I apologize for the lateness of this post...I came back and then 3 days later left to drive halfway across the country for my brother's wedding. We got them married yesterday and so I now have a second to breathe (and post!).
Istanbul was...amazing. I was a little worried about security, especially after Paris, but I never felt unsafe at all while I was there. There was a day that there was a threat against the American consulate, but it didn't impact us at all (the consulate is pretty far out of town and you really only go there if you need something). Security in the airports was a little higher than normal (especially when I flew back to the States), but I expected that.
BF planned almost the entire trip and did the most amazing job. It was an amazing gift of time and travel. It was also the first time we've spent any significant time together since he deployed in April, and the first vacation we've been on together as a couple. Istanbul is a special place for us--we went with a group of 12 other people nearly 5 years ago, when we were still barely even friends. It was while we were on that trip that we really started to get to know each other.
So, without further adieu, the recap (with pictures, because...Istanbul):
Day 1: I landed about 2:30. My flight out of Savannah had been delayed, but I managed to make my connections in NYC and Paris without incident, so I landed on time. BF was waiting for me at the airport, and then he hired a car to take us to our hotel. We stayed at
this hotel, and it was lovely. Our room had a little sitting area with a couch and coffee table, and looked out over the Sea of Marmara. It also had these amazingly sexist "do-not-disturb" signs:
BF had wine and chocolate waiting for me in the room, as well as a few other gifts he'd bought me: a saint's medal and rosary ring, plus some really lovely perfume he bought in Dubai. We relaxed in the room for a while and then went out to smoke hookah ("shisha" in Arabic; "nargile" in Turkish) and have dinner. We went to a great shisha place about a 5 minute walk from our hotel. I loved it especially because they had live music and a WHIRLING DERVISH:
Day 2: I established our travel pattern this day by sleeping until 11:30. This sort of became our habit...I think we only got out of bed before 11:00 maybe 2 days out of the entire time we were there. We didn't go crazy trying to see everything, which I actually really enjoyed. We were there to spend time together, and we realized early on we have the same rhythm/routine when we travel: sleep late, see some cool stuff, eat some delicious food, smoke some hookah and/or drink some drinks, go to bed. So that was basically our routine every day. On this day, we went to the Basilica Cisterns, which are these huge Byzantine-era water containers underneath the city. They're so peaceful:
We also stopped that day for lunch at a restaurant just beside the Hagia Sophia; they directed us up 6 flights of stairs to their terrace (which the guy who convinced us to come into the restaurant said was "Amazing!!"). The views definitely were:
This is a panorama shot I took from the terrace of that restaurant. The Hagia Sophia is on the left; the Blue Mosque is on the right.
That night we went to an amazing seafood restaurant that we had visited the last time we were there. It was awesome...they bring the fresh fish straight to your table, and you pick out which one you want and they cook it for you. SO COOL.
Day 3: I really wanted to go back to Dolmabahce Palace...that was one of the only things I really wanted to do again that we had done before. The reason for this was because I had not enjoyed our first visit at all. My bipolar disorder had swung me towards a pretty deep depression on that trip, and the day we went to Dolmabahce was one of the worst. On that first trip, BF, wanting to help and not having any idea what was wrong, bought me a cookie from the little cafe next to the palace and gave it to me, thinking I was hungry and needed a snack (I felt better just because of the gesture!). So of course we went back to the cafe and he bought me the same cookie!
Dolmabahce is amazing...it's a nineteenth-century Ottoman palace, but it's built in the European style (because by that point the Ottomans were trying REALLY hard to be European), so the architecture is very baroque and ornate. You can't actually take pictures inside the palace, so I took one of the outside and then of the view of the city from the grounds:
Days 5-6: Basically the same pattern. We went to the New Mosque and the Spice Bazaar on Day 5, and went to Mass and did some shopping on Day 6. I don't have a ton of pictures from those days, for some reason.
Day 7: This was our photographer day! I was so excited that BF agreed to do this, because he HATES having his picture taken. We used Flytographer. We had bought the package that gave us a 90-minute shoot at 2 locations with 45 digital images to do with as we choose. We ended up going a bit over that, and the whole "2 locations" thing was sort of a general guideline. It was so much fun. I love basically all the pictures but here are a few favorites:
(The three photos above are credited to Ufuk, with Flytographer in Istanbul.)
Day 8: On this day, we went to The Museum of Innocence. It's the companion art piece to Orhan Pamuk's book of the same name, which I've read 3 times and is one of my favorite books ever, so I was super excited to see this. The premise of the book/museum is that Kemal falls in love with a young woman named Füsun, who is far removed from his own social class. They begin an illicit affair in which they have sex without being married (still enough to make a woman damaged goods in 1970s Turkey). Kemal is engaged to someone else, and Füsun leaves him after about 6 weeks of an intense love affair. But he's desperately in love with her. He falls into a deep depression and ends his engagement. He comes out of despair only when he begins to have dinner with Füsun, her husband (whom she had married to save her reputation), and her parents several times a week...which he does for 8 years, until Füsun and her husband divorce and she plans to marry Kemal. The story ultimately has a tragic end, but Kemal collects things that Füsun touches or things that remind him of her. After she dies, he creates a museum with all of those collectibles.
It's one of the best museums I've ever been to. Just collections of ordinary things that really blur the line between fiction and reality. For example, the display of cigarette butts. According to the book, Kemal spirits away nearly every cigarette butt that Füsun snubs out for nearly 8 years. All of them are on display in the museum. Some of them are stained with lipstick, some of them have obviously been stamped out in a huff, some of them are half-smoked...it's amazing:
Day 9: This was our last full day, so we tried to cram in all the things we hadn't seen while we were sleeping/eating/smoking hookah. We went to the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, and Topkapi Palace, all of which we'd seen the last time we were there but thought deserved a second look. The Hagia Sophia was by far my favorite. It was a Byzantine Church built by the Emperor Justinian, which became the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church after the Great Schism in 1054, which split the Eastern and Western Churches. When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul in 1453, they converted it into a mosque, but instead of destroying all of the Christian artwork, they simply left it intact and covered it up (Islam forbids images of God or of individuals in places of worship). So when it was converted into a museum after Turkey became a republic in 1923, they restored a lot of the Christian artwork, and today it's this incredible blend of both. For example, the picture below shows Arabic calligraphy describing the characteristics of God next to an uncovered mosaic of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Christ Child:
Day 10: I flew home. I left for the airport at 2:30 in the morning, so I ended up being awake for something like 48 hours. I cried when I left BF at the hotel, and ended up crying most of the way home (luckily I was reading a book so I could pretend it was a sad book). I always cry when we separate, because I never know when I'll see him again. But it was an amazing trip and I really feel it helped bring us closer together. We had a lot of conversations about the future...marriage, family, jobs, moving, and all that stuff. We're definitely on the same page about all of it.
