Ride To Istanbul

In the morning, the clothes still weren't dry, but there was a small breeze and the sun was in and out.  I strung them up on the clothes lines, and waited them out.  Meanwhile, I had no hotel in Istanbul, so I got on-line, did not quite enough research, and booked a hotel in the old-town.  My thinking was, a three star hotel within walking distance to the main attractions and parking for the bike.  That was the idea.  Two out of three isn't bad -- as long as the two are in your favor, right?

I left at 10:00, with the clothes dry enough to not get smelly.  I also put in the full rain liner set, as it was looking iffy out there.  Indeed, it was sprinkling gently as I left, but that soon dissipated, although the clouds never went away.  The road took me through flat salt marshes for many miles, with lots of shore birds, including cranes and ibis.  Then, as I turned inland, the road was bounded by fields, and flocks of sheep and goats and small herds of cattle.  Quite bucolic.  You can see why the land was fought over in centuries past, as it produces so much food.

Eventually, a little after noon, I roll up on the border.  Leaving Greece is waiting in line until it is your turn to have your passport stamped.  Splat!  I'm out of Greece.  Now it's Turkey's turn to have at me.  I ride up to a post, ready to hand over my papers, but the guy is smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone.  A soccer game is on TV in the corner, and he is watching it, too.  Finally he looks at me, and waves me on.

I ride past the duty free shop, wait in line, and hand my passport to the guy, who is watching a soccer game on a TV in a corner.  He looks through it, says "Where is visa?"  I reply I have to buy one.  He agrees that I do, tells me to park the bike, and walk over to another hut and buy the visa.  I do as I'm told, and the guy in the hut offers me a "sugar" (candy), which I accept, then tells me it's 25 euros, while watching a soccer game on a TV in a corner.  I hand him a fifty, he puts a visa in my passport, stamps it, hands me a fiver and a twenty, and sends me on.  I go back to passport control, give my passport with newly purchased visa to the guy, he turns away from the soccer game, stamps the stamped visa, and sends me to customs, 50 meters away.

I ride to the customs office, hand the lady my passport and moto papers.  She says, "No green card.  Where is green card?"  I say I have to buy one.  She tells me to park the bike, go to the duty free shop, and buy the green card.  I do as I'm told.  I find the insurance office, give the man my passport and title, and take a seat.  He wants to know how long I'm going to be in Turkey.  I tell him three weeks.  He fills out the papers for three months.  Language barriers are costly.  I ask how much, he says 99 lira, about $50 USD.  So I go next door to the bank, hand them my twenty I got from the visa guy, plus the fiver and a ten.  They run all three bills through a machine, and tell me the twenty is a counterfeit.  They blame it on Greece, telling me that Greeks make a lot of counterfeit euros.  I nod wisely, and fork over $100 USD for lira so I can buy some insurance, and maybe a cup of coffee.

Newly issued green card in hand, I walk back to customs and stand in line to hand over green card, title and passport.  When it is my turn, the guy turns his attention from a soccer game on a TV in the corner, and becomes quite confused because the license plate doesn't have any numbers.  I point to papers. He points to computer, then talks to guy at the other counter, then watches some soccer, then stamps the papers of six truck drivers who have run up to the window, then finally sighs, and writes all over my visa stamp.  He gives me back the papers, tells me to go, and turns back to the soccer game before he is interrupted by the next driver.  I ease on to the next booth.

The next booth is manned by a guy who is kind of surly.  He ignores me for awhile, but then thrusts his hand out the window and demands my papers, which I have been offering to him for some time.  Apparently I have all in order, and he tells me to go, handing me back my papers.  I'm into Turkey now, and things around me are changing.

Not the countryside though.  The county is rolling hills, almost all divided into fields with crops or pastures growing.  Trees are plentiful as well, with orchards in some areas.  Once again I see sheep, goats, and small herds of cattle.  Some of the cattle are grazing on the shoulder of the road, with a herder standing or sitting nearby.  It reminds me of Albania, except the roads are better in Albania (except for the expansion joints on the bridges.  Turkey is still maintaining theirs, while Albania does not.  This suggests to me a different National Defense Strategy for Turkey).  Likewise I see horse drawn carts on the roads, and tractors pulling hay rakes doing 50 on a roadway where the speed limit is 100.

In fairness, Turkey is rebuilding the highway from the border into the interior, and the closer one gets to Istanbul, the better the roadway is.  I stopped for gas between the border and Istanbul, and was met by three attendants who all came over to see the bike.  They loved it that I had chosen their station at which to stop, and thanked me for my business.  That doesn't happen much any more, at least in Alaska.  Anyway, they bought me a cup of coffee so I would sit with them, which was nice.  One showed me a picture on his phone of his prize dove with her new chicks.  There was a dog lazing around under a fuel truck, and it got up and ambled out of sight.  A few minutes later, it came back into view, proudly holding a bag of garbage it had stolen from somewhere, headed for its shady spot under the truck where it hoped, I'm sure, it could investigate at leisure the contents of the bag.  Sadly, that was not to be, as the dove guy gave chase, the dog dropped the bag just before disappearing under the truck, and the bag was properly disposed of this time. 

