Day 207, Istanbul, Turkey
We said bye to our Paris apartment, a great three months. Years ago Paul had wanted to stay in Paris for a year, but we both agreed three months is ample time to get the broad strokes of a city, with more detail of a few favorite neighborhoods. It was a perfect amount of time. But same as Costa Rica, a place quickly starts feeling like home. Traveling on New Year’s morning is ideal. The metro is nearly deserted except for a few stumblers finding their way home.
Our plane to Istanbul was delayed two hours because of the snowfall they were having. But the gate was needed, so we had to board the plane and sat grounded for the next two hours. But they warned us we had wifi on the tarmac, and for the girls, where there is wifi there is happiness. Air France treated us well, the meal was tasty. When we were booking, we always have to order a vegetarian meal for Cali. In this part of the world there are many other designations to the simple vegetarian choice, mostly due to religious restrictions. We found those interesting and had to look up a few terms.
Turkish immigration was a breeze, because we’d bought our Visas online. The American ones were one third the price of the Canadian, so we went with those passports. Took us quite sometime to find our luggage since we flew Air France and not a Turkish Airline. That’ll teach us. Eventually we found our lonely bags on a merry-go-round at the end of the terminal. Happy us.
We took a taxi through the city. I was here 15 years ago with my sister and niece, but it was a first for Paul and the girls. Paul chatted with the driver. He never lets a lack of language hinder his ability to chat up a stranger. With a few
common words, they talked the economy of the city, and soccer. We were dropped off at a coffee shop to wait for our Airbnb person to show us to our apartment. Meanwhile we sampled some Turkish hot chocolate and cheesecake. The hot chocolate is like melted liquid chocolate with a dark brown chocolate froth. Heavenly after a day of travel. The Raspberry cheesecake was also delish.
(All of these night pictures are taken from the roof terrace of our apartment.)
Watching the people trying to walk in the snow, it was clear this doesn’t happen often. They were slip-sliding all over the square, which was somewhat amusing watching this from our cozy cafe with hot chocolate. Until we tried it ourselves. Our guy came, and we set off for the apartment. Let me mention that we’ve spent decades in Canada, we know how to drive, walk, generally live in snow and ice. We are not rookies. But in Canada we have snow shovels, salt. The streets were sheets of ice with slush on them. No one, I repeat, no one could maneuver, I was grabbing onto strange men without hesitation, whoever was close. We came to a sloped street of ice, and that’s where it started getting fun. We had suitcases, and there was a railing we held onto on the left. Strangers were so helpful, everyone was so helpful. Paul and the guy had already skated down the hill with two bags and couldn’t get back up to help us, so the girls and I were trying to get down without killing ourselves. This older man was helping the girls but then left his wife and grand-daughter stranded so I was trying to grab onto them one by one to help them up. We were all laughing together. Then after the ice hill, we were at the bottom of three icy flights of stairs to climb. We all burst out laughing, may as well have been
Everest. Some how we made it up with our stuff and back down another steep hill and made it into the apartment. We just laughed, it was such an unusual experience. Welcome to Turkey, I like this place already.
Originally we planned to go out to eat after we got settled in, but the girls and I decided we were never leaving again, once we confirmed there was decent wifi, of course. That’s what we check first, before anything else. We’d had hot
chocolate and cheesecake before our adventures in ice-hell, and that would have to last us until the thaw. Paul, being the born and bred Canadian boy that he is, thought that was a bit defeatist. He layered up and left to forage for food in the icy tundra. We bade him a fond and perhaps final good-bye and away he went.
Meanwhile we checked out the apartment. Let me preface by saying our experiences thus far with Airbnb have not only been good, they’ve been great. You get what the pictures show, and the reviews help fill in the missing pieces. This was our first mis-step. Not that is was a disaster, but we learned that if they don’t show a picture of the bathroom, you should ask yourself why, and then move on to a posting that does. The bathroom was a tiny room that had the toilet and room to stand. Above you was the shower head. The girls asked, where’s the shower, and I told them to look up. Ship bathrooms are bigger. I don’t mind a bit when surprises like this happen. Let’s face it, we’re all pretty pampered. A little bathroom challenge can be good perspective. I believed that right up to the moment one of the girls forgot to take the toilet paper out of the toilet/shower room and it was a wet smushy glob. Perspective over.
We can adjust easily to various levels of comfort, we’re generally a pretty flexible bunch, but not so much to temperatures, cold ones that is. And the apartment was cold, like so cold the shampoo was frozen. There was one thin
blanket on each of the beds, and I was starting to wonder if we all had enough layers with us to get through the night. When Paul walked in the door with the most delicious falafels and hummus–so that’s how those are supposed to taste. Hope restored.
Then he figured how to raise the heat to a temp that didn’t require coats and gloves, and we found extra blankets for the bed. Wifi, warm, and fed. That’s doable. He then figured out why the toilet wasn’t flushing, but not before getting unexpectedly soaked by the toilet-bidet. That’s got to be filed in the top five things that have impressed him the least. By bedtime, everyone was in good spirits, and ready to sleep in.
What we’ve surmised so far, Turkish signs regarding where your luggage is – unreliable, Turkish wine – good (the kind we bought), Turkish people during ice storm – extremely helpful, Turkish hot chocolate – unrivaled, Turkish food – more, please.