Dan Brown Made Us Do It
Turkey • Istanbul • October 2015
We owe this entire trip to Dan Brown. Specifically to his book Inferno, which is set largely in Istanbul and which when we read, we immediately said: we have to go. Istanbul is the only city in the world that physically spans two continents, Europe and Asia, and it carries the layered history of the Byzantine, Ottoman, and Roman empires, all still visible today. It's home to more than 20 million people. I
Getting there, however, was its own adventure. We had a stressful rainy drive to JFK, found our 12:30am flight delayed, and then spent the better part of an overnight on Ukrainian Air, which I have since renamed the International Spirit Airlines. We got an incredible deal on these tickets… $500 round trip, and I will say: you get exactly what you pay for. The seats were the tightest I have ever experienced in my life. We were in the middle of a four-seat row, fully shoulder-to-shoulder and leg-to-leg with the strangers on either side of us. You could not cross your legs. You could not change positions in any meaningful way. The sleep was terrible. We survived. We landed in Kiev for a two-hour layover and then continued on to Istanbul.
Arrival in Istanbul was a breeze, which helped considerably after the Ukrainian Air situation. I'd done my research and found a company called All Day Wifi that rents hotspot devices with unlimited data. After our Sim card adventures in Thailand this felt like a revelation: pick up your device at the airport, stay connected the entire trip, done. Highly recommend. We also arranged airport transport through them, so we were whisked to our hotel in a spacious van feeling significantly more human than we had about an hour earlier.
Our hotel was in the Beyoglu neighborhood, in an old renovated French apartment building that was spacious, posh, and just generally delightful. Beyoglu is trendy and directly adjacent to Istiklal Caddesi Street, which is essentially Times Square, alive around the clock, buzzing with people and music and food. This turned out to be perfect timing because we arrived close to midnight, hadn't really eaten, and were completely confused about what time our bodies thought it was. We started wandering toward Istiklal and found a restaurant called Ficcan that had outdoor seating. Our waiter turned out to be from Paris, only 24 days into a stint in Istanbul, and about to go back home because he missed it too much. The moment Matt and I told him Paris was our favorite city, he became what I can only describe as a French chipmunk: speaking entirely too fast for us to follow, eyes lit up, arms moving. We caught about 40% of it but the joy was completely contagious. We ate Turkish ravioli made with meat and topped with yogurt sauce (I could eat this every single day), stuffed grape leaves, and a puff pastry filled with mushrooms and cheese. All wonderful. Great start.
We woke up the next morning to the city and our hotel's breakfast area on the top floor, which gave us our first real aerial view of Istanbul. Then we started our 2.5-mile walk to the old city, stopping at the Bosphorus to watch the fishermen before crossing the bridge, which is its own little world of restaurants and bars serving fresh fish right there on the water.
First stop was Hagia Sofia, and it's remarkable. Built in 537 AD, it has served as a place of worship for three different religions: Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Muslim, before becoming a museum. It looks predominantly Muslim now, with only two small sections of Christian iconography still visible. Everything else was covered or removed when it became a mosque, because Muslim belief holds that only God can create life, meaning painting a person or animal is considered an act of "creating life." This is why all mosques contain only calligraphy, never figurative art. The minarets were added during the Muslim period. For more than 1,000 years it was the largest cathedral in the world, until the cathedral in Seville was completed in 1520. It is genuinely the kind of place you wish you could come back to multiple times on a single trip, because one visit doesn't feel like enough. You want to just sit there and absorb it.
After Hagia Sofia we were hungry and Yelped the nearest highly-rated lunch spot. We found it, sat down, looked at the menu…six items, none of them interesting so we decided we'd rather keep walking. Which led us to a guy on a busy street who pointed us toward his restaurant's terrace. Sold immediately. The view was the entire Blue Mosque. We sat there through an afternoon call to prayer, which in Istanbul is something close to transcendent. The sound floats across the city in layers, each minaret slightly offset from the others, and you just close your eyes. We've heard it in Egypt too but something about hearing it with the Blue Mosque right in front of you makes it land differently.
The Blue Mosque itself was next. It's a fully functioning mosque, which means it's closed to visitors during all five daily prayer times, so you need to plan your visit around that. I was very proud of myself for dressing appropriately and remembering to bring a scarf to cover my head. Then the attendant informed me I was too shapely for the mosque as-is and handed me a skirt to wear over my tights. Well. I tried. I put on the skirt, went in, and it is beautiful.
The Basilica Cistern was the moment the Dan Brown fan in me absolutely lost it. This is a sixth-century underground water supply for the city, essentially a massive subterranean cathedral with hundreds of marble columns rising out of still water, lit by warm light. In Inferno it's where the plot reaches its climax. Descending down into it felt exactly like stepping into the book. We couldn't get enough and ended up sitting down there for a while with fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice, just not wanting to leave.
We ended the day at the Galata Bridge for sunset drinks looking out over the Golden Horn. Beautiful. Then came the hike back up to our neighborhood, which I should mention is on what feels like a vertical cliff. My shoes, which I had irrationally believed would be fine, had given me blisters in three places by this point. We stopped for a bandaid on the way up and a German woman appeared and held out her own blistered foot asking if she could have one too. Universal language of bad shoe decisions. I bought new shoes on Istiklal Caddesi. No regrets.
We grabbed a Doner sandwich and then had dinner outside under trees at a restaurant near our hotel: fried cheese with hot pepper jelly, scorpion fish done ceviche-style with bright lemon, and lamb chops. The evening ended on the rooftop looking at photos, windows open to the night sounds of the city below.
A few things I noticed right away about Istanbul: corn on the cob carts everywhere (not hot dogs), approximately 75 cents each; roasted chestnuts on every corner; the city is remarkably clean for 20 million people; and selfie sticks are sold absolutely everywhere for about $1.50. I almost lost an eye several times. I refuse to say more about the selfie sticks.