ISTANBUL
Hotel Kybele is nestled between shops, sidewalk cafes, larger hotels on a busy street up from Hagia Sofia and The Cisterns. It's a small boutique hotel decorated with thousands of suspending ceiling lamps. My room alone, perhaps 10x14 is outfitted with fifty-seven colorful, etched glass, creamy milk glass, some with dangling crystal rods, each unique from one another.
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| Hotel Kybele |
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| here I am! |
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| lobby hanging lamps |
As the title of this entry suggests, the charm of my room exists in a tiny little balcony from which I write with a wonderful vantage point of cafe barkers enticing customers to sit and enjoy, of shop sellers versed in multiple languages enough to greet and welcome guests to step into their world and a multitude of street vendors offering anything from fresh squeezed pomegranate or orange juice, roasted "kestane" or chestnuts, shoe shine, roasted corn on the cob, "simit" or fresh brewed "chai". While the tour season is coming to a close, the rumbling of diesel bus after bus after bus is still more than I'm comfortable.
The Turkish people I have met, encountered or engaged in conversation have been inviting and welcoming visitors to their country. With Turkey aspiring for membership approval into the EU the tourism board is putting on the dog for all the world to see. A billboard along the Bosphorus exclaims: Istanbul, The Most Inspiring Place In The World!
One last day to walk between the two magnificent mosques Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque, through Arasta Bazaar and around the neighborhood. I came across a wonderful organic linen shop called Jennifer's Haman, a wonderful Canadian woman from Alberta, Jennifer Gaudet whose mission has been to present the finest linens possible from small family owned specialty looms in Turkey. Incredible stories of silk farmers whose workers, family members and friends all carry a small pouch of five silk cocoons in their front pockets as being close to the heart is the right temperature for the worms to produce silk. Each cocoon can produce equal to three football fields in length. She has encouraged new designs, patterns and fiber mixes to her factory owners though change is a slow process.
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| Jennifer's Hamam, Arasta Bazaar |
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| silk cocoons |
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| also check out: www.jennifershamam.com |
Arasta Bazaar shops...
In a conversation with blue-green eyed blonde jewelry maker, I learned he is full blood Turkish who he believed his ancestors were from Hungary or Russia. Fati, Sureyya's brother spoke of Turkish people have been known to come from a variety of eight strains of ethnic groups which explains why I have been asked I were from Eastern Turkey. Those from Turkmenistan, Kazakstan and Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries derived from Mongolia are considered Turks! As in their family from Southeastern Turkey in Gazanhi they are from Arab blood, and yet others North near the Russian and Georgian borders, and middle eastern countires of Syria and Damascus, and so on. Turkey had been ruled by several empires whose influences are in the faces of their people, food, culture and customs.
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| Fati and Sureyya |
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| Sureyya with her parents |
This last night in Istanbul we enjoyed a fabulous view of Hagia Sofia from a rooftop restaurant and a house specialty of pottery cooked mixed kebab presented at the table complete with a gloved server atop charcoal flame, then cracked open at your table.
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| Hagia Sofia in the background |
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| Kebap specialty of the house. |
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Perfectly cooked beef kebap with
rice and oh yea...french fries! |
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| seasonal salad |
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| Turkish ravioli |
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| Margaret and Hagia Sofia |
Pudding Shop Ice cream cart sported a cow bell ringing, crowd drawing and costumed performer; a combination of showmanship, part magician, all salesman!
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| fast hands...I mean with the ice cream scooping! |
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| check out the size of our scoops! |
