Saturday May 16
Following our adventures with Turkish Customs, it was about 7:30, so we decided to proceed on to Istanbul rather than stay in the border town of Edrine, since I wanted to get closer to the ultimate destination and I figured that Istanbul would be more interesting than Edrine. So we booked a hotel in Istanbul on the European side from the car using the Booking.com mobile app. Sometimes you can get a good price on that at the last minute. My only concern was finding the hotel and driving in a strange city in the dark, but I grew up in NYC and drove a cab there, so I thought, how hard could it be.
We made very good time getting to Istanbul. One of the little games I play while long distance driving is whether I can beat the estimated time of arrival of the GPS, and in this case we were 30 minutes ahead of the machine. So when we got to the outskirts of Istanbul I was feeling pretty good, two hours ahead of the master travel plan and looking forward to eating a good dinner.
Istanbul is huge. 50% bigger than NYC and a road system that seemingly dates back to Byzantine times, pedestrians who think that jaywalking laws (are there any here?) do not apply to them, commerce being conducted on the lane deviders, (even I do not want to stop driving to buy ice cream, but apparently others disagree) lots of buses and drivers who are very aggressive about filling any space on the road regardless of size or lane markings. The map was useless and even with two GPS systems going we could not stay on the blue line. (The arrow kept maddeningly going askew.) The street names were indecipherable and unrecognizable to us and too many were one way. Four times I drove over the Bosphorus (fortunately no tolls) and even as we were near the hotel, tantalizingly close at times, we could not locate it. Finally I parked on the sidewalk (very common practice there) and set out on foot to find the Blisstanbil Hotel. The police did not speak English and the directions I received at the first hotel I found were wrong. A second hotel staff was more helpful and as the GPS says, "I found my destination."
The hotel staff was marvelous. They had my reservation and asked where I had been. They gave me directions on how to drive to the hotel, but I pleaded exhaustion and despair, so one staffer accompanied me back to the car and drove it to the hotel while I walked there. When Karen and the car arrived they drove the car off to some lot, took our luggage upstairs and gave us some Turkish beers. We then had about an hour-long discussion about the NBA and its playoffs, one staffer had just watched the Golden State--Memphis game, Turkish players in the NBA, NYC and its skyscrapers ("you never see the sun there") and the hotel jobs that the head clerk had held in the US. He then pulled out an expired Virginia drivers license and that initiated a Virginia discussion. That went on for about an hour until about midnight.
Then they set us up for dinner at the Shishily Cafe and Bistro. Lamb and steak were probably not the best choices for a post midnight meal, but it was good.
The next morning we did not get down until about 11. The new staff crew had heard about us from the prior crew. They wanted to know why we had not come down earlier for breakfast (we did not think it was part of our package since the price was so low). One asked if we had spoken with the desk clerk for an hour, why he hadn't told us about breakfast. The breakfast buffet was a very nice spread.
When we finished breakfast the car reappeared and we were off with directions that I promptly could not follow. The bridge I had crossed so often the night before was now elusive. After a couple of illegal u-turns and 30 minutes (that was half of my wanderings the prior night) we made it across the Straits and into Asia.
We will return to Istanbul and that hotel in July.
Following our adventures with Turkish Customs, it was about 7:30, so we decided to proceed on to Istanbul rather than stay in the border town of Edrine, since I wanted to get closer to the ultimate destination and I figured that Istanbul would be more interesting than Edrine. So we booked a hotel in Istanbul on the European side from the car using the Booking.com mobile app. Sometimes you can get a good price on that at the last minute. My only concern was finding the hotel and driving in a strange city in the dark, but I grew up in NYC and drove a cab there, so I thought, how hard could it be.
We made very good time getting to Istanbul. One of the little games I play while long distance driving is whether I can beat the estimated time of arrival of the GPS, and in this case we were 30 minutes ahead of the machine. So when we got to the outskirts of Istanbul I was feeling pretty good, two hours ahead of the master travel plan and looking forward to eating a good dinner.
Istanbul is huge. 50% bigger than NYC and a road system that seemingly dates back to Byzantine times, pedestrians who think that jaywalking laws (are there any here?) do not apply to them, commerce being conducted on the lane deviders, (even I do not want to stop driving to buy ice cream, but apparently others disagree) lots of buses and drivers who are very aggressive about filling any space on the road regardless of size or lane markings. The map was useless and even with two GPS systems going we could not stay on the blue line. (The arrow kept maddeningly going askew.) The street names were indecipherable and unrecognizable to us and too many were one way. Four times I drove over the Bosphorus (fortunately no tolls) and even as we were near the hotel, tantalizingly close at times, we could not locate it. Finally I parked on the sidewalk (very common practice there) and set out on foot to find the Blisstanbil Hotel. The police did not speak English and the directions I received at the first hotel I found were wrong. A second hotel staff was more helpful and as the GPS says, "I found my destination."
The hotel staff was marvelous. They had my reservation and asked where I had been. They gave me directions on how to drive to the hotel, but I pleaded exhaustion and despair, so one staffer accompanied me back to the car and drove it to the hotel while I walked there. When Karen and the car arrived they drove the car off to some lot, took our luggage upstairs and gave us some Turkish beers. We then had about an hour-long discussion about the NBA and its playoffs, one staffer had just watched the Golden State--Memphis game, Turkish players in the NBA, NYC and its skyscrapers ("you never see the sun there") and the hotel jobs that the head clerk had held in the US. He then pulled out an expired Virginia drivers license and that initiated a Virginia discussion. That went on for about an hour until about midnight.
Then they set us up for dinner at the Shishily Cafe and Bistro. Lamb and steak were probably not the best choices for a post midnight meal, but it was good.
The next morning we did not get down until about 11. The new staff crew had heard about us from the prior crew. They wanted to know why we had not come down earlier for breakfast (we did not think it was part of our package since the price was so low). One asked if we had spoken with the desk clerk for an hour, why he hadn't told us about breakfast. The breakfast buffet was a very nice spread.
When we finished breakfast the car reappeared and we were off with directions that I promptly could not follow. The bridge I had crossed so often the night before was now elusive. After a couple of illegal u-turns and 30 minutes (that was half of my wanderings the prior night) we made it across the Straits and into Asia.
We will return to Istanbul and that hotel in July.
The Blisstanbul Hotel, eh? What is the rate or the name that made you pick that hotel? Driving in Istanbul definitely sounds like a nightmare but it sounds as if the hotel staff worked hard to make up for the nightmare by entertaining and feeding you well.
ReplyDeleteNow that I think about it, the Turkish lawyer with whom I used to work always had his firm's driver take the NG folks (who lived and worked in Ankara) about when they visited Istanbul. Now I appreciate why he did that. Emre Sait. I was the only person at NG who truly understood that NG's success in Turkey was in no small part due to him.