Catching up: Istanbul, take two

We got a few last days in Istanbul before heading our separate ways for the holidays. The second time around we were old pros: we stayed in the cool side of town, chilled with the locals, and checked the last of the major tourist attractions off our list.









First on the agenda was Dolmabahce Palace, where the sultans moved when Topkapi began to cramp their style. It did not disappoint. In terms of ridiculousness and ostentation I think it surpasses Versailles. To the left is the crystal staircase (the banister supports are made of carved rock crystal). Another favorite spot is the modest room allotted for religious ceremonies:


Aaron's favorite find in the treasuries? A spiff hide-a-way liquor cabinet:

Mine? The demitasse, duh.

We spent a day wandering around our neighborhood, Beyoglu, which is home to some really fun antique shops. Most were selling kitchy 50's retro stuff or finer goods from Ottoman days, but A la Turca, a four story town house meticulously decorated with carpets and other Turkish treasures, was where Aaron and I lost our heads.

Every surface was covered with the classiest examples of the most stereotypical antiques. Interspersed were things we'd never dreamed of: deer antler cutlery, ten foot tall wooden birdcages, ostrich egg bowls. It was a kind of high-brow hipster Neverland.

Better still we got keyed in to the local music scene over two evenings with an old schoolmate from Castilleja, Belkis Boyacigillar. Belkis has been working for Istanbul-based entertainment group Babylon since college and introduced us to Turkey's hottest selling recording artist (a clarinetist) who was in town performing with the saxophonist from one of Aaron's haunts, NuBlu.

A few last notes. First, I think I've yet to mention the ever present evil eye in any of my posts from Turkey. We saw this symbol on everything from doilies to jewelry to doorknobs. A group of small girls in Konya waved them at us for protection while peppering us with questions about America. This was my favorite use though:

And while we're on food, the candied quince with clotted cream we ate upon our return to the pudding shop Saray deserve some recognition. Gorgeous, no?

xoxo Jessie

Catching up: Safranbolu

Safranbolu is a small town in northern Turkey that has maintained traditional Ottoman building styles and society for the last four hundred years, give or take. By mid-December we found it largely deserted. The air was thick with smoke from wood-burning stoves and chimneys that heat the city through it snowy winter. The architecture reminded us of buildings in the old town section of Plovdiv, but also the mock-Tudor mansions of Beverly Hills:)

We saw a number of traditional craftsman at work, including a number of blacksmiths and this saddle maker.


Happily for us, Safranbolu is also the native habitat of the safran flower and the original home of lokrum, or Turkish delight. The safran flavor was Aaron's favorite. I, predictably, went for chocolate covered pistachio.

xoxo Jessie

Catching up: Cappadocia

In the middle of Turkey, Cappadocia is home to some of the most bizarre rock formations in the world. Called "fairy chimneys" but often resembling something more phallic than bedtime story, these geologic oddities have been home to everyone from the Hittites and early Christians (who also moved underground) to present-day Turks and tourists. We stayed in Goreme in what was once a church, carved into a cliff-side and improved with electricity and cable tv.

Goreme is home to an open air museum made up of a former cave city including homes, gathering places, and churches.

I don't know if you can really see it, but there's snow on the ground! A number of the churches still have their frescoes more or less intact.

From Goreme, we visited the nearby underground city in Kaymakli. Begun by Hittites and expanded by early Christians, the underground city is over 350 feet deep and could hold as many as 3,000 people for as long as 6 months. There were family quarters, food storage facilities, laundry rooms, kitchens, churches, and security systems all dug around a single well. This underground city was connected to another one roughly 5 miles away. While we were there only the first five stories were accessible because the porous sandstone walls of the lower floors had collapsed. The rainwater dripping from the walls around us wasn't the most comforting sight.

We also visited Pasabagi home to Cappadocia's most famous collection of chimneys. We had the place to ourselves until a tour bus of Japanese tourists arrived. When their guide announced we were American we got a big round of applause. Go figure.


Our favorite meals in Goreme were served up by a Turkish man who spent 15 years in Spain as a Flamenco dancer. Pides and Efes next to a wood-burning stove are the best end to cold days.

