from Bodrum, Turkey: wondrously close and yet…

How could it be that I am less than a mile from one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and I have not seen it yet?

As I said, this day was for catching up on work and reading. Not too stressful, as I find reading by the hillside pool to be, well, exquisite. Oh, that view!





By evening, I hadn’t moved more than ten yards from the side of my deck chair. In the water, then out again, slobbering in the sun screen, turning (wet now) pages . The air here is hot and very windy – torrents of it blowing at you, keeping you from feeling oppressed by the temps.

Lunch? Delivered to my chair. Here, it looked like this:



grilled calamari on arugula




sour cherry ice cream


Decadent, right? I admit it.

Finally, by evening I work up the motivation to go down and get ready to eat. Dinner is at the other end of town and the walk is along a busy road. Hugely uninteresting. I mean, in places that sport one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, you’re not going to be impressed when you pass by a random amphitheater from around 400 BC.





The restaurant, by the way, is wonderful and it, too, has the view of the harbor and castle -- from the other side of town.





But I feel I cheated here as the owners are Turkish, but full-time residents of Paris. I mean, should I praise the sauces (SO French) or the fresh ingredients, brushed lovingly with olive oil (SO Turkish)?

The Ancient Wonder (Mausoleum of Halicarnassus) will be around tomorrow. I hope. I understand it’s so damaged (earthquakes, terrible excavations, etc) as to be unrecognizable. Still, so close… Must get to it. Tomorrow.

from Bodrum, Turkey: where roosters crow and young ones dance

A table by the Bosphorus: coffee, grilled cheese on breads, cucumbers, tomatoes, jams and sesame rolls. Always, the freshly squeezed juice. Breakfast in Istanbul, then a flight south.

In a stroke of good luck, we make the flight to Bodrum (by the Aegean Sea), in spite of the fact that I misread the departure time, thinking it to be late afternoon rather than early afternoon. Ask me a schedule and chances are only 65% that I will give you the right answer.

In fact, we not only make the flight, but have enough time to stop for a goat’s milk pistachio and orange (for me) and pistachio and chocolate (for my daughter) ice cream. One cannot neglect the important things in life. Goat’s milk ice cream is up there.

On the flight, I am sitting besides a Very Friendly person. Frequent fliers do not like Very Friendly seatmates, unfortunately. Never mind that this woman tells a normally fascinating to me story of her movement between Turkey and America (she is a chemical engineer and, along with her family, is part of the significant tide of returnees to Turkey). Never mind that she has some interesting commentary on the Kurds at the Iraqi border. It’s all good, all interesting and I try so very hard to listen and ask questions, all the while thinking – how many more seconds before we land?

We take a cab to Bodrum proper, past dry hills, oh so dry, with olive trees growing nonetheless – their pale gray leaves adding to the feeling of ruggedness and heat.

It is very hot here. How can a place, just a fifty minute flight from Istanbul, be that much hotter? We roll down the windows of the cab and let ourselves be slapped around by hot air – like a massage of sorts, not a cooling one, but still good and punchy.

The discreet hotel is a thing of great loveliness – perched on a hill, away from the chaotic little town (for Bodrum, though small, has the same feeling of frenzy). Stepping out on the little balcony, I see…




… the Aegean Sea and the white houses hugging the little bay, I see the islands – some Greek, some Turkish across the waters. It’s all tempting, all worth exploring, but I have work to do and besides, there is a pool and so we decide that the next day, we will go nowhere and see nothing and we’ll sequester ourselves right here in our lovely white room on the hillside of Bodrum.

First, though, there is the matter of dinner and we walk down into town, past small houses, with people sitting in front,





... and city roosters, too. Past shops, always the shops, everywhere in Turkey, people selling things, we pass all this and wind up at the harbor.









We try to fit into the pulse of the town, for we have heard that the globetrotters have “discovered” Bodrum and they come here to party late into the night and so everything is done at a much later hour, but we are hungry and so we cannot wait.

We find a restaurant that comes with praise. We sit in a small courtyard, with flowers to the side...




... and our waiter is even friendlier than all the hugely friendly waiters of Istanbul and he makes suggestions and they are all good and we eat everything.










We are ready to collapse, but he cannot believe that this should be our plan given that we are in a village that likes to party late into the night and so he slips my daughter a card indicating how they should meet up and dance the night away and I smile politely as does she – for we are the tired ones, the ones who lose their oomph at midnight (except that I know that she is molding herself to me, that were she here with her own pack, they would be out there tasting music and laughter at 4).

All at once I feel protective and maternal and I am wondering if I have become this way because I am so close to the waters that wrecked havoc in my own youth. Bodrum is within spittin’ distance of Samos, the Greek island next to the Turkish coast, where some 35 years ago a bartender and I rode a motorbike all night long and threw plates in tavernas and danced and smooched on a rocky beach and then he asked me if this means I would be his wife and I thought – Jesus, what am I doing??

