Istanbul with Erin

 We had not seen our daughter, Erin, since last August when she left for her yearlong State Department assignment in Pakistan.  It has been a long, grueling and difficult stint for her, and we had missed seeing her, so we were very happy to meet up again in Istanbul, Turkey.

We were last in Turkey in 2000, and many things have changed.  Turkey has grown and prospered economically. Istanbul seems a first world city to us, and certainly is a lot more expensive than we remembered. Many more women seem to be covered and dressed quite conservatively, yet many Turks seem to be quite casual about their religion as well. And like so many places we have visited recently, it seems to be overrun with tourists.

The difference in the tourists is quite marked however; there are far more people from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa than you might see in a piazza in Rome or the Prado in Madrid. It was quite interesting also to see the number of Muslim women and their varied costumes, veils, and scarves. We often tried to pick out where they might be from, based on their clothing.

We arrived just as Ramadan began; this annual Muslim celebration involves fasting from dawn to dusk for thirty days. Although some Turks seem to fast and pray, many go about their business as well. Tourists as well are not expected to observe Ramadan fortunately.

One of the most interesting things that we did during our stay in Istanbul was to attend a performance of the "Whirling Dervishes." The Dervishes are members of the Sufi Muslim sect and part of their worship consists of whirling or turning in circles many times a minute to the accompaniment of musicians and singers chanting from the Koran.

It is hard to explain, but mesmerizing to watch.  Since it is part of a religious performance, no photographs are permitted and you are asked not to clap after the performance. We left the performance very calm and serene.

 Delighting in being with Erin, we seldom managed to visit more than one tourist sight a day. Our second day, though, we took a really great, two and one half hour boat ride along the Bosphorus.

Istanbul is home to perhaps 20 million. It straddles Europe and Asia, stretching 150 kilometers East to West and half that north to south. Many beautiful homes line the Bosphorus, so many that you wonder to yourself, "where do the poor live?"

Our one stop on the cruise was to visit the 600 year old Rumeli Fortress, built by the Sultan
Mehmet in 1452 to aid in the capture of Constantinople for the Ottoman Empire, something he accomplished in a few short months in 1454.

We stayed in the Old City, in the Esans Hotel, just a short walking distance from the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia. The Esans is new and quite small with just eight rooms, but we were treated liked honored guests by all of the staff.  Every where we went in Istanbul, people were so nice and welcoming.

With so few foreign tourists being able to speak Turkish, many, many of the Turks speak and understand some English.  Again and again, we asked how to say hello and thank you, but never seemed to master even those rudimentary phrases.  Waiters, tour guides, and shop keepers, on the other hand, always seemed eager to practice their English, and often wanted to know where we were from. Many have friends and family members in the States.


The Blue Mosque, which is nearly 500 years old, is huge; its interior is covered in blue tiles and suffused with blue light streaming through Venetian glass window. Other than that, it is quite austere, but revered by many Muslims.

It is closed to tourists five times each day as it continues to be used for prayer and services. We all had to take off our shoes, and Sue and Erin had to cover their heads with a scarf--provided by the Mosque to all women who show up without them.

The Hagia Sophia dates from the 6th Century and served as a  Greek Orthodox cathedral for nearly a thousand years before being converted to a mosque in the 15th century.  Today it is a museum.

Like the Blue Mosque, which it faces across the Sultan Ahmed Square, it is huge, but it was much more elaborately decorated and, for us, more interesting.  Many of its icons and paintings were plastered over in times past, but some have been uncovered and are now being restored.  The ones we were able to see, although not fully restored, are hauntingly beautiful.

There is so much to see and do in Istanbul, and, in truth, we did very little.  Mostly we just wanted to relax and enjoy being with Erin, which we did.

Long lunches and dinners in small cafes and roof top restaurants were the norm.  We liked especially the mixed hors d'oeuvres plates (always asking for extra stuffed grape leaves) and the lamb and seafood.

Catching up on all that has happened this past year always gave us something to talk about.  It has been a difficult year for Erin in Pakistan; the security situation is often difficult and much of the time she can only go between work and home.

 Fortunately, we were never hurried and had plenty of time to talk and relax.  We especially enjoyed sitting on rooftop terraces, many of them with nice views of the Bosphorus and harbor.


The Turkish people love cats apparently, and everywhere we walked in the old city we seemed to encounter them, which Erin, our cat lover, really liked.

She often took time to pet and visit, while pining away for her own cat, Diego, whom she adopted while she was in Mexico City but had to leave behind in Washington, DC with a friend. Even though the cats seem to roam the city streets at will, most are very tame and well fed and often quite oblivious to us humans.

It was fun walking in the streets and alleys, looking into the shops and even venturing into some.  We would probably have gone into more, especially the carpet shops. The carpets are wonderfully beautiful works of art and craftsmanship, and just invite to be touched and admired, but once you entered a shop, you were all too often hounded and pressured, so it was not easy or pleasant to browse as much as we wanted.

But even while the Turkish merchant is trying to make the hard sell, he is always smiling and pleasant and inviting you to come back as you leave.

And go back we may someday: Turkey is a delightful mixture of exotic and familiar, and Istanbul is a cosmopolitan European city, still with a touch of the mysterious Orient.