Day 1 - Blogabond

Well, it took me and Mark 23 hours to get to Istanbul; we left Philly at 1 p.m. on Saturday and arrived at our hotel at 7 p.m. Turkish time on Sunday. Fortunately, the trip was not as unpleasant as it might have been, despite the many long layovers and out-of-the-way stop-overs (someone at Olympic Airlines seems to think that Thessoloniki is on the way to Istanbul, which made what should have been a brief, 1 hour hop from Athens to Istanbul more like 4 hours). Although the plane was full, Mark and I were able to get two aisle seats across from one another and we used the time to plan the trip and to sleep.

Mark selected our hotel in Istanbul, the Ceragan Palace, which is literally a palace--a converted Ottoman palace just north of central Istanbul. It is about as plush as hotels get. There is a huge UN conference going on (Habitat II, I think), and it appears that all relevant dignitary types are staying here -- there is a metal detector at the entrance and armed guards all around the place. However, once passing through the front doors, all is marble, fountains, and quiet.

Our room, like nearly all of the rooms in the hotel, looks out over the blue Bosphorus and over to Asia. But as tempting as lounging on the patio was, after showering and changing, Mark and I decided that a real, non-airline meal was in order. At the suggestion of the concierge, we walked north along the Bosphorus to a small neighborhood called Otokoy for dinner. We selected a small open-air restaurant on the water and had a terrific dinner of sea bass. Afterwards, we walked around the neighborhood a bit--definitely an "in" spot for 20-somethings looking to see and be seen. The narrow streets were crowded with cafes, bars, food stalls, and peddlers of all kinds. We took it all in until the sound of the muezzins calling the faithful to evening prayers, a sound which would become a frequent backdrop on this trip, signaled us that it was time to head back to the hotel.

For me, the evening ended sitting on a stone bench behind the hotel (actually in front of the palace, as the original main entrance faces the water), with a huge full moon reflecting off the narrow strip of sea, watching the ferries criss-cross the strait, listening to the faint sounds of very good jazz coming from the hotel's piano bar, and delighting in the fact that I was finally on vacation.

written by

shoshtrvls on June 2, 1996 from Istanbul, Turkey

from the travel blog: Turkey and Greece (1996)

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