Istanbul, Part III - Vignettes

Here is a list of all the things I loved about visiting Istanbul:

• The weather - warm and sunny


• The Bosphorus - blue, gorgeous, could stare at it for hours


• Raki - though two shots of that and I lost my damn mind


• Cuisine - had some amazing kebabs and hummus plates


• Affordability - at 3 Turkish Lira to 1 GBP, things were surprisingly cheap. We had an amazing sushi dinner one evening overlooking the sea, with appetisers and a bottle of very nice wine, and I think it cost us each the equivalent of £25-30. Unheard of in England, and hard to do in parts of America, too.


• The mix of old world and new world visible everywhere, and the way you can see the layered levels of the city’s history (Byzantium - Constantinople - Istanbul)

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Guest Relation

We stayed in a hotel called The Surmeli, which was shaped sort of like a big cylinder and looked nothing like the photos on the website. In fact, when I think about it now, what I remember most is “brown”. And not a good, modern chocolatey brown, but rather a tired, Brady Bunch wood paneling 70’s courdoroy brown. To the immediate left upon entering the lobby was a small desk with a sign that read, “Guest Relation”.

And as we found out, not only was there an “s” missing, but also missing was any real comprehension of the English language. Allow me to demonstrate…

After the first taxi ride of death across town, during which we seriously feared for our lives, we arrived back to the hotel with the wide-eyed stares frequently found on victims of natural disasters. Our knees were wobbly, we were shaking from the adrenaline rush of the past 30 minutes and we were in desperate need of… alcohol. As we in no way wanted to risk a taxi ride of any real duration again that day, J and I decided to visit Guest Relation for some advice. E made the wise decision to head up to the room.

J: “Oh, hello. Do you think you can recommend somewhere close to the hotel where we could have a nice drink? We’ve already eaten, and we just want somewhere to relax.”

Guest Relation (GR): “Oh, yes, you can go for wonderful food in Bebek!”

J: “Is Bebek near? We were thinking to find something in Taksim, which is very close.”

GR: (pulling out map and pointing to a location that was at least six inches away from our hotel on that map) “Try here, is a great Italian place. You can have good food in Bebek.”

J: “We have already eaten. We are just looking for somewhere close to have a drink. Maybe in Taksim?”

GR: (now pointing to the other side of the map) “Right here, near the bridge, is great restaurant. Very good food.”

It is worth noting that we were staying on the other side of the water from the main tourist attractions like Hagia Sophia, Grand Bazaar, etc. The bridge she was referencing was at least 20 minutes away by taxi and had featured a starring role in our afternoon ride of glory

J turns to me, with a look on her face that clearly shows her lack of amusement with this process. So I step in.

Me: “I’m sure that’s a lovely place. But we don’t want to go there (pointing to place on map). We had a crazy taxi ride today.  We want to stay near the hotel. We want to go around this area. (Drawing circle with my finger around where our hotel is on the map) We just want to get a few drinks.”

GR: “You want taxi? Then I say Bebek. Definitely best food in Bebek. You go Bebek.” And she sat back with a satisfied smile on her face.

Me: “We really do not want to EAT. We just want DRINKS. NEAR THE HOTEL. CLOSE BY.”

GR: “You want I call Bebek then for you? I call restaurant for you now?”*

*We did eventually make it to Bebek for sushi. It was lovely, but the best part was that our Lonely Planet guide listed the main attraction in Bebek as… the local Starbucks. So we are still unclear as to why Guest Relation was so sold on Bebek.

That was the end of that conversation because we could take no more. We said no, thanks, we’d give Bebek a pass and that we would sort out the situation on our own. To be honest, I’m not sure where we ended up going that night - it is highly possible that was when we decided to buy a litre of vodka at the corner shop and hit the Popeye’s.

It is also worth noting, while we’re on the subject of “Guest Relation” that this woman also tried to send us to a public pool that sounded suspiciously like a tourist trap style of Lido Deck (This is the website - http://suadaclub.com.tr/ - which looks cool at first until you see how closely all the deck chairs are arranged. Imagine all those chock full of annoying tourists - and us being TRAPPED on there for the day). We kept trying to get more information about this SuadaClub - was it adults-only? Was it touristy? Was it nice? We were willing to pay for the best we could find, as we wanted one day of high luxury.

Our original plan was to go here - http://www.caudalie.com/uk/turkish-spa.html - but they were unfortunately closed for the weekend. Guest Relation responded to all our questions by saying, louder and louder “Suada great place! I go there myself all days I can!”. That was enough to ensure we did not, in any circumstances, want to visit this Club Suada.

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The Taxi Ride

It is worth trying to describe the infamous taxi ride. We picked up this taxi after a long day of shopping at the Grand Bazaar. We couldn’t find a taxi outside the Bazaar and so we spent some time wandering rather suspicious looking back-streets until I went into a hotel and got directions to the nearest taxi stand. J has some sort of internal GPS because she had been pointing down this scary street all along with the certainty that taxis were to be found at its end. That street was exactly the one that hotel directed me to.