Too tired to hike up, we take a cab back and the driver gives us each an evil eye (a glass bead), to ward off the dangers of travel.

from Istanbul: Sunday destinations

The ever changing Bosphorus. A morning mist can add another level of beauty to a view that I have now looked at a million times (I need only roll over in bed and face the window and I have this before me):





It’s Sunday. We have been told that the commercial heart of the horn (the old center of town) shuts down. We work from morning til night — a Bazaar merchant tells me. Thank goodness for Sundays.

I ask at the desk for suggestions: what’s a good outing? What do Istanbuli people do on this day?
They take the ferries out to Princes’ Islands.

I’ve read about them. An hour or two from central Istanbul (depending on which island), they offer an escape – a few beaches, no cars, a restaurant or two – that kind of thing.

Great. Do you have the ferry schedule?
The desk clerk hesitates.
Go there during the week. It can get very crowded on a Sunday…
That’s okay, we want to do what the Istanbuli people do. What time are the ferries?

We do the usual: first, ferry across to the European side. There we look for the boat that will take us to the closest of the islands – Kinaliada. We take look at the various boats and ferries and then we see it. The big boat. And a sea of people. The rush to the islands is on.

We are undeterred. If the Istanbuli people regard this as a fun Sunday outing, we want to try it. We join the stampede.

Everyone is running toward the boat and we run as well, though we’re not quite sure why. It’s still twenty minutes toward departure.

As soon as we step onto the boat, the gangplank is lifted, the horn blasts and the boat pulls away. The ferry crew makes the call that there are enough passengers. Off it sails.

Indeed, the large ferry is packed. Standing room only. There are some couples, sure, and some families, but mostly we see young men – groups of them, dressed for the beach.

As always, we are treated super politely. A boy will punch his brother for bumping into me and make him fish for the English word to apologize. (Sometimes they’ll find it, but mostly, when you step out of the hotel or restaurant, English disappears. Not a word.)

We stand at the rail and watch the city retreat.


Within an hour, we are nearing the island. A vast majority chooses to disembark here. Like us, they want a quick escape. We get off with a crowd that is worthy of Grand Central Station in New York. At rush hour.

But it is, in fact, an escape. We have been told that there are anywhere between 14 and 25 million people living in the city. The traffic congestion during the day is unreal! How wonderful to get to a place that has none of this.

Still, it has the crowds alright. This island hasn’t much in the way of beaches, but people make do. They splash with the jelly fish (hundreds of them!) and they take pleasure in getting wet. Just a little break. A dip.





We pause for our afternoon baklava and espresso (it’s become a routine – replacing the latte and scone addiction from back home),





... and then hike up. Mind you, this isn’t a big island – maybe two miles across and a half mile wide. Still, there is a village center and some open countryside.

Most day trippers stick to the village and the beaches. As we climb up, the air becomes hot, still. And you have this feeling of eyes peering at you from behind bushes and dry grasses. That’s because there are eyes peering at you. Every couple of hundred meters you’ll see the flash of kerchief. Young men, smooching away with their women. It still takes getting used to: the guy in western clothes – jeans, t-shirt, maybe swimming trunks and the woman in an ankle-length skirt, maybe with a coat over it and a head wrapped tightly with a scarf.

The views from the walk up are predictably stunning. The city in the distance, a few sailboats, freighters, ferries, and the mountains of western Turkey somewhere in the hazy horizon.





But it’s hot up there and so we head back to town, past horse-pulled wagons delivering water,





…past kids, couples, stray cats, past cafes with men playing cards and games that I cannot recognize, drinking tea, talking,





…all the way to the ferry. True, the schedule says we have more than an hour til the next one, but lo! There is a boat and there are people rushing to it and so we join the pack, because joining the pack has served us well thus far and we’re all running again, because this boat is about to pull away toward who knows where.

On board, we are reassured that we are indeed heading to Istanbul and so once again we squeeze ourselves up there toward the rail, to avoid all those men (and a handful of women, but really, mostly men) puffing away at their cigarettes.

There is a stir. Passengers are leaning over the rails, pointing, smiling. Dolphins. One leap, another. People are guiding us to look this way, to see better.

Eventually we settle on a bench and do some people watching.








And always there are the tea drinkers as the ferry bar tender makes his rounds, not with beer, not with coke, but with glasses of tea and cups of orange juice.





And finally, we are back in Istanbul...





Landing seemingly close to our dinner place, and yet, the fact that we are in downtown Istanbul means that we are not close at all, because maps do not properly tell you where you are and where restaurants are and so we spend the next two hours trying to find where we ought to be.

Flamm Restaurant is worth finding. In a back alley, with just a handful of tables hugging the wall, it is run by the nephew of the original owner.

