A few hours in Istanbul

I know of two kinds of vacations. The first is the kind where you have each day and hour planned to the minute. This kind of vacation rewards you with a warm satisfied departure. You know have seen everything that was worth seeing on unforeseen land, without losing any time. It also makes for a great confluence of conversation amongst fellow-travellers who have seen it all too. And then there’s the photo-journal-like facebook album that gives you that “great use of my time and money” feeling even months later. There’s the other kind of vacation. Unrehearsed. Beaming with an ignited wanderlust. And that twitchy restlessness when you leave, one that comes with the knowledge of all the untread earth and unheard stories you are leaving behind. Knowing that there’s a part of you that you have bartered there, in ransom for the wealth of experiences you are taking away. Equipped with only a hotel reservation and two days, Istanbul for me was all this. I stepped onto Turkish soil (well, tarmac, if you are a stickler for facts). I remember closing my eyes and inhaling deeply when I landed. As I stopping to smile at the cliché, it occured to me why travelers do that upon arrival. It is to indulge that voracious appetite to explore an unacquainted land that takes over your senses like a narcotic. Istanbul's easy-breezy airport left a warm first impression. I believe that a lot is to be learnt about a country from its airports. I half expect to be regarded as foreigners are: with a distant, intimidated curiosity. But in Istanbul I experienced a palpable warmth. These were people who were proud of their country and excited about you discovering it. Before I even stepped out of the airport at Istanbul, I was in love. I got a visa stamped on my passport and found my way to a cab that cruised through a neat and spaced out city. In my unbridled excitement I found myself clicking so many pictures of the road itself that I could have assembled a frame-by-frame photo map for directions to the hotel. After a quick check-in, and a surprising ebb of inter-continental travel exhaustion, I found myself in my walking shoes, on the cobblestone streets of Sultan Ahmet. When on foot, the most striking feature of Sultan Ahmet Square is a panoramic view of a centuries-old past and the glittering big-city present. Handy tour-books quickly remind you that everything around you dates back to the times when Istanbul was Constantinople. A walk around the hippodrome shows you a German Fountain, a Greek column hoisted by a Roman emperor, and an Egyptian obelisk, making for a curious case of history and belonging. Within minutes of being in Sultan Ahmet Square, you begin identifying Byzantium and Constantinople as Istanbul, a city that has changed names as it has changed eras. On my right was the only monument I expected to see there, the Blue Mosque, standing in quietude. I made a note to visit it the next day, and to find out why this magnificent white structure before me was named the “blue” mosque. A walk down a bustling park was a treat for the eyes and nose. Stalls selling colorful souvenirs, carts offering pretzels, warm steamed chestnut, and sticky-chewy rainbow candy on a stick thronged the cobblestone walkways through the small park. The sights and smells of the lazy park gave way to a very chic avenue. A walk down the street seemed like a romantic odyssey between contemporary Europe and the Middle Eastern. Great looking and impeccably-dressed folks, quaintly designed cafes, baklava and tea houses, continental food restaurants, a royal graveyard followed by a multitude of stores selling Turkish lamps, devil’s eye mementoes, carpets, and upholstery,a Turkish bath house, an old pillar doubling up as a feeding post for pigeons, and some distractingly handsome Turkish men left me at a loss of adjectives I can use to describe a city street in Sultan Ahmet. A mouth watering Mezze dinner coupled with an engaging chat with a charming waiter at the Beydagi restaurant later, I walked back to my hotel. The changing moods of Sultan Ahmet from the lively city street to the idle cobblestone walkways to the hotel had me captivated. Istanbul has a way of nudging you into history, century by century, and hauling you back into the present in a charming unpretentious way. In the few hours that I had known it, the mystifying montage of images and tales that was Sultan Ahmet had me up late that night, like a girl new in love anxiously waiting for the next day to come so we may meet again.