Turkish delight

Finally, I found myself sitting at the gate waiting to board ‘Turkish Delight’. 😉As I was looking around I found no person who spoke English. None. And then, as I was minding my own business, the whole crew came and sat around me speaking Turkish to each other. It was a bit of weird realisation that I am on my way to a country where I cannot understand a single word, and by the sounds around me, they would not understand me.

Then I found myself on the plane, waiting for things to happen. Engines to start and emergency videos to play, when I to my astonishment I heard Afrikaans in the seat in front of me! If you know me, you know that I am not good with strangers. But there I found myself so relieved to hear people that I can understand that I leaned over and spoke to them like the extrovert that I am not.

And now, after a long-winded intro, I can get to actual Istanbul story that I wanted to tell….

Atatürk Airport

(Since writing this the Airport has moved and been renamed)

I did some googling and reading but still thought that Istanbul was mostly an ‘undiscovered’ tourist destination, hence the free tours in order to promote the country. Boy was I wrong! I discovered that almost immediately as we entered the airport from the plane. There was a river of people coming from the left sweeping me into the stream going to the right. There was a never-ending stream of people from all over the world dragging me with. I had no choice but to go with the flow.

So much for ‘undiscovered’ tourist destination. What other surprises were waiting for me?
The stream pulled and pushed until I finally got to the front of passport control where I got my passport stamped and my visa checked. Hereafter I made my way to the arrivals lounge at a more leisurely pace.

There is almost nothing in the so-called ‘lounge’ other than taxi and hotel services and a coffee place or two. I made my way to the one furthest to my right, the Starbucks, as that is where the tour meeting point is.

And then you wait for adventure to start

They take your boarding pass to check if your layover is long enough and tell you to be back at 9 am. Then there is nothing left to do other than wait. (I landed at 5 am so the day was still young).
Just before 9, I found my fellow South Africans also waiting for the tour. At least I don’t have to take flipping ‘alonies’ if I tag along with them.

Turns out we were a huge group of tourists on the 9 am tour. I think we were 3 busloads full. Touristanbul hands out light blue buffs so that we can recognise people of the group before heading out.

Istanbul

As we left the airport I was immediately struck by how neat everything is. Landscaped gardens. No litter. Neat rows of trees and houses. After just 5 minutes on the road, I could already see that the country had another surprise in store for me. I had anticipated third world county surroundings but found neatness that was better than any first-world city that I had been to.

Sea of Marmara & Sultanahmet

We drove a scenic drive next to the ocean (Sea of Marmara) and before long we took the turn that indicated ‘Sultanahmet’. The buses stopped, and I saw people and their bags disappearing into a building. It was at the tour company’s office and the guide told us to leave our backpacks there. I was freaked out by this and could not stop thinking that my bag was at a place that I was not. It took half the tour before I starting to relax.

Anyway, from here we walked up a picture pretty road to a restaurant for breakfast. What is a Turkish breakfast? This Turkish breakfast was a hardboiled egg with fresh bread, cheese and a dried fig I would guess. I just needed a coffee to add to that and set off on a search for Joe. I stormed to the nearest people with cups of jo, asked them where they got the coffee and discovered to my delight (I did it again 😉) that they knew where the coffee was and as a super bonus, they were South Africans! Not only that, but they were also going on the same half-day tour as me which meant that I had to get back to the airport same time as them. I had partners in travel and my day was made.

Hippodrome

After breakfast, the very big group was split into a half-day group and a full day group who had to follow a Smurf. Our group got a very enthusiastic guide, but oh the understanding part. I just looked to where he pointed because his strong accent made him difficult to understand.

The Hippodrome was where the horse races took place way back when. Here are the famous Obelisks, serpentine column and German fountain. Some of the detail literally got lost in translation, but it was fun watching this very animated guy snapping his fingers as if to pull a coin from your ear. That was his thing. Snapping fingers when listing things. He would make an excellent magician.

Then he got to the ‘bul-jo’ mosque. I did read up on some of the main attractions, but I could not recall this bul-jo mosque. When I turned around to face old bul-jo, I saw the sign. Blue Mosque. This light bulb moment lets me realise 2 things: bul-jo is actually blue and of that mosque I knew (I brought a headscarf so that I could go in) and second, I found it very interesting how his language influences how he speaks another. If I could only get the crib notes on the other words that I did not understand…

Anyway, we went towards the Blue Mosque, which is only the tourist name by the way. The size of this building dwarfs us and it is pretty impressive. Unfortunately, the mosque was closed for renovations, so we could only visit the outside.

Turkey’s tulips & Tokapi

Hereafter we went out into a garden square of some sort. There is this pretty garden area between the mosque and Hagia Sophia. Nice and neat cut grass, trees, plants and tulips. Apparently, they are well known for their tulips. Who knew? And here we are thinking that the Netherlands has that claim to fame.

The garden area has nice benches from where you can see both the famous landmarks and take the ‘I was there’ pictures with the thousand other tourists (again, not so undiscovered as I thought). We walked past Sophia (which was not named after lady) to the entrance of the Tokapi Palace. Here are guards. Still, like broccoli. Unmoved subjects of many selfies. I would hate standing there doing my duty and have all these giggling girls posing for selfies and not being able to shoo them away (I thought only the queen’s guards had to stand passively by)(the UK and Netherlands seem to have pulled the wool over our eyes).

We had about 30 minutes to walk around, but it is not enough to be able to value what you see. We had a quick walk through the armoury and the huge kitchen and then on to the restaurant for lunch.
Lunch came with an amazing view of the ocean and consisted of 3 courses. A warm vegetable soup, a main meal with meat such as those that you find on a dönner kebab (this is my frame of reference for Turkish food) and a custard dessert.

Delightful discovery

Super full (this was my third full meal of the day and it was only 14:00) we walked back to the tour office to get our stuff. We then piled into the busses to head back to the airport where we had to get scanned to get enter. I got some WIFI at Starbucks to let the people back home know that I survived the day and got in line to get my passport stamped again.

Real Turkish delight

It was still a long time before my flight would leave so I did some window-shopping at duty-free. I was browsing at a snail’s pace. Absentmindedly I picked up a Turkish delight sample not expecting much. But!! If I were a cartoon character, my eyes would have popped out of my head. That was how unexpectedly awesome the Turkish delight was. I think my eyes might have popped a little anyway. It tastes nothing like what passes as delights back home. So, I did a sweep of all the samples and by far the best one was the pomegranate and some or other nut combination. Made a big mental note to stock up on my way back. (Yes, I had another tour of Istanbul to look forward to).

Caught up with my new favourite South Africans and hung out until our flights finally got on the departure board and we could leave for our gates. I really hope we get to meet again on home soil next time.

And then it was just me and myself. But by then I was so tired that the 2 off us did not really speak. Could hardly wait for my bed in Venice.

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