Our last night in town we hiked through the so-called Pigeon Valley where we totally alone among the best formations and dwelling clusters of the trip. A great end to a really interesting place.
That was a month ago, so I've got my work cut out for me. Although since my flash drive got stolen and I lost my copy of my safari pix the job of catching up has gotten considerably simpler.

xoxo Jessie

Honey ... I'm home!

OK well not really, but I'm out of Africa and back in touch. So stay tuned for belated reflections on Cappadocia, Istanbul (take two), Doha, Safari, Zanzibar, and Mumbai!

In the meantime, Happy New Year!! My resolution was to be in better touch, so expect an email shortly:)

xoxo Jessie

Konya: Whirling, etc.

Without knowing what it was exactly, we went out of our way to catch the dervish festival in Konya. Here's what I learned when we got there: this year marks the 735th anniversary of the death of the mystic Sufi poet Mevlana (or Rumi, as he's referred to in the States). Every year his followers gather in Konya, where Mevlana worked and is buried. For decades this was the only dervish ceremony allowed all year by Atatürk's vehemently secular regime. The dervishes don't perform, there is no clapping, there is only prayer, and the music and the relationships between the dervish pupils and teachers, rather than the whirling, are the central features of the process. The experience was mesmerizing.

Apart from the festival, the Mevlana Museum has a noteworthy series of roofs,

and Konya is home to unique (and kind of gross) compacted powdered sugar candy:

In Konya, we also found some good examples of food items we've seen throughout Turkey. This churro-like pastry (generally served cold and without the benefit of cinnamon I'm sorry to report):

And the humongous döner skewer:

This year, the Mevlana festival fell the same week as Eid-ul-Adha or Kurban Bayramı. The first dozen or so people we asked about this holiday could only explain that it involved slaughtering a goat or sheep. Eventually we learned that this holiday commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son. It's something like the Turkish Thanksgiving: everyone spends time with family, eating ritually slaughtered goats, sheep, and cows, and donating the same to those less fortunate. The holiday lasted for eight days in Turkey. And each day's evening news was dominated by footage of escaping livestock. We left Konya on the last day of Bayramı. The bus station was full of hundreds of families seeing their (mandatorily) enlisted sons back off to military service.

xoxo Jessie

Antalya

We stopped for a day in Antalya in transit from the Mediterranean coast to central Turkey. Once again the reality far exceeded my guide book-based expectations (as I'm writing this - my second consecutive post on this theme - I'm realizing that perhaps I need to pay a bit more attention to my travel research ... hmm). Anyway this was the steep descent through a charming seaside town to the harbor I was expecting to find in Olympos.

We stayed in a charming pension with a breakfast patio full of peach trees. In town we found a great bookstore (an opportunity totally wasted on me since one of my two purchases was by P.J. O'Rourke, who I thought was supposed to be an "American humorist" but turned out to be little more than a classic jerk). The proprietor - middle-aged, loud, and curmudgeonly but incredibly well-read - was full of memorable pronouncements like, "Murakami? Yes, I read him. A hack! Boring!!" Classic.

Finally we ate our first Turkish tost (basically panini) while the sun set on this scene.



xoxo Jessie

The Expectations Game: Olympos

So we read through the Mediterranean coast section of our Lonely Planet and decided on Olympos as our next destination. By the time we actually got there, however, I had worked up a set of expectations based on the descriptions of at least three other places we'd reviewed and rejected. So there wasn't so much a lovely town as a lovely woods, and not so much a steep descent through town to the harbor as a muddy slop through underbrush to the pebble beach. But guess what? All the surprises were for the best. We were staying in a log cabin on a glorified campsite surrounded by pine forest and granite cliffs. And the beach was totally gorgeous.

I also managed to forget the main attraction, the ancient ruins. The city of Olympos is largely unexcavated, despite having been a relatively important religious and commercial center for the ancient Greeks. It was a surreal change of pace to hunt for columns, tombs, and ancient structures in the undergrowth and greenery. When or where else I will walk on millennia-old mosaic floors I don't know.



Finally, there was the Chimera - natural gas flames that "scientists" can neither explain nor extinguish, apparently - which wasn't in my guide-book for me to forget or confuse.

So Olympos, you surprised me. Thanks!

xoxo Jessie