Turkish Delight: Part 2 - Travelling To The Palace

My room was exactly as it was last year... grim.

Two plain hard beds with non-existent pillows and a TV with bad reception and no english channels anyway. The bathroom was even worse. A sheet of PVC was attached to the back of the door in the toilet where the paint had either been chipped away or the door kicked in, above the toilet the paneling around the flush was missing and you could see the cinder blocks of the wall. There was the little hose in toilet - the very reason you don't shake a Turks left hand - but what really seemed to be just out of spite was having toilet paper which had shards of fibre glass through it (or at least that is what it felt like). It was as if punishing a Westerner staying there, who might have alternative views on hygiene. The next morning when I went to have a shower pure brown water came out for at least a minute.

But I didn't have time for a shower that evening as I was meeting a friend, Trevor, who was working in Istanbul for dinner. I had been texting him to let him know I'd arrived while on the minibus from the airport and we'd agreed to meet in his hotel, the Ciragan Palace, around 7pm.

I went back downstairs to the reception to see if they could tell me where the hotel was and also the name or address of the hotel I was staying in so I could find my way back. After a lengthy Bi-lingual discussion, I learnt that the hotel would not call me a taxi and that they definitely couldn't speak English. Giving up any hope or wish to deal with these people again during my stay, I asked several people in the lobby how I could get to the Ciragan Palace. Eventually one spoke some English and through a process of showing him the name of the place I wanted to go on my phone and a complex mime-filled dance, I learnt that the best way to get there was by bus and not taxi. While the man tried to explain in broken English where the bustop was I had already given up listening. I managed to get a card with the address of the hotel on it and set out to find a taxi.

It was duck at this stage and the streets were once again packed with cars (peak rush-hour lasts from 7am to 1pm and then from 2pm to 8pm in Istanbul, for the rest of the time it is just rush-hour). I hailed a taxi easily enough...

"djksfliuahsdflh;lkd adufoihaij asdfoichh;aoi asdoi;oiu aldciaewoij aweroi", said the taxi driver.
"Ci-ra-gen Pa-lace", I said, showing him the name and address on my phone and so it began again.
"asdkl;fa; a;oeija;idj awoidjc;poija asoie;oiejrios roi jre;oij fo;i", he shouted repeatedly stopping the taxi and physically reaching across me and opening my door.
"Thanks a lot you %*&<$%@ £$%^! Merry Christmas!", I smiled and waved as I got out. This process was repeated in another taxi but at least this one, was polite about it and made some attempt to explain the situation to me. I gathered that I would have to go by ferry probably because the traffic was so bad. I thanked this taxi driver genuinely and went to consider my next move. I asked in two chemists how I could get to the hotel and in the second one they explained to me that I needed to take a minibus to Uskudar port and the a ferry across the river. They even went so far a to stop a minibus on it's way down the hill towards the port for me. My faith in the Turkish restored once more, the bus trundled downhill to the port. I asked one man on the bus for Uskudar and the ferry and he very kindly told me where to get off and even directed me to the ferry I needed to get as he was getting one from the same jetty. It was as if the closer I got to the European side of Istanbul the nicer the people and places were getting. As we chugged across the bay, with the Bosphorus Bridge illuminated in the darkness and the constant flow of cars lights running across I was beginning to soften on the city somewhat. When I reached the other side a taxi driver informed me that the hotel was within walking distance so I set off. A long flight (including a sweaty near-death experience), a trek in a minibus across the city and I didn't even have time to change my clothes from the old torn jeans and hoodie I'd been wearing all day. Then I arrived at the Ciragan Palace and I'd wished i had been more suitably attired.

I walked past the doorman in top-hat and small group of security guards through the revolving doors into the lobby. Huge reddish white marble pillars rose in front of me up to the high marble ceiling, my old hiking boots clicked across the white marble floor as I walked across the marble lobby to some chairs towards the back marble (the last marble was just to make sure people realised there was a lot of marble, and I don't think the roof was marble either. I didn't want to be staring at the ceiling afterall, I was trying to play it cool). I sat down in a sofa and waited for Trev who was in a taxi heading down from Tacsim.

Within a couple of minutes a security guard came over wondering if he could help me but I told him I was just waiting for a friend. And wait I did, having not eaten since the miniture plane food and before that breakfast at 7am, I was very much in the mood for some food. After about 45 minutes of starvation, Trevor arrived in his work suit, casual friday so with a tie.

"You jammy bastard!" I exclaimed. Trevor agreed. We were in the MBS programme and Smurfit together and he had landed this job during the summer while I had been looking to move to Paris. His comany writes portfolios for potential investors on different countries. They had interviewed the GM of the hotel and he had agreed to put the up in exchange for advertising in the portfolio.

Trev's room had a giant kingsize bed, an entirely marble bathroom, a balcony overlooking the bridge and a large flat-screen TV (with English channels). A small bottle of wine, a fruit ball and nuts were delivered to the room each day. His room was nicer than mine anyway.

We went to a local restaurant and spent the time thoroughly amused at the thought of us two meeting up in Istanbul and the general bizarre nature of the world.

I got the doorman at the palace to call me a taxi and headed back early to get a good sleep before the next morning.