Istanbul - a week's diary I

(Pavillion roof at the Topkapi Palace)

For more pictures, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/bourlingue/sets/72157623570814422/

Friday, Feb 19. Arrived from Barcelona end of afternoon, on Turkish Airlines; dark already. Needed to get visas to come in – no surprise, but why C$45 per visa for Canadians when Americans pay only $15, and French nothing?!? (Canada must have pissed off the Turkish Government somehow!) Picked up by the hotel – twice as much time we are told to get to hotel – one hour+ because of the Friday night traffic; not surprising…

Staying at the Ceylan (the C is pronounced J as in Jell-o; and while we are at it, Ç is pronounced “ch” like in “church”) Intercontinental. Built on a steep hill across from the Golden Horn, near central Taksim Square (in the so-called “new” town, Beyoĝlu – the accent on the g in Turkish is reversed, and it makes it silent); great view overlooking the city and the Golden Horn. Dinner with colleague and his wife (also a colleague, from another Society though) at Abracadabra Restaurant; their suggestion; featured in the London Times the week before (as one the 20 lesser-known good restaurants in Europe). Not disappointed – pride itself as authentic classical Turkish cuisine. Hot place! Located up along the Bosphorus, past the bridge to the Asia side. See http://www.abracadabra-ist.com/

“Istanbul, 2010 Cultural Capital of Europe” – funny! You wonder...Obviously a marketing ploy to bring more (European) tourists into the city during that year, but it is rather odd for a city that has always defined itself as distinct from Europe – even Constantine chose to leave the West (European) side of the Roman Empire to start afresh in a new capital – Constantinople – in the East! And of course Istanbul evokes nowadays much more the Ottoman side of its nature... The danger here is that a city, any city, risks of losing its identity if it is trying to be too many things at the same time...


Saturday, Feb 20. Later start than anticipated. Breakfast on the club floor; there is commanding view over the Bosphorus (only broken by the hideous Ritz Carlton building, standing in the way). I am reminded of the Hong-Kong Harbour: lots of water traffic going back and forth across to the Asia side of the city.

Go to Süleymaniye mosque – the work of Sinan, the great Turkish architect of the 16th century (his tomb is nearby) - only to find out that it is closed for renovation(has been since 2007)! (Aerial view picture here taken from a poster outside the mosque!)Have to be content with visiting Süleyman (“the Magnificent”)’s tomb on the grounds of the mosque, and that of his concubine\wife of many names – a wily woman! – in a mausoleum next to his.

Never mind, we go to visit the nearest other mosque, Sehzade Mehmet – worth seeing, much smaller but surrounded by green and very quiet gardens. (picture of its dome) Midday prayer has just started –some people coming in late, or walking out to take a phone call on their mobile! Have lunch at the adjoining restaurant that you access through the gardens, the Sehzade Mehmet Sofrasi. We are practically alone, in the courtyard; warm enough to eat outside. Great place to take a midday break!

From there, we walked to the famous Grand Bazaar, the largest souk in the world, they say, after having a quick look at the book bazaar nearby, Sahaflar Carsisi. Walked through the bazaar – it’s covered, and has been practically since its creation in the 15th century, so that business can carry on regardless of the weather (not raining today though, but grey and cold...) Survived it without having to part money – not due to lack of solicitation (that suave polyglot carpet salesman as we walked out of the bazaar was something else, with his impeccable French, baise-main for Cynthia and all)! Pushed further, towards Sultanahmet just to have a first look from the outside to Topkapi Palace and Haghia Sophia. Accosted by someone (“I am not a guide”!) who is trying to coax us to go to his nearby carpet shop, offering first to take us to the Blue Mosque.(view of Haghia Sophia from the Blue Mosque - click on the picture to blow it up: you will see the "herder", bottom right, talking to Cynthia!) Can’t shake him off – and he is good nature (aren’t they all!) So we visit the mosque with him and then accept to follow to the shop, where he “delivers” us to the owner, and then takes off (presumably to “herd” back another prospect!) The pattern was to repeat itself on every possible visit in the week, but we soon learned how to shake them loose pretty quick! Meanwhile we were shown beautiful carpets at the store, but managed to leave without buying...

