Day 59: Adventures in Istanbul

At the risk of sounding like whimps, Rob and I decided that our first full day spent in Istanbul would be a settling-in day. We slept in dangerously late, took an adventure walk to go forage for food in the hustling, bustling streets of Taksim (the area of Istanbul that we’re staying in). Let me say, Istanbul is distressingly large. While we were flying over it as we were coming in to land the night before, we were in awe at how largely sprawling the city is. From the air, you don’t really get a very good idea of the terrain (especially at night in darkness), but the area we’re staying in is built into hillsides and the streets are very steep and uneven. This makes for an adventure in itself when navigating the perilously narrow sidewalks teeming with pedestrians – and that’s just on the sidewalk outside of our apartment! We saw a man get side swiped by a car, and he just waved and walked it off...

We bought food in a nearby grocery store and beat a hasty retreat back to our comfortable and calming rooms. Rob did a great job finding accommodations! The place we’re in is very comfortable; it has a full kitchen (minus an oven, which would’ve been appreciated), laundry facilities (but no dryer, which forced us to problem solve a solution to air-drying clothes when we have nothing to hang clothes on…), a living room and dining room, a freshly renovated bathroom, and a large bedroom with French doors leading off into a beautiful backyard patio area. It’s a wonderful place for breakfast!

Most of our first day was spent nibbling food and hanging out on the couch watching movies. (Robin Hood was quite good, if a little lacking in major action scenes, but don’t waste your time on The Expendables… I will never get those 90-odd minutes of my life back. None of the dialogue made any sense whatsoever, and the gratuitous violence scenes weren’t even very well done… painful). We felt after a full day at the Schiphol Airport, we could use a little R&R…

So, today we ventured out further than the local grocery store. In fact, we found a much better grocery store in the opposite direction (which we will frequent from now on.) However, first things first.

We decided to follow a walking tour, which Rob found in an eGuide book that seemed promising. The tour was supposed to take us up to Taskim Square, and around through the main shopping and tourism boulevard. We found the square just fine, which has an old stone reservoir wall left over from the aqueduct systems that ran through the city, as well as a cool monument which I didn’t quite get the story on. However, we got a little turned around in the square (there’s so much action going on all around you that sometimes you feel like you just have to keep moving – in any direction – just to keep from getting washed into the sea of humanity) and long story short, ended up walking down the wrong street. It didn’t take us in completely the wrong direction, but it definitely wasn’t a touristy shopping street, that’s for sure! We did, however, stumble upon a great view overlooking the Bosphorus and the areas surrounding it, which was pretty breath-taking. It also allowed us a moment to realize we were on the wrong street, but thankfully it ran parallel to the street we thought we were on and in moments we were back on track.



We found the Pera Museum, which is a cool national gallery holding some wonderful works of art centered around Istanbul. There was an exhibit on 17-19th century paintings created mainly by European artists would traveled to Istanbul with European dignitaries and trade merchants in order to capture, through their eyes, what the essense of the mysterious East was all about. The most famous painting here is called “The Tortoise Trainer” by Osman Hamdi, a treasure in Eastern-inspired art. It broke a record in Turkey by being sold for the amount of 3.5 million dollars in December 2004. There was also an exhibit on Weights and Scales, which was a fabulous collection of the history and various methods of measurement for trade, pharmaceuticals, cooking, land survey, and architecture. It was absolutely fascinating to see the progress of this primitive technology from 800BC through to the 19th century. There was also an interesting exhibit on Turkish Ceramics, but we kind of sailed through it and headed back into the touristy street. Overall, a nice museum to visit!

We managed to find the Canadian Consulate, which we had researched before leaving the apartment. In was on the 3rd floor of a rather run-down, tower-like building. The views out the windows were pretty cool, but I got the creeping feeling that we weren’t invited. We found the unit that the Consulate was located and although it looked closed, we buzzed anyway. After a few moments, we figured they’d left work early (in was 4:45 and they closed at 5pm) and started back down the stairs when we heard the door open behind us. The man didn’t speak English (which seemed odd, since it was supposed to be the Canadian Consulate), but he let us inside. We were greeted by a very small, stuffy office which two woman inside, and although we were very enthusiastically welcomed, we were disappointed to discover that it was really the Canadian consulate, as an official consulate doesn’t exist in Turkey, and that the Canadian government has outsourced their consulate to a private company. However, the woman who worked there, Zeyda, assured us that come December 2010, there was to be opened a real Canadian Consulate and that she would most definitely be working. Good job, Zeyda, and thanks for reminding us not to loose our passports!


We left the ‘consulate’ feeling slightly disillusioned, but soon happened upon a huge, life-size, inflatable tank through a large window. We found out that it was part of an exhibit at the Arter Gallery (arter.org.tr). Intrigued, we stepped inside and looked through the impressively large collection of modern art. Now, I’m not a huge fan of modern art because I find that it’s not very accessible. Either it tries to say too much, or it doesn’t say enough, and it does it in a way that makes you feel stupid or non-receptive. Now, sometimes there are little nuggets of gold buried in modern art galleries, and I think that tank was one of them. It inflated and deflated on a timer that made it look like it was breathing or something… and there was a fun little exhibit on Mozart where the artist made CD’s playing various selections of Mozart’s music. There were five different CD players placed in different areas of the space and the idea was to turn them all on simultaneously to create a new Mozart music experience that no one has ever experienced before. It really was interesting and the music, when played together, actually made an interesting – if not harmonious – composition.

Heading back toward the apartment, we happened to find the Carrefour, which is a much superior grocery store compared to the small, crowded, ramshackle placed we’d been buying our groceries and bought some fixings for dinner.

Tomorrow, we’re planning to head across the Bosphorus to check out the Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque. This may require using the somewhat complicated Metro system. Wish us luck!