Istanbul is one of 2010’s European Capitals of Culture. When travelling with her grandparents and brother on a recent holiday to Istanbul, Isabelle Tabb took a notebook with her; the following is an extract from her travel diary.


Istanbul

26/10/09
We arrived in Istanbul and took the most terrifying taxi ride of my life around the old walls of Constantinople (or Istanbul as it is called today) and into the district of Sultanahmet to our hotel. That evening we ate off the streets and had a couple of plates of vegetable meze consisting of hummus, spinach bake, mushroom, spicy sauce and various other nice things.

I had expected much more street hassle, but really it was very low. Actually, Grandad was more hassle going on about the Byzantine Empire. He kept telling us the date 1453 is the most important in history and that the last Emperor was called Palaeologus. He died as the Ottoman Turks overran the city in that year. All I really wanted to do was watch the cat five storeys up on the roof and wonder how it got there.

27/10/09
After a breakfast we took the street tram to the Blue Mosque, one of the greatest structures of the Muslim world. I took off my shoes and put a scarf on, then I looked around at a space that possibly has the biggest carpet in the world – it certainly has the most lightbulbs (a man spends all his life changing them). Outside, Grandma was doing a good job knocking down the prices on every small thing she bought .


The Hagia Sophia

Grandad, however, had another agenda. It was his 70th birthday and he planned to make it a good one. So, we went to the Hagia Sophia which he hadn’t seen in many years. For him it is the most magnificent building in the world. And there it stood across the Hippodrome, huge and imposing – more than 1,000 years older than the Blue Mosque. We went inside and up to the first balcony and the scale of everything was frightening. Grandad told me loads more but I can’t remember it all; but he did laugh at the long queue of people waiting to stick their finger in a hole in a column for luck. He muttered something about mumbo-jumbo but I didn’t quite catch it.

After lunch we walked to the Basilica Cistern, a vast underground reservoir built at the same time as Hagia Sophia by the Romans. In one of the columns that held the roof up there was yet another hole to stick your thumb in and wish for a lottery win. Also there were two beautifully carved heads of Medusa at the bottom of columns which should have been under water; they were meant to ward off evil spirits. It shows us that long ago this was a pagan city. There were also hundreds of fish, some a metre long in the water.


A colourful selection of Turkish bowls in the Grand Bazaar

The Grand Bazaar (Kapali Carsisi) was opened in 1461 and is probably the biggest covered market in the world. It was here I bought Grandad a little pillbox hat for his birthday and my brother, Alex, bought a handbag for his girlfriend. We found the haggling easy as we had done it all before and knew when to walk away and at what percentage to say yes.

For Grandad’s birthday tea we ate on the street. Grandad and I had chicken shish, Grandma had sea bass and Alex had Iskender, which in Turkish means Alexander; the waiter joked he was eating himself. Alex bought Grandad a raki, a clear alcoholic drink which turns white when you add water and is then called ‘lion’s milk’. Grandad was a bit cheerful.


Part of the City walls looking out to the Bosphorus

28/10/09
The next day was surprisingly wet but it didn’t matter because we had planned to go on a boat. Down at the Galata Bridge we caught the ferry boat and chugged out of the Golden Horn into the Bosphorus and headed towards the Black Sea. With 50,000 boats a year going through it, the Bosphorus is the second busiest waterway in the world – I worked it out to be six an hour (plenty went through it that day). On the bank, either side, were many beautiful palaces – some falling down. We went under two bridges and watched the traffic passing overhead like tiny birds. The last village we stopped at on the European side is known as Rumeli and from there we crossed the straits to Asia and the tiny fishing village of Kovagi which sat in the shadow of a huge Byzantine castle. Meanwhile, out on the Black Sea, hundreds of vessels waited their turn to enter the Bosphorus. We then returned to Istanbul after lunch and were able to see the Blue Mosque at its best from the sea.

29/10/09
Today we set out with a shopping list and made our way back towards the Grand Bazaar, stopping off at the café called the Pudding Shop. It starred in a movie called Midnight Express and the pictures around the wall show what it was like in the 60s; now it is very swish. We continued uphill and for no reason at all we spent some time in a cemetery reading the gravestones, well, those not in Arabic. When we got to the Grand Bazaar, it was shut. The only day of the year when it shuts is Army Day – today was that day!


A fine selection of textiles in the Grand Bazaar

Grandma decided it was time to inflict ourselves on the posh shops to see if they haggle – they do. We bought an exquisite leather coat for me which started life at 360 TL and ended up at 125 TL and a few other items. Before going out for the evening we ate vast quantities of Locum (Turkish Delight) then we went to see the Whirly Dervs (Whirling Dervishes). These dancers are Sufis who pray by spinning on the spot with their heads to one side and their arms going higher as the dance progresses. They wear long white dresses which fan out as they spin. I found it very interesting to watch – once! Tram home, a drink in the café next door and off to bed early as we had to get up at 2.30 am English time, 4.30 am Turkish time, for our flight back to the UK.

PS.
I have been told, and I’ve checked on the Internet, that in St Dilpes Church at Landulph in Cornwall, lies the body of Theodore Palaeologus, descendent of the last Emperor of Constantinople.

In the parish church is the following inscription, upon a small brass tablet: ‘Here lyeth the body of Theodore Palaeologus, of Pesaro in Italy, descended from the Imperial line of the last Christian Emperors of Greece, being the son of Camillo, the son of Prosper, the son of Theodoro, the son of John, the son of Thomas, second brother of Constantine Palaeologus, the eighth of that name, and last of the line that reigned in Constantinople, until subdued by the Turks.’