My uncle gave me this restaurant to manage. He’s busy with hotels and restaurants in other parts of the city and country. I have ten cousins, but my uncle, he doesn’t trust any of them. He was his textiles, his family cheated him. So I got the restaurant.
He likes you?
I think he just thought I needed something to do.

The nephew is an easy going kind of guy and he comes over frequently to talk to us.
My uncle hired all the best people for the kitchen.
You’re just getting into the busy tourist season?
Actually, the busy season is winter. Mostly, we serve my uncle’s friends and relatives here. He has a lot of friends in Istanbul.

We eat fried squash patties, smoked fish and mussels in grape leaves.





We go with the choices from the kitchen – meat in yogurt sauce over eggplant puree, pudding for dessert. The waitstaff hovers attentively.





Our week in Istanbul is finished. Tomorrow we fly south, before heading north again. When you’re in Istanbul, it’s hard to remember that Turkey is more than just Istanbul. Time to take a look elsewhere in the country.

from Istanbul: ice cream

Imagine, a cone with scoops of creamy goat’s milk ice cream – one orange, with chunks of candied peel and bits of nut, the other pistachio, packed with nuts, dripping with flavor.

Worth a long hike and a complicated boat ride after a day out on the crowded week-end streets of Istanbul? Sure it is.




The day can well be described as one of confusion. Saturday chaos. Week-end ferry schedules, requiring learning new times and different departure points. The hard way. By showing up at the wrong time and wrong place first. Eventually pulling away from the pier, wondering if maybe we’re bound for the Black Sea instead of downtown Istanbul.



from Uskudar to...??


Saturday in the city.

If you want to write home that you were pulled along with crowds coming in from all corners of the country in a mad rush of what appears to be compulsive buying, you’ll want to get to the heart of Istanbul on a Saturday.

Oh, but the color of it! The intensely interesting wares, the men calling out – actually I do not know what they were calling out, but it seemed full of energy and passion, despite the hot sun.

Old stuff, new stuff. And lots of it.









A detour to a beautiful mosque proved mistimed. When men (and women?) pray, the mosques close. Ten after one, the wailing chants reverberate throughout the city and we know we were done for. The best we can hope for is a quiet look at rows of men washing their feet in preparation for the services. It feels intrusive to even look this far.





We get lost in the markets. This is to be expected, but it seems especially difficult to extricate ourselves from the web of alleys and shops today. We take passages that look unfamiliar, even as the pleas to stop and shop are now just background noise.






In the spice market, we return to our favorite tea vendor. How is it that he is a favorite? No good reason. He had thrust his card at us, made us sniff his teas and there you have it. Friend for life.

One more look at spices,





One more purchase, this one sealed with a kiss (to be fair, he asked permission).

We return by ferry to Asia and hike along the road to our hotel with dripping cones of goat milk ice cream.


At sunset we go down for the first time to eat dinner at our hotel.



meze (tapas like)



calamari



grouper on skewers

The owner, Nedret Butler, a Turkish architect, comes over and chats about how it is that she, her daughters and her husband (an American architect) transformed this warehouse into a restaurant and small hotel (the Sumahan). Her husband moved to Istanbul with her and for years they worked on this together. It was an ambitious project, but the results are magnificent. Having experienced the quiet of a room looking out over the waters of the Bosphorus, it’s hard to imagine staying anywhere else.

An espresso, an ice cream baked in halvah and the day is done. With a warm crunch, lick and a drip.

from Istanbul: swept away

So here is the truth: deep down, I had hoped, I had dreamed of purchasing a Turkish rug.

All these times, when carpet salesmen would come up and say: do you want to visit my carpet store? Do you want to see my rugs? I wanted to say yes! I do! Show me, show me!

But I remained silent. What do I know about buying a Turkish carpet here? About the authenticity of any of them? About whether I would be scammed? About how to take the damn thing back, should I be so lucky as to purchase it?

I had secretly measured the space in my new condo. 9 x 6. Just in case someone was throwing something in my lap, I’d know. 9 x 6.

On the first days here I ignored all the thousands of carpet stores. What happens to those who enter? Do you get sucked into an exchange from which there is no turning back? Is stuff poured into your tea cup so that you wind up handing over credit cards willingly for carpets that you don’t even like?

I concentrated on exploring Istanbul and ignored the carpets.

Until today.

It was determined at breakfast that on this day we would turn our attention to the markets.

I took out my little scrap of paper. 9 x 6.

I poked through my books and came up with several addresses of reputable carpet dealers. Just in case. Anyone who knows Istanbul would laugh at that, but I was of the belief that carpet dealers can be divided into the reputable and the questionable and that knowing a good street number is all that you need for instant success in carpet acquisition.

We set out. Over the Bosphorus and into the tangle of streets.