It should probably have served as a harbinger of things to come that we had to walk down the scary street to get to this taxi. We passed men who, of course, gave us the evil eye and hollered and yelled. We tried to walk on sidewalks which ranged from non-existent to where they would suddenly turn into big holes or steps going down. If you weren’t paying extremely close attention, you could easily break your neck, and I’m not exaggerating.

At the end of the scary street, we found ourselves staring at a sign for Taxis - when suddenly, a taxi flew down the street and came to an abrupt halt. Silly girls that we are, we took this to be a good omen and congratulated ourselves on our luck.

We got into the taxi, gave the address of our hotel, and settled back for what we thought would be a relatively uneventful ride. (We were already accustomed to the somewhat aggressive driving style - after all, our taxi driver that morning had gotten into an argument with another taxi driver over who should be in what lane - and they continued this argument while driving down the street, hanging out their respective windows to scream at one another. I really wish I spoke Turkish because I’m pretty sure there were some legendary insults traded that would have been worth remembering.)

That taxi took off like a bat out of hell, and didn’t stop. The driver seemed to know only two styles of driving - gunning the engine and going fast as he could, or slamming on the brakes with a massive fury. No obstacle was too great to slow us down. I am honestly surprised we did not end up driving on the sidewalk. We wove in and out of traffic with near pathological precision. There was one instance where I would have bet my last bit of monies that we were going to be hit by a bus, and yet we avoided that collision by less than an inch. That taxi sped through the streets like we were running from the po-lice. We took corners on two wheels, sped through traffic lights, narrowly avoided hitting people, other cars, buildings. At one point we were on these really steeply downgraded back streets to avoid a traffic jam and there was a woman in front of us who dared to drive normally. Between her and the speed bumps in the road we managed to only exceed the speed limit by 20MPH. I thank Baby Jesus for that car being in front of us as I am truly frightened to imagine what our driver would have done with those speed bumps. All I can imagine is that scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when the two garage attendants take the convertible out on a joyride and you see the car going airborne -

I’m pretty sure it would have been something like that, only way, way worse. I remember remarking to E that I felt like we were inside The Bourne Identity, only without Matt Damon or any conceivable reason for people to be chasing us.

Needless to say, we did not tip that taxi driver. I think E even gave him exact change, which is kind of hard to do in Turkish lira. I don’t know if the driver thought he’d get a prize for beating the sound barrier and getting us back to our hotel whilst being mostly airborne, or if he just wanted us out of the car so he could pick up and terrorise another fare. I do know we were so glad to see the back of him!

(Although, when stuck in traffic a few days later, we did find ourselves missing Mr. Crazy a little bit, and remarking that he would have gotten us through that traffic jam in no time)

Aside from the crazy driver, we had:

• Driver who stopped on the side of the road to talk to a man with a suitcase, and apparently negotiate that he would pick him up once he dropped us off - and then he drove like a demon to our hotel and all but threw us out of the cab


• Driver who drove in circles a few times running up our fare before J’s internal GPS caught on


• Driver who offered me the opportunity to marry him and make some babies since we were both single


• Two drivers fight over us when we came upon a cluster of taxis and weren’t sure which one to pick. One driver even warned us about the other one saying it would be so expensive


• Varying degrees of cost for the exact same trip - sometimes it cost 20 lira, sometimes 40, sometimes 13. It was bizarre


• We never took the same route twice. Every taxi driver had a different way to get us to the Grand Bazaar, or back to our hotel.


• One taxi driver who said he knew exactly where our hotel was and then proceeded to take the most roundabout way possible. It was so bad that we abandoned the taxi and ended walking the rest of the way back

At the end of it all, I really missed London’s black cabs. I even missed the crazy minicabs with their hilarious foreign drivers and questionable odours.

The best part of all this is that about four days into the trip, we were reading what J’s Lonely Planet guide had to say about the taxis and we found this:

Istanbul is full of taxis. Some drivers are lunatics; others are con artists – most are neither. If you’re caught with the first category and you’re about to go into meltdown, say ‘yavaş!’ (careful/slow down!). Drivers in the second of these categories – the con artists – are unfortunately reasonably common. All taxis have digital meters and must run them, but some of these drivers ask for a flat fare, or pretend the meter doesn’t work so they can gouge you at the end of the run. The best way to counter this is to tell them no meter, no ride.

There was also a sentence (which I can’t find now) referring to the apalling road safety record of the city, which was by no means a surprising fact.

I consider myself lucky to have escaped unscathed and now have a much greater appreciation for the orderly nature of English traffic (something I thought I would never say).

And for the record, ‘yavaş!’ is pronounced “Yah-vash” ;)