Snapshot: Istanbul

Ann and I are privileged to be spending three weeks traveling from Istanbul to Athens by boat. We'll post some impressions of our ports of call, and add some photos later. (This is a Blogger Mobile posting using Blackberry, so let's hope for the best.)

This evening, we're sitting on the terrace of our hotel on the European side of the Bosphorus, gazing at the Asian side. It's a rather narrow (maybe the width of the Charles in Boston?) and incredibly busy (an estimated 50,000 commercial craft a year) waterway, hugged by buildings on both sides.

Istanbul is immense - over 15 million people - and densely populated. Traffic is as thick and scary as Rome. There is advertising everywhere - not traditional billboards, but big murals, building hangings, and some creative 3-D (for Knorr soup bases, of all things) and electronic displays. Minarets and domes of 3,000 mosques pierce the sky all across the landscape.

Ramadan is just ending. Many shops are closed. The bridges over the Golden Horn (the natural harbor that separates the Old City on the European side from the financial district) are lined check-to-jowl by men (almost exclusively) with fishing poles enjoying their holiday.

We are in a Muslim land - sung prayers ring out from loudspeakers on the minarets of the mosques several times a day - but there is a strong Western sensibility. From our visits to key tourist sites, we learned about this city's gradual orientation toward the West, beginning with some of the sultans of the 18th century who abandoned caftans for jackets, and completing its arc to secularism under Ataturk's bold leadership after World War I.

Having only one full day in the city, we hired a guide and toured Topkapi palace, Hagia Sofia (the Byzantine church turned mosque), and the Blue Mosque. We skipped the Grand Bazaar (which sounds like one immense hustle) in favor of the Spice Market, which features curries, saffron, teas, honeycombs, dried peppers, figs and fig concoctions, and every imaginable spice, but also loofahs, pastirma (Turkish pastrami, which our guide called "spicy and smelly"), 18k gold bangles, and the ubiquitous hookahs and Turkish delight sweets. The most interesting come-on: a big yellow sign reading "Turkish Viagra 6 times in night" - "garanti," said the news article below.

I always keep an eye out for street food. Here, popular items include kastane (roasted chestnuts, like "castagne" in Italian), roasted corn on the cob, freshly squeezed orange and pomegranate juices, and doner kebabs (like gyros, but on Italian-style bread rather than pita).

Odd moment of the day: a small Japanese gentleman approached our guide at the palace kitchens in Topkapi and asked our guide to take his picture. I began to step aside, but it then became apparent that he wanted to be photographed with me - not because of my celebrity, but because I stand 6'6" tall and he came up to just below my sternum. This reminded me why I've not rushed off to visit Japan - I'm afraid I'd be regarded like Godzilla.