First though, I need to feel like I am at home here. Like I know about life.

I pause and buy an ear of corn. Like the locals. He picks an ear out a stack, I smile wickedly and say no, no, not the old ones, I want one fresh from the coals. He shrugs and hands one over. Fresh from the coals.





I burn myself bigtime.

We enter the lesser Bazaar, the Arasta. I had already determined that looking at rugs at the Grand Bazaar would be like looking for the perfect croissant in Alaska. I’m sure they’re there, but where do you even begin.

At Arasta, all is calm.





I pass shop after shop, looking only for one dealer, whose name I ripped from a book on doing Istanbul the right way.

There it is. Gengiz. In we go. Small shop. So now what? Unlike the 99% others out there on the streets of Istanbul, this one seems supremely indifferent to my shopping needs.

Carpets, I want to look at carpets, I prod. (Was that a yawn?) He shows me one. All wrong, I think. Shouldn’t I be looking at a catalogue? At samples? Shouldn’t we discuss my tastes, my demographics? My budget?

After a minute or two, he says – follow me to the other store.
Ah, there is more. Good.

The other store is not just up the block. It is up and down, and turn this way and that, into a jewler’s and up the stairs and finally, I am in a room with many many carpets.



In the meantime, my man from Gengiz is gone.

I am now before Ilker (from Nakkas), with the pink shirt. Ilker is big. But Ilker does not himself bring out the carpets. Workman one and Workman two do that when Ilker issues a command.

The search begins.

I want something big-ish. 9 x 6.
That’s too yellow.
I prefer flowers.
Too red.




That wont go with the brick love seat.
No, I don’t really remember the shade of brick, but this seems a mismatch.
Maybe we should go for the deeper reds.





No, not that.
How much is it anyway?
Too much.
Do you have something for less?That one has pink in it as well.
Too yellow.

Ilker is sweating, which is strange because he is not the one lifting carpets. Both he and my daughter look discouraged. I am offered apple tea.





We talk prices again. I tell him my bottom line. My daughter looks at me. Are you supposed to reveal your bottom line? Should you visit only one carpet dealer? Aren’t I doing this all wrong?

We continue. Workman one brings out another roll and another. Workman two may have decided to quit, I don’t know, he’s gone. Ah, there he is – we are now on round two of tea. Turkish tea. A step up, perhaps?





How about something lighter, bigger, cheaper, and something that will go with my brick loveseat?

Ilker brings out a carpet and then he takes another to imitate a brick love seat placed right on it.





To me, it looks perfect.

I lie down on the floor next to it (really). I place a cup of tea on it, just for visual effect.




Still perfect.

Bottom price? Ilker comes up with a price considerably lower than his first offer. Too high. We have been here the entire afternoon and now I am about to walk out on the perfect carpet.

I remember the words from my book on how to do Istanbul the right way: squabble if you must; worry about the thread content, the dyes, the authenticity, the right price, but in the end, if you like that particular rug and that one only, buy it.

And so I buy it.

Everyone is happy. I save money on not shipping it. Of course I can carry a 9 x 6 carpet with me – to the restaurant for dinner, to the airport, to Paris, to France, to Chicago – hearty Polish peasant stock here.

The carpet is put in a satchel. We are set to go.




Ilker looks troubled.

Where are you eating tonight? Oh, the Balikci Sabahattin? He nods approval.That’s just a little way down, not too far from here. That has the best fish! Straight from the sea. You cannot walk there with this carpet. I’ll have Workman no. 3 drive you there.

We gratefully accept, but not just yet. I am in a daze. I need several hours to recover.

We walk to the Great Bazaar, looking at soaps and shawls and coffee urns, trying hard to steer clear of carpets.





Up one aisle, down the next, allowing ourselves to get lost in the chaos of soaps and textiles, tea sets, and hookah pipes. Finally, we are ready for dinner.

At the Balikci Sabahattin, we sit in an alley beneath grape vines. Small dishes (meze) are brought to us and we select what looks best: marinated sea bass, roasted eggplant, rice with mussels.





I let the waiters guide us in the fish selection. You like them grilled? Yes, yes, a simple preparation, it is always the best for fresh fish.





The waiter hovers. When I take a picture of my daughter, he is right there beside her. I am thinking that maybe he, too, will want to marry her and I consider if this would be a better choice than a carpet salesman. The man knows all about fish and olives and roasted eggplant.





The meal ends with fresh cherries and stewed figs. No espresso here. This is a place for fish and wine and roasted eggplant. A wonderful wonderful spot to bring your 9 x 6 carpet to after a long day.

We are ready to head back to Asia. They call us a taxi and we speed across one bridge, then another. The sun is just now setting over the mosques. The birds circle over the waters, screeching, dipping, on their last spin around Istanbul tonight.