Dinner at the Safran restaurant at the hotel; Turkish cuisine, with live music on 2 traditional instruments.

Istanbul - a week's diary II

Sunday, Feb 21. The whole day spent visiting Topkapi Palace (typical dome-roofs of Topkapi) and Haghia Sophia – the “essentials” as one colleague referred to them – both extraordinary! End-of-the-day drinks at the 4 Seasons Hotel nearby – Canadian flag floating between two Turkey ones at the front! Built we are told on the site of an old prison (which is the one apparently where the action took place in the film “Midnight Express” – that story of the dreadful treatment a young foreign drug smuggler received at the hands of the local guards; those who say that the film was shot there better check the film credits: it was done in Malta!) Anyway, service has no doubt improved on that site! (Ceramic murale in Hagya Sophia)

Dinner at 360 Istanbul (rooftop view; hip bar; food OK). Raining going down; walked along famous “piétonnière” Istiklal Cadessi (Street) – still full of “promeneurs” at this late hour on a Sunday – back to the hotel.




Monday, Feb 22.News trivia of the day: Turkish film director Semih Kaplanoĝlu won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale for his film “Honey” (“Bal”) – last Golden Bear for Turkey goes back to 1964! Turkish film production is significant, and popular throughout the Turkish diaspora in Europe, I read somewhere else... Trouble in the world of producers of raki, the local national drink: the price of aniseed would have gone up 70%...and aniseed constitutes some 50% of the cost of producing raki!

Hosted Secretariat members for dinner – a tradition now at these semi-annual meetings; this time at Borsa Restaurant, highly rated by Zagat and recommended by Intercontinental concierge. Totally appropriate.


(view across the Goldern Horn - including the Galata Tower - from the Topkapi Palace)


Tuesday, Feb 23. I am reminded that Turkey is a land of earthquakes: eleven of them, of serious magnitude, in the last 75 years or so! The last major one in 1999 (Marmara, of magnitude 7.4) caused the death of 17, 480 people and injured some 44,000 others. It’s a common thing (tremors, small quakes) around here it seems, but the anti-earthquake building code that was introduced after the Marmara quake in 1999 would apparently only prevail currently in 19 provinces out of 81!

Turkey’s bid to access the EU is a constant on the political agenda here. The negotiation process is engaged, has and will continue to be for many years! France and Germany are resisting. Spain would support, the president of Spain’s Senate reiterated earlier this week. At stake is whether EU is better off with Turkey in, even though this big country is led by a party that presents itself as Islamist, albeit moderate, or denying them access, thus pushing Turkey possibly further away from Europe and closer to Islamist forces...generally put!

More film news, this time from London: “Hurt Locker” (Katheryn Bigelot, director) takes 6 prizes at BAFTA. Colin Firth takes the best actor awards for his performance as a distraught English professor in Tom Ford’s “A Single Man” – well deserved!

Lufthansa (pilots) goes on strike for 4 days; interesting: the length of the labour action is fixed in advance, whether or not anything is settled at the end – the German or European way? Got to worry though about our flight to Frankfurt on Lufthansa out of here on Saturday...

