As headlines last summer told of Syrians pouring over the border into Turkey, I cannot tell a lie, it sort of scared me.
Intellectually, I know that every border crosser isn’t a terrorist, that most of them are just trying to escape the raging civil war, but which is which?
We were headed to Istanbul. Would we be welcome there? Was this the right time to go?
Yes to both, it turns out.
The people I met were some of the nicest I have encountered on any of my travels to bucket-list European cities, and the only time I didn’t feel safe was cabbing it from the airport with a driver who jumped curbs to drive on the sidewalk when traffic stalled.
Istanbul has one foot in Europe and the other in Asia. We stayed in the Old City, on the European side.
Yes, some of the locals were pushy when it came to hawking their rugs, so look out for that. But overall, they were friendly. We got an education. And not just about mosque etiquette, but also about the danger of misconceptions and the importance of travel.
Most every time we told someone (or they guessed) that we were from the United States, the response was the same: I’ve never been there. I want to go. I’m trying to get a visa. A few of them even broke into “Hotel California” or “California Dreamin’.”
We met one young Syrian, wearing an Ozzy Osbourne T-shirt and a ponytail, working in a spice shop near our hotel. He told us he had been thrown into prison by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s henchmen for being a Satanist because he’s into heavy metal. Upon release, he was kidnapped by rebels. He escaped after a few months of forced labor and made it to Turkey. His dream destination: Phoenix.
He cursed the terrorists over cups of tea. They have hijacked our religion, he said.
Another night we got off a metro at the wrong spot. And that was the last train. It was after midnight. Two young Turkish guys saw me and my husband and teen daughter huddled around a map in the dark. When we told them our hotel, the Neorion, was near the Blue Mosque, they informed us we were about 4 miles away. They would take us there. On foot, no less.
We walked the dark, empty streets trading stories about our countries. There was a lot of laughing. When we got back to the hotel around 1:30 a.m., a cafe was just closing up across the street. We all decided to grab some sodas before the men walked another few miles to catch a ferry home.
When it came time to pay, they had gotten to the waiter before us.
“But we owe you a soda at least!” we insisted.
“No, you are our guests,” they said.
We took a group selfie and waved goodbye.
Nights in the Old City are quiet. But days are a dizzying panoply of exotic sights and sounds. Trams clang down rails in the middle of the street. Taxis honk. Ships blow their horns in the distance down by the Golden Horn estuary. Seagulls cry. Cats are – everywhere: skulking, stretching, sleeping.
Shopkeepers guess our language. Hola! Hello! Turkish delights! Come in! Let me help you spend your money!
Women in white scarves sit cross-legged on pillows in cafe windows, cooking pita dough on hot grills. Tourists and locals pack outdoor tables, eating puddings and pancakes stuffed with potatoes.
The main drinks are little glasses of Cay (Turkish black tea) and sweet, muddy Turkish coffee. You can order a hookah pipe off the menu and a fruity tobacco to smoke in it.
Five times a day, the call to prayer rings out from mosques across the Old City (over loudspeakers, so everyone can hear), hypnotizing and haunting. The first arrives before the sun comes up, loud enough to wake us in our dark hotel room.
Ninety-eight percent of the residents here are Muslim, but Istanbul is a cosmopolitan city with just as many women wearing color-coordinated headscarves as women with bare heads and skirts, although the skirts are a modest knee-length and I saw no spaghetti straps. (If these people woke up at the Huntington Beach Pier on a summer day, they might pass out.) It is also a gay-friendly city.
Parts, like Taksim Square, draw a younger crowd, drinking Raki, a yogurt-anise firewater, in cozy, narrow back streets lit with colorful lanterns. At night, musicians strum guitars and waiters call out to passersby to sit for a fried oyster sandwich or beer.
We were there for the history, though, so we spent most of our eight days in the Old City, crowned a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Civilization began here as a Greek colony in 600 B.C. It remained Byzantium until Emperor Constantine the Great arrived around the year 300, pronouncing it the new capital of the Roman Empire.
The underground Basilica Cistern, built by the Romans, still holds water, and you can go down to stroll the dark chamber by lantern glow and hunt for giant stone Medusa heads. (James Bond floated in the cistern in 1963’s “From Russia With Love.”)
In 1453, Constantinople, by now the largest and wealthiest of all European cities, fell to the Ottomans. The cavernous Hagia Sofia, considered one of the greatest surviving examples of Byzantine architecture, was turned into a mosque. It is now a museum; a religious mashup of gilded mosaics and altars and minarets.
One day we took a cab across town to a section of the crumbling stone walls that Constantine built to keep enemies out. You can still climb them for views.
Better yet, visit the mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent. Built on a hill overlooking the Golden Horn, it offers some of the best views of the Old City and the ferries and ships traveling the Bosporus, a strait of sparkling blue that separates Asia from Europe.
Or you can travel the Bosporus yourself. We took a three-hour ferry cruise for $5, past old palaces and small fishing boats and cruise ships the size of Vegas hotels.
To rest, we sometimes ducked into mosques. Scarves are lent to wrap around your waist and cover your head if you haven’t brought your own. Inside it is cool and quiet and you can sit on the Persian rugs and marvel at the tile work. More than 20,000 handmade blue tiles decorate the interior of the Blue Mosque, in patterns of tulips, trees and fruits.
Outside the Blue Mosque is Sultanahmet Square, home base for tourists. Once the Hippodrome, where Romans raced chariots, it is now a picturesque park of benches, flowers and grass where you can sit by a fountain or buy roasted chestnuts from carts.
This is where a suicide bomber blew himself up in January, killing 10 tourists.
The Grand Bazaar is a short walk from here. The oldest mall in the world, it is a chaotic maze. Less overwhelming but still packed like a tin of sardines is the Spice Bazaar, halls lined with colorful bins of dried fruits and olives and spices and teas.
We returned exhausted every night to drink wine on the rooftop terrace of our hotel and watch the sun set over the minarets and domes that decorate the skyline.
We also went back to our hotel in the afternoons for mezze breaks. Every day from 2-6 p.m., the Neorion set out a spread of cheese sandwiches and salads plus hot soup and rice.
Breakfast was a feast of figs and compotes and grilled vegetables and breads. All of it included in the $250 a night rate.
One of my favorite spots was the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, home to one of the best collections of Hellenistic and Roman antiquities in the world. Ancient artifacts dot a shady garden courtyard where you can sit with a drink and watch the cats slink among the ruins.
Another big cat hangout is the cemeteries: pretty little parks with iron gates and elaborate gravestones, many of which have herbs and flowers growing out of them like Chia pets.
On the last morning, I woke and hustled a few blocks from my hotel to the Hagia Sofia for a Turkish bath in a hamam that Sulieman the Magnificent built in 1553 for his wife and harem.
A woman who didn’t speak English doused me with gold-plated bowl after bowl of hot water and then scrubbed me with bubbles on a warm slab of white marble. It was ridiculously extravagant and cost $110.
But still, I would do it again. On my next trip to Istanbul.
