowd up against beautiful ancient mosques. And there are a lot of beautiful ancient mosques - so many that the classic tourist destinations only comprise a small subset. The food is great (most every post will contain some discussion of food). For the most part, though, it feels very old-world European - relatively narrow streets, usually one-way and paved with cobblestones. Lots of hills, twists, and turns. Small, independent shops everywhere - barely any chains (barring a few Western ones).

A few pictures from our initial foray follow.

Our first Bengali wedding

Grace and I attended a Bengali wedding earlier this month. At least part of one. Apparently they last several days and more distant acquaintances are only invited to the last little bit.

The part we attended was a little less crazy than one might think for a South Asian wedding, but sort of bizarre. The basic agenda (from my viewpoint) was:

  1. Guests arrive, sit around unsure of what to do, get bored.
  2. Wedding procession occurs accompanied by lots of fanfare and drumming.
  3. Bride and groom sit on elaborate raised dais, are fawned over by relations.
  4. Groom and father of groom make speeches that fall a bit closer to public service announcements than toasts.
  5. Everyone eats quickly and without much ceremony, leaving pretty much as soon as they finish their food.

It was a fairly interesting experience, perhaps made more so by the fact that we gave Grace's boss a ride. This meant (obviously) that we arrived with Grace's boss, imbuing us with enough cachet that we got VIP seating throughout. I'm glad we went but have no real interest in attending more weddings unless I have more of a personal relationship with those involved.

Some pictures (and video!) below.