Saturday, September 26, 2015
Max and I began our day walking from the apartment (in Beyoglu) to the port at Kabatas and walking to the Ciragan Palace in Besiktas, further up the Bosporus towards the Black Sea. The Ciragan Hotel was as elegant as ever, cool and comfortable.
After that we walked in the opposite direction to Karakoy, where we had a cheap (and not very satisfying) dish of gyro-sliced lamb served on a pile of hot bread cubes. We picked up the tramway that took us over the Galata Bridge to Eminonu and the Grand Bazaar. Today the Grand Bazaar is closed because it is the weekend of the Feast Of The Sacrifice, a moveable feast that involves slaughtering lambs and distributing food to the poor. Nonetheless, the area around the Bazaar hummed, as the private shops can open, while the Grand Bazaar must close on national and religious holidays. We spent some time with a rug dealer who tried to convince us that the outrageous prices for his (admittedly) lovely rugs were reasonable, notwithstanding the collapse of the market for Oriental rugs.
From there we went on to Sultanahmet, where we entered the English Bookshop, which specializes in English language books about Turkey. Suleiman, the manager, quickly led me to a small press book that is a history of the effect on one Turkish family of the change from the Ottoman's to Ataturk's modern Turkey. We exchanged e-mails and agreed to keep in touch.
Grabbing the tramway back to Besiktas, we mounted the stairs to the apartment, struggling a bit in the heat. Resting at our temporary home before going out, we discovered after our naps that the water in the city had been turned off.
The water will not go on until tomorrow at 4:00 p.m., Ilhan said.
Not happy news.
We pondered what to do and realized that the multi-gallon bottle of water in the kitchen was only one-third full, so we did not have much water from a non-municipal supply to use until the city's supply came back on.
When we called Ilhan this time, he said the water would go back on in one hour.
Hmmm.....
After a needed nap, we went walked to Taksim Square, Istanbul's equivalent of Times Square, and on to the Pera Palace, in the neighborhood of the same name. The Pera Palace is famous because it was built by the Belgian who also started the Orient Express, and meant to serve its customers. It is also famous because Agatha Christie lived there when she traveled to Istanbul with her husband, who was an archaeologist.
When I was last in Istanbul, in 2001, the Pera Palace was in need of a re-do. Which it was given, to plaudits, recently. The interior of the hotel retains its charm, but an expressway has been built on one side of it, and high-rises on the other. With the result that the building feels wedged in, a glorious relic, overtaken by development on all sides.
The dinner we had on the terrace was uninspiring, as was the service: barmen also served as waiters, a waitress inside had to use the bar to serve clients, rather than using a service bar. All was presided over by a loud, bossy man dressed, not in a waiters uniform, but a suit and tie to set him off as in charge. The chief result of his interference seemed to make the service less efficient, rather like the business school paradigm of an assembly line whose efficiency is decreased when one-too-many hands are added. The breeze on the terrace was cool and watching the largely older American and British couples do their best to get drinks had its entertaining moments: the staff barely speaks English, so they frequently misunderstand the requests the guests were making.
This seems a problem all over Istanbul: despite the enormous number of foreign visitors, most of the natives can express themselves only in Turkish. The one exception was the Ciragan Hotel, perhaps because it is part of the Kempinski chain, owned by Germans. The Pera Palace, on the other hand, is owned by the Jumeirah chain, owned by a group from Dubai.
While one school of hotel management holds out fine service across-the-board as its ideal, another (exemplified by the Jumeirah Pera Palace) seems to think that a once-great reputation and famous guests is enough to keep new clients coming. As many of those clients are tourists for whom a stay at the Pera Palace is the trip of a lifetime, the name being well-known, they book. While they may be dissatisfied with the service, they will not be returning anyway --and will be replaced by the next unsophisticated tourist, seduced again by the allure of the Pera Palace when it was the place you stayed before you boarded the Orient Express.
***
I thought there were a lot of stray cats in Caunes, but I've never seen as many as roam every street in Istanbul. The cats here are sleek thoroughbreds with diamond-chaped heads and sharply peaked ears. They come in every color and variety of mottling, and they are great seducers. What the life of a cat on Istanbul's streets must be like is not something I like to think about: today I saw first, a young black cat, lithe and agile; a few seconds later, an old,and shambling one. The old cat's fur was mangy, its sides spongy. The two cats looked at each other. The older cat (perhaps sensing that in a contest for food, the younger would win), slunk off to find some other place to feed, far from youthful competition. A survivor, it had paid dearly for its its longevity.
***
The streets of Istanbul are a shambles.
The city has many hills, so there are plenty of steps to mount to reach apartments overlooking the city and the Bosporus. I tread carefully, whether I am going up or down them, as the cracked masonry can lead to a sudden spill at a sharp angle. The streetscape is messy, but the vibrancy of the city is undeniable. Walking along Istlikal, the main shopping street in the city, tens of thousands of people swarm across the long avenue, which is pedestrianized, except for the old trolley that still makes its way from one end of the avenue to the other . Watching it approach, slicing through the ocean of humanity on each side of the Istlikal, men hanging off every corner of the tram, the sun setting behind, the scene was an incomparable vision of humanity.
The great cities are messy affairs, and not for the faint-hearted.
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