Melissa in Constantinople, part one

Well, we made it, and it’s already been an adventure. Here’s the first batch of photos— I’ll explain as I go along.

Our flight was at 5:00 this morning with check-in starting at 3:00, so rather than inconvenience the friend who offered us a ride to the airport, we had him drop us off at the domestic terminal at midnight, and we just hung out at the airport for several hours. I was intrigued and moderately amused by the implied sitting positions of the people in the Waiting Lounge graphic, but I can see now that much of my amusement must have been due to sleep deprivation.

I’m not sure if the airport employees don’t have other homes or what, but they seem to sleep at the airport.

When we arrived in Istanbul, we pretty much headed straight for the hotel, hoping against hope that our room might be ready at seven in the morning. But no. While Emirhan negotiated our check-in time (which ended up being noon, as usual), I hung out with Bibo, the hotel dog. As you can see, Bibo’s not exactly what you’d call excitable. But he’s ancient, so give him a break. And he’s lovely and affectionate… or rather, he doesn’t care either way if you want to pet him, he’ll just let you. By the way, that’s Emirhan in the background standing next to our red suitcase.

So after the failed attempt at check-in, we had several hours to kill, and neither of us had slept a wink all night. Emirhan’s from Istanbul, and he suggested we go up the road to the park at Gülhane to relax. It was an excellent suggestion. I’d walked past this park many times during my other visits to Istanbul, but I’d never gone in. It’s gorgeous. I particularly loved the water features and the sculptures.

There’s a lovely fountain on the other side of the pond.

And of course the day can’t be complete without a bit of light Turklish— this one, too, seemed funnier at the time.

This is actually quite cool— the plaque reads, “This stone pillar is all that remains of a Byzantine triumphal arch from which road distances to all corners of the [Ottoman] empire were once measured… Date: 4th century A.D.” Emirhan in his sleep-deprived state tried briefly to explain something to me, but in my own sleep-deprived state I couldn’t make much of his explanation, except that it was something about Greenwich. So clearly that would make this a very important pillar indeed.

Then we decided to have an early lunch… Emirhan knows I’m a huge fan of seafood, so he took me to his favourite local fish fast-food place. We had fried shrimp sandwiches and midye dolması, which are the rice-stuffed mussels Turkey is famous for. It was shockingly inexpensive (10YTL for enough shellfish to feed two people is unheard of in Antalya), and it was so tasty that I made Emirhan promise we’ll eat there again.

The reason we came to Istanbul is because Emirhan is taking an exam up here for his IATA certification, and unfortunately he had to leave to go to the first part of the exam (second part is tomorrow) before we were able to check into the hotel. So after he left, I settled into the hotel lounge, and voilà, what do you know? The hotel has WiFi. Score. Then I noticed that there was a potato on the bookshelf next to where I was sitting.

Anyway, I’m feeling pretty shattered now, and I can’t wait for them to give me the room key so I can get upstairs and see if we have a bathtub. I haven’t seen a proper Western-style bathtub in three years, and if we have one I’m going to have the longest bath in the history of the world, and you can forget about any more Istanbul updates. No, joking. But I am going to stay in that bath until I get completely wrinkley. And then I’m going to have a long nap. See you guys later.