We made it to Istanbul and so far it seems great. We’ve only explored our immediate neighborhood so haven’t seen any of the iconic sights but what we’ve seen is charming. As you all know Istanbul is the only city in the world to sit on two continents, Europe and Asia. The two parts are separated by the Bosporus Strait so the city is surrounded by water. It’s very hilly with whitewashed houses with red roofs perched on cliffs. Think San Francisco with a Mediterranean flair. Our neighborhood is on the European side and is called Taksim Square. It’s a trendy area filled with young people and lots of cafes, restaurants, patisseries, diners and other ways to eat. Hard to go hungry here.
We lucked out on our accommodations. We’re renting a one bedroom apartment from a young Turkish couple and it’s adorable. It’s about two blocks off the main drag, down a winding cobblestone lane. The apartment building is small, four stories with two apartments per floor and very quiet.
The flight from Mumbai is long (seven hours) and the plane, which was scheduled to leave at 5:30 am was delayed an hour. We had to leave for the airport at 2 am to get through immigration, security and customs so we were pretty spacey when we arrived in Istanbul. Jim did get to have something he’s always wanted on a flight, a seat that turned into a flat bed, so we slept quite a bit. I recommend Turkish Air. They were excellent.
We took a bus in from the airport, which arrives right near our apartment and our host met us to it was really easy. Aside from leaving my computer in his car and having some panicky moments when I thought I had lost it, everything went well.
When we run out of steam we can watch TV. We have a choice of channels in Turkish, Azerbaijan, Afghan and Arabic. The Azerbaijan channel has good circuses. Also, as near as I can understand no mentions of Israel, good or bad, but they really, really hate the Iranians.
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