(interior dome in the Harem - the private apartments within the Topkapi Palace)

Istanbul - a week's diary III

(View from the Ceylan Intercontinental - The Süleymaniye mosque)

Wednesday, Feb 24.
I skipped lunch to visit with Cynthia the Dolmabahçe Palace, just down the slope from the hotel. Incredibly lavish, this European-style extravaganza of a palace, mixing all styles – Baroque, Rococo and Neo-classical blended with Ottoman art! Built mid-19th century by the Sultan of the day, intending to show that the Ottoman Empire was not dying, it almost bankrupted it (and the Treasury was only rescued by foreign loans apparently)! Impressive by its opulence: huge rooms and massive crystal chandeliers and candelabras – you are in growing awe going from one room to the other, until you reach the climax: the Ceremonial Hall with its dome standing 36 meters high and its 4.5 tons chandelier of English crystal. The Sultans moved here from Topkapi Palace in 1856. Atatürk used it as an office and residence after the Republic was established in the 20s; he died here in 1938.



(façade of the Dolmabahçe Palace, facing the Bosphorus)



It would have been nice to have a quick bite on the premises – there was a cafe but not giving on the Bosphorus where really it should be...

We have dinner with Necmettin, local Society CEO, at the Mavi Balik restaurant, a classic seafood place, further up on the Bosphorus. Great appetizers and perfectly grilled blue fish!






(Gate at the Dolmabahçe Palace, opening on the Bosphorus)


Thursday, Feb 25.
Turkish-Armenian relations, another fixture in Turkish politics! A formal rapprochement process (to put behind them the disputed genocide of a hundred years ago) is underway since last year, and it has its ups and downs... lately the respective governments seem to be reluctant in pushing through legislatures what would bring about the conclusion of normalization. A strain as well in Turkey-US relationships as the latter (the Congress) is insisting that this be recognized as a genocide – lots at stake here, considering that America is relying on Turkish support (read military) in the Middle-East…

Last dinner with some closer colleagues, at the Peramey Restaurant – a small Turkish cuisine restaurant, off Istiklal, that one colleague has sampled before. Food was great, and so was the fun!


Friday, Feb 26.
The Greeks want the Turk army out of Cyprus! That one has been going on for generations now! Intimately linked to the issue of EU accession – unlikely to happen, among several reasons, if the Cyprus issue is not resolved...

Meetings ended before lunch; visibility too bad and weather too cold to spend afternoon on Bosphorus; cancelled cruise. Go for a walk in the city. Could not find my cigar case – had to do without! Down Istiklal, all the way to Galata Tower, via the music instrument shops street. Climbed out Tower; grey sky, no sun but great 360 view over the city, the river and the Golden Horn. Built in 14th century by the Genoese to fortify the expansion of Constantinople – trying to stop the ever invading Ottomans; to no avail though – the city was finally conquered the in 1453! Go down to the Galata bridge and come back by the tram along Kemeralti; take the funiculaire up to Taksim square, near hotel.



Went to a Whirling Dervishes ceremony (a “Sufi Music Concert and Mevlevi Sema Ceremony” to be more precise). By the Sufi Group of Istanbul Galata Dervishes. Held at the Hodjapasha, a 550 year old hamman in Sultanahmet transformed and well adapted as performance hall – it provides the right setup for such an inspirational experience. Fascinating! This is what Wikipedia says: “The whirling dance or Sufi whirling that is proverbially associated with Dervishes, is the practice of the Mevlevi Order in Turkey, and is part of a formal ceremony known as the Sema. The Sema is only one of the many Sufi ceremonies performed to try to reach religious ecstasy (majdhb, fana). The name Mevlevi comes from the Persian poet, Rumi (born in Balkh, modern day Afghanistan), whose shrine is in Turkey and who was a Dervish himself. This practice, though not intended as entertainment, has become a tourist attraction in Turkey.” For more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufi_whirling






















(Whirling Dervishes - picture from Wikipedia)

Final dinner at the well-praised Hamdi et Lokantasi restaurant, reputed as one of the best eateries in town. Turkish cuisine, warm ambiance, full view of Galata, the Goldern Horn and the traditional Istanbul skyline. Nice way to cap this week-long séjour here.