Thanking the three nice men for their help and the coffee, I headed for Istanbul in earnest.  I needed not only earnestness, but steadfastness, and courage, and chivalry, and all the virtues of a knight.  Bravery, too.  Turkish driving is fun to watch, but hell to ride in.  I'm stopped at the very first traffic light I come across in Turkey, two lanes, cars in both lanes, I'm second in line in the righthand lane.  The light is red.  It doesn't even have a hint of green to it yet, when a Land Rover comes roaring by on the right shoulder, passing everyone, runs the red (which in fairness did turn green after he was throughout the intersection), and pulls back into the right hand lane, and keeps on going.  I was to see more and more of that passing on the right shoulder throughout my ride that day.  If a driver wants to get somewhere, they will use every inch of asphalt on the ground to get there.  Amen, and pass the Tylenol.

Mr. G was telling me that I should arrive at Istanbul at 5:30.  It started raining at 5:00.  I had been watching the sky darken, and it was a repeat of the previous day.  A thunder and lightening enhanced downpour.  I briefly sought refuge under an overpass, but it got crowded under there with all the cars and trucks trying to shelter there as well.  I decided to press on.

Since it was really stop and go traffic, I figured I would be okay if I used any lane but a middle lane, and that way I would have an escape route onto a shoulder if necessary.  But it was wet and slippery.  At 5:00 on a Sunday evening, there was a lot of traffic.  But the city has 12,000,000+ inhabitants, so at any given time at least half of them are going to be on the road, right?  Seemed like it.  It was hellish riding, and I think I will give myself a passing grade on getting through it.  But the worst was yet to come.  Navigating in the 'hood.

Now remember, I am staying in a hotel in the Old Town.  Why did I think the old town was flat?  With paved streets?  This is ISTANBUL, an ancient city, built before there was pavement, and it would naturally have hills because that's where people built cities and towns.  So faithfully following Mr. G, I turned onto a street leading towards the hotel.  Actually, I had no other choice because the road I was on was bounded on the left by the rail tracks, and turned into a oneway street going the other way.  I had to turn right, down hill, onto a cobblestone street that was wet.  May I mention that the tires I'm running on the still-unnamed-bike-yearning-for-a-christening are not designed for this particular type of road surface.  But that's what I have, so that's what I have to make work.

Mr. G was getting confused, and the little arrow was spinning slowly.  I inched and crept around, riding down narrow cobblestone streets with men looking at me like I'm deranged, upsetting a couple of cricket games in alleys, startling a young man trying to start a fire in a brazier (which was probably good for the air quality in the 'hood.  I don't know what he was burning in there, but it was really noxious.), and just generally being a noisy nuisance to the residents.

Logic told me that a hotel would not be located on an alley, logic that I would later prove wrong with a stroll past the Hotel California, so I concentrated on finding a classier sort of street.  Mind you, cheek by jowl is raised to an art form in this magnificent city, so they are next to each other.  I turned left up a street with shops and restaurants on it, and Mr. G told me to make a u-turn.  Exhausted, I did, looked up to the right, and saw a building that looked like the picture on the web of the Hotel Santa Sophia.  A young man was smoking a cigarette on the side walk, and asked if I was looking for the Santa Sophia, to which I replied, yes.  It was good that he was standing there, because there is no exterior sign.

Now remember, I wanted three things: central location (check), three stars (uh-oh), and secure parking for the moto (fail).  It really is centrally located, with everything within easy walking distance.  There is a little store across the street, and just beyond that a restaurant.  Across the street from the restaurant is where the Yul Bryner look-alike cut my hair, and so on.  The people at the hotel are very good, earnest and friendly.  The building is a little dated is all.  But there is no parking facility.  The bike is on the sidewalk right outside the front door.  Or it was when I came in from dinner tonight.

I checked in, changed out of my wet clothes, and went to the little restaurant for dinner.  It was a pleasant little place, with the owner outside shilling for customers.  This is a local custom, and one which I expect to see throughout the East.  But once again I was safe, had a dry place to sleep, and food in my belly.  Can you really ask for more than that in life?

Oh yeah.  Hotel California.  I went for a walk after dinner, a few blocks around the hotel just to see what was out there.  A block or so over I see the Hotel California.  It was, in fact, on an alley.  AS I wrote to my friend Bryan, the lobby looks like a set from a movie, a thriller, and this is the hotel where the nerdy but good guy gets shot at from across the alley.  Or any thriller or cop movie starring Steve McQueen or Paul Newman.  I guess I'm trying to say it was gritty, like out of a Raymond Chandler novel.  Or the Hotel Moore in Seattle, where I stayed in 1963 after getting kicked off the debate team in Seattle for smoking.  But I'm wiser now, and don't stay in places like that . . .