Top Five Istanbul Moments

And now, the eagerly awaited, final five of the Top Ten Istanbul Moments


Joel, Meredith, and Ari overlooking the Bospherous at Topkapi Palace

5) Getting accosted by the police (The Polis) in Kuzguncuk. Our second day – Saturday – we took the ferry to Üsküdar, on the Asian side, and walked around for a while, seeing the residential area and “how the other half lives.” In Meredith’s guidebook we noticed that there was an old synagogue in Kuzguncuk, so we walked a few km towards the hamlet. It was a very cold and windy day, and we were on the water, and there was wind, and we were much colder than we expected to be. Finally, after getting a little lost and miming for directions, we found the synagogue. We started to take pictures, but a pair of policemen stepped out from a booth and wouldn’t let us. There was a serious communication barrier; they didn’t speak more than 2-3 words of English, and we knew, as said, zero Turkish. We motioned to enter; they motioned, “No.” They mumbled something that I made out to be, “Muslim?” And then, “Christian?” Then one motioned to see Ari's passport and started thumbing through it. When he came across his Israeli student visa, the other policeman pointed at the visa, and then at Ari, and said, “Jew.” They’d figured us out. We were slightly nervous; we had no idea what they wanted. Were they protecting the synagogue? Protecting us? What was going on?

We’ll never know. They gave Ari back his passport and we hurried away, to have another adventure taking the bus back to Üsküdar so we could ferry back to the old city. But, when we went to Ortaköy (see #3 below), we did see another synagogue and got our pictures. We showed those Turkish police!



The new city


Me walking in the new city (photo courtesy of A. Lorge)

4) Dinner and “a show” on our first evening. After arriving at our janky hotel, Hotel Klas, we ventured into the heart of the old city (where the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, and Hagia Sofia are) for a late dinner and to see the old city at night. We were hustled into having a pretty good 3-course meal at Safran, a restaurant that had a Turkish band playing live music and a lady making the Turkish version of laffa in the front of the restaurant. The waiter was the spitting image, albeit a little taller and non-English speaking, of my stepbrother Adam. That was a little bizarre.

After dinner, on our walk through the old city, we turned a corner onto the main drag, and were overwhelmed with activity. About two storefronts ahead, a jumble of men started whizzing and yelling, and suddenly there was a man running right towards me, followed closely by two other men in white jackets. They almost ran into me, and the first man, the one being pursued, ran off. The men in white jackets turned their attention to another guy, in a long black trench coat, and started running after him with a white plastic chair. They threw it at him, and as he stumbled, they caught up with him and started punching him and beating him with the chair – in the middle of the street. The chair broke, and the guy getting beaten ran off, with shards of plastic chair thrown after him.

We’re not sure what the fight was about. Either the guys stole some baklava or hit on somebody’s sister (or mother?). Welcome to Turkey!


Me enjoying our meal at Safran (photo courtesy of A. Lorge)

3) Evening in Ortaköy. Both Ari’s sister’s friend and my friend Alea (who was in turkey for two months last summer) highly recommended we spend an evening in Ortaköy, a section of Istanbul in the new city, on the edge of the Bospherous, off the tourist path, and filled with a pulsating nightlife of restaurants, cafes, bars, stores, art gallerys, street vendors, a gorgeous view of Asian Istanbul and the Bospherous Bridge, and Turks doing Turkish stuff.

We had a dizzying, traffic filled taxi ride over there, and stumbled out of the taxi in a motion sickness induced haze, but alive and eager to see this area. It turned out to be a fantastic evening. We walked around a bit, and ran into a synagogue (see # 5), which made us feel vindicated after our adventure that morning. Then we found a delicious waterfront restaurant (the quality of the food was a pleasant surprise) with an incredible view of the water and a nearby mosque. Then we strolled and found a quaint café to sit at, drink tea, smoke melon hookah, and play cards for a few hours. The weather was cool but not cold. The staff was friendly. The tea and cake was delicious. The hookah was smooth and flavorful. The company was wonderful. The evening was relaxing, authentically Turkish, and really, really a lot of fun.





Shots of Ortaköy (the street and the Bospherous bridge, the synagogue, the mosque)

2) Walking into Hagia Sophia. I’m really not sure how to write about this moment, because it’s pretty indescribable. The exterior of Hagia Sophia was beautiful at night, and stirring during the day, but nothing could have prepared me for the interior. I’ve read about the church/mosque have wanted to see for years, and Ari had taken a class on Byzantine art and was really excited about the mosaics, but I was still totally swept away by the beauty. We were very lucky with our timing – we hit it right in the late morning, and the location of the sun hit the back windows and created this intense glow of light which accented the immense ceilings and coloring. The scaffolding – apparently it’s been in a restoration process for decades – oddly enhanced the experience. My guidebook said that Hagia Sofia was designed to mirror heaven in an earthly fashion. I think it comes pretty close.






Interior shots of Hagia Sofia

1) Getting stuck in an elevator. On Saturday, our second full day, we had our Asian Istanbul and Grand Bazaar adventures (see #5 and #9), and returned back to Hotel Klas around 5PM really cold, tired, needing showers and having to use the bathroom. We walked into the elevator, pressed our floor (which was two flights of stairs from the lobby), and went up. But not all the way up.

The elvator doors opened suddenly, and then quickly closed. We could see a quick glimpse of wall and sheet rock and metal. Meredith gasped. The elevator was between floors, and the doors opened and closed on their own, leading to nowhere. We stopped, and the moved up a bit, and the doors did the same thing. We looked at each other, silent, and I think our hearts imploded a bit. Then the elvator moved again, and did the same quick, partial open-close between floors. We all took a deep breath – it was a very small elevator, and I could feel my already small bladder getting tighter and tighter – and I hit the alaram button.

Nothing. No sound, no noise, no alarm. It didn’t work. We had no phones. We didn’t speak Turkish. Nobody knew we were in here. The hotel looked empty. People wouldn’t be returning from their day’s adventures for a while. No one was coming to rescue us. Time to panic.

We take off sweaters, unload backpacks, pull out snacks and take a seat. We might be here for a while.

We hit “Lobby,” and the elevator descended, and did the same thing. Then we hit “5,” thinking this elevator, the rear elevator, opens onto the restaurant and perhaps there will be someone there getting ready for the dinner hour and notice something it wrong. Well, we were right – sort of. As we stop halfway between floors “4” and “5,” we hear voices. They’re talking in Turkish, saying things we don’t understand, but we realize that they know we’re there! The elevator door opens again, this time it stays open, and Ari jumps up, and grabs the outside door – the bottom of the door on the fifth floor. He pushes and pushes and pushes, and sort of breaks the door, but we see faces peering out at us, talking loudly in Turkish. We respond, “We’re stuck, we’re stuck, we don’t understand you.” Finally, we get that they want us to step back. We do, the elevator rises to the fifth floor, and we stumble out, breathing in the stale Turkish air of freedom.

All in all, we were only in there about 10 minutes, but it felt like 10 hours. It really capped off an awful hotel experience, and summed up a lot of our feelings on Istanbul. We struggled back to our room, collapsed in hilarity, and played a really intense game of Oh Hell.


The three of us in front of the "Elevator of death"