Saturday, Feb 27
A bizarre piece of political brinkmanship unfolds while we are there. Some 50 military personnel, serving and many retired, arrested for allegedly participating into plotting a coup that never happens 7 years ago! Led to a major rift between the government and the military! The story was revived by a newspaper which provided sufficient evidence to lead to the arrests. Weird but symptomatic of the tensions that exist between the conservative Islamist party in power and the military which tend to be more secular and sees it as its role to intervene whenever they see fit – and it has happened often in the past apparently! The tensions were palpable in the city, with a lot of police in the streets... (P.S. for a - somewhat histeric - view of Turkey's political dementia, see this piece in the Wall Street Journal that was published a few weeks following our visit: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704131404575117641079293872.html?KEYWORDS=turkey)

Quick shopping visit before leaving in the nearby fashionable district of Nisantasi – reminded us the neighbourhood where some of the action in Orhan Pamuk’s latest novel, The Museum of Innocence, could have taken place in the sixties or the seventies… Packed and left around noon. Good that we allowed enough time at the airport: two security checks – coming into the airport and at the gate – and long queue at the passport checkpoint. Did not leave enough time to process the tax refund through the busy and only counter available (I guess the country is counting on this!...)


(Magnificient view of the Süleymaniye Mosque from the grounds of the Topkapi Palace!)

Barcelona – La Sagrada Familia!

Pour plus de photos, voir http://www.flickr.com/photos/bourlingue/sets/72157623452166611/

De retour à Barcelone. Cette fois pour participer à la plus grande conférence mondiale annuelle de la téléphonie mobile – 50,000 participants attendus! L’industrie qui déjà façonne irrémédiablement l’évolution de la nôtre…


Je prends quand même quelques heures, avant de quitter la ville, pour aller avec Cynthia découvrir La Sagrada Familia, l’œuvre maîtresse de Gaudi et l’emblème même de Barcelone qui la domine de son énorme stature.



Je l’avais bien vue lors de ma dernière visite, mais de l’extérieur seulement, découragé d’y entrer par la horde de touristes qui faisait la queue – il y aurait plus de 5 millions de visiteurs par année – du coup classant le monument dans mon esprit comme piège à touristes! Erreur d’appréciation évidemment. Pour avoir pris le temps cette fois d’y pénétrer et d’y déambuler, je dois dire que c’est à coup sûr le temple le plus original qu’il m’ait jamais été donné de voir – un peu dans la veine de sa Colonia de Güell – ce qui se voulait la crypte d’une cathédrale que Gaudi n’a jamais pu finir, à proximité de Barcelone (voir blogue de mars 2009) – mais à une échelle combien plus grandiose.



Remarquable! Gaudi a passé le plus clair de son existence professionnel à y travailler – plus de 40 ans! Pour mieux s’y consacrer, il y logeait, littéralement, les dernières années de sa vie, jusqu'à sa mort accidentelle, frappé par un tram en 1926, laissant l’œuvre évidemment inachevée. Ce qu’il prévoyait sans doute de toute façon puisque la construction d’un tel édifice ne pouvait se faire que sur de nombreuses décennies – il s’amusait à dire que « son client – Dieu – n’était d’ailleurs pas pressé »! De fait, le temple demeure toujours en construction, et ce n’est pas une « figure de style » comme on peut parfois croire : les travaux s’y poursuivre sérieusement pour parachever la construction des tours principales au centre de l’édifice. On espère finir le tout en 2026, pour coïncider avec le 100e anniversaire de la mort de Gaudi. Si on y parvient (çà reste à voir), on y aura mis un peu moins de 150 ans à le construire – ce qui se compare même avantageusement au temps que l’on pouvait mettre à la construction des cathédrales romanes et gothiques!



C’est vraiment l’œuvre-synthèse de Gaudi. Tout y est. D’abord l’inspiration de la nature qui caractérise toutes ses réalisations: les colonnes et la voûte de la nef centrale, quand on observe d’en bas, rappelle l’effet que créeraient, vue de la même perspective, les troncs et la tête d’énormes arbres contre le ciel en arrière plan.

