Hello from Istanbul!

We are in Istanbul, in a lovely, homelike apartment on a narrow street in a neighborhood called Cihangir (it’s pronounced like this). If I stick my head way out the living-room window and look left, I can see a sliver of the Bosphorus. The air is warm and slightly humid, so we have the windows open to the street outside. The narrowness of the road makes car traffic difficult, so there’s not much auto noise here; we just hear the sounds of the neighbors: doors opening and shutting, loud and soft talk, dogs barking. After five days of the tiny London hotel room, and about nine hours in taxis, the plane, a shuttle bus, and airports, I would have been overjoyed to be in any clean, roomy apartment — but the niceness of this one comforts me even further. And our host left us some home-cooked spinach pie.

 

{click to enlarge, mouse over for notes — as always}

 

I suspect there’s tons to do and see around our neighborhood, but we are too tired and too overwhelmed with the recent travels. Only a week ago I was playing dress-up at the National Museum of Iceland; three days ago I watched Kate and Petruchio tussle on the stage of the Globe Theatre; and now we are in Turkey. How do seasoned jet-setters do it, I wonder? We’ve decided they must have other people making the bookings for them, or else they’ve got their planning down to an art. For me, it is all I can do to keep the details straight for each leg of the trip: transport to and from strange airports in unfamiliar cities, visa/entry requirements, contact info and meeting times for AirBnB hosts, appropriate currency, tipping customs for cab drivers in each country, backup plans in case any stage of this goes awry. Having to do this with two large cities with three languages within a one-week period has the effect of exploding my thoughts into all directions. And, too, there is that familiar traveling feeling of being overheated and sleepy and burdened with my giant rolling duffel and my two smaller bags, and often coats and/or sweaters too. It is enough, each time we arrive in a new place, to make me want to stay indoors for the next few days, getting my balance back.

This afternoon we went out only to buy food for dinner, and since we found a small grocery around the corner, our walk was a short one indeed. It’s just as well; we are surrounded by small streets — definitely not laid out on a neat grid — and it would be all too easy to get lost, especially since we are functioning on little sleep.

However: we have already seen about a half-dozen cats today, two of them kittens. I think this bodes well.