Puis la sensualité des formes, toutes en courbes. Y ajouter le caractère inusité parfois presque grotesque des éléments architecturaux, comme les sculptures – les pinacles qui terminent les nefs à l’extérieur par exemple. Et puis ce contraste si frappant entre la façade de la Nativité du côté du levant, tout en fiorure baroque excessive, et la façade de la Passion et de la Mort, du côté du couchant, très austère, aux âpres sculptures représentant le chemin de la croix et la mort du Christ. Plus on s’y attarde également, plus on y découvre le souci extraordinaire du détail.


Tout çà laisse une impression indélébile; on ne peut que s’exclamer d’admiration devant autant d’imagination et de persévérance dans la réalisation.


Le temps nous manque hélas pour monter à l’une des tours et observer le panorama de la ville…

Barcelona - "39 Steps"

A word about the place we stayed at,“39 Steps”.

It’s an apartment, just off La Rambla, in the heart of the Old City (on a small side street called “Bonsuccès” – God knows how this street ended up with such a French name!). Easily accessible by taxi – ours, coming from the railway station, first mumbled (they all do all the times, especially if they are of a certain vintage!) checked his book for direction, and then took us right to the door.

Quite unique! Very roomy – a bedroom and a living room, linked by a very modern kitchen in-between and a spacious bathroom adjoining the bedroom, with a large shower. Very stylishly appointed; flat TV screen, DVD, and a music player with iPod stand. Tiles – it looks like original ones – make for cold floors in the winter (good thing we brought our warm slippers – it was 6 degrees centigrade when we arrived in Barcelona, and as much as the apartment is equipped with 2 wall-mounted aircon-heating units, they were never strong enough to heat the place thoroughly, not until the third day of our stay anyway.)

You can’t be put off by the exteriors: the apartment is in a 18th century old building ; the stairs – there are 39 of them, hence the name of the place – are very narrow and meander to the second floor (1st floor as denominated in Europe where you only start counting after the réz-de-chaussée!). The entrance lobby and stairs are badly in need of renovation and of a good coat of paint, but we gathered the obstacle is getting a license to modernise the space on account that this is a very old building...

The whole concept is interesting. The apartment is managed (and owned presumably) by a few individuals based in Manchester, England who have started running places for rent based on the idea of a cross between boutique hotels and service apartments (borrowing the quaintness of the first and the functionality of the second I presume). The outfit is called “Staying Cool” and it is run by the individuals who started it – very personalised and responsive, judging by the email exchange I had with them when sorting out how to get the key mailed to us in Toronto in time for our stay... In their own words: “We set up Staying Cool in 2005 (we being 2 friends with a shared passion for style and design). We both worked away from home and thought there had to be a better alternative to a boutique hotel (great design but small rooms and a hefty bill) and a serviced apartment (cheaper and more spacious but badly and blandly furnished). So we came up with the concept of Staying Cool – the hip alternative to hotels”. By what I read, the apartment in Barcelona is the only property they have out of England, their major undertaking currently being in Birmingham where they took up refitting and running some fifteen apartments in one of this city’s landmark buildings.

We found this place through the travel site i-escape, (http://www.i-escape.com/hotel.php?hotel_key=BC014 ) an outfit based in London, which we use regularly to reference and book places where to stay when travelling or vacationing – in Kerala and Cochin in India, in Madrid, Sevilla and other places in Andalusia – we will always cherish the memories La Cazella near Ronda left us with – and now Barcelona. Never disappointed!

Carried on discovering so-called new Catalan cuisine at places run by chefs who claim inspiration from the “chef of all chefs”, Ferran Adrià, and his improbable restaurant elBulli, outside of Barcelona (set to create more waves; see recent article in Newsweek): Cinc Sentits, Sauc, Dos Cielos, etc. Tried also Neri Restaurante and Casa Calvet.