Why The World is Going to End, or how Day 2 of Istanbul went

So, as I was sitting, with my feet up after 5 miles of walking today (I know, I'm a whiner), some other hostellers were mentioning the blue moon and I saw that there is a partial lunar eclipse happening tonight. So yeah. That's why the world is going to end.

But today was a good day for it to end on.

I had another short night... I'm still on a different time zone, though I don't think it is Seattle's either. With another sunrise over Asia, I'm ok with being up at dawn.

Breakfast is a delicious affair; the hostel serves up a continental breakfast of bread and cheese and yogurt (yay!) and juice. I love it!

So last night, Jasmine and I made plans to head to the New District, north of the Golden Horn. We started walking, and then meandering around the Spice Market on the south side of the bridge. After getting adjusted to the way that shopkeepers talk (and now being in a pair), I didn't feel as harassed today.

Wow, this post is sounding boring. I'm a wee bit tired. Let's think if they are any interesting stories...

Jasmine and I were walking down Istiklal, and I finally found some guys playing backgammon, or tavla. I heard that was a big thing around here, and so, after watching for a bit, they invited us to sit down. I was "on a team" with one, while Jasmine was with the other. After rolling some good numbers, I still lost by a single piece. So we switched teams and... Jasmine, who had never played before, crushed me! Rolling double 4's every other turn probably didn't hurt her, either.

While we had really good luck with ferries (2), and trams (1), and a funnicular (1, after it took half an hour to find it), we did miss out on seeing the Maiden Tower up close and personal. That ferry stopping running right when we got there.

Now, purely for documentation purposes, I'm going to basically list all the places we went. From the hostel we walked to the Spice Market, then across and up a giant hill to the Galata Tower. On the way, we stopped into this little photo museum with a guard who asked where Jasmine was from. He guessed Japan, then we had this little conversation explaining where Singapore was. On our way out, he called after us, "Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore!" Good job, man.

We made it up the hill and to the Galata Tower. The view was windy, but pretty stunning. The balcony was just three feet wide, at most, to the management kindly put a sign to travel clockwise around it, which some people ignored (causing the rest of us a bit of grief). The views were pretty spectacular; all the terra cotta roofs reminded me of elsewhere in Europe (like Prague). We have really boring roofs in the States.

After, it was "breakfast" time at the nearby Kiva Han (which is also the name of a restaurant and coffee shop near Carnegie Mellon, but I would be shocked if they have any relation.) I had menemen, an egg scramble dish (wiki and picture). Jasmine had lentil soup. We spent quite a while talking about Singapore versus the USA, especially about Christmas. In Singapore, it is a party with a countdown, similar to New Year's. So, she was expecting the same in Europe, but after spending it in Norway, she now knows it is very much a family holiday for Europe and North America. A lot less fun for her.

We made our way onward to Istiklal Street, a "pedestrian-friendly", wide shopping street with the classiest shops I've seen in Istanbul. It has a lot of Western influence, except for the "pedestrian" part; the just means the trams and only a few taxis barrel through there regularly. We met our Turkish board-gamers along this stretch as well. One of my favorite restaurants was called something like "Potato" and had this cute sign with all the condiments.

The street ends at Taksim Square, which was getting ready for the festivities at midnight (since it was New Year's Eve). I had heard, however, that it was going to be crazy and we should avoid it; the police and cameras around validated this point. We spent 20 minutes trying to find the funicular to go down to the water, finally finding it... in the metro station.

We got to a port district called Kabatas, and took a little ferry boat over to Asia! My first time! And I made it just in time to say that I did it in 2009. We went to Uskudar, and began to see the difference. It was a lot dingier, and many more locals (and conservative locals) then tourists. We spent half an hour walking to the Maiden Tower to find that we just missed the last ferry over to see it. So, we continued along the shore toward some ferries (different than the ones we came on) and ended up in the port district of Kadikoy. (Just a note, all of the cities have wonderful accent marks that I have no desire to try to type at the moment. End note.)

I was exhausted and my feet were hurting (and I sure Jasmine can attest to my "whining"), so a final ferry later (and a tram) and I was back at the hostel. However, I decided that I wouldn't nap, convinced that that would make me sleep longer (note in retrospect: it didn't). After discussions on what to do for New Year's Eve festivities, Jasmine and I went to dinner. I had looked up the time for the partial eclipse (and it was also a blue moon, the second full moon in a month, which only happens "every 19 years" according to unreliable sources). NASA said 19:23 would be the height, so we peaked outside at 7:23 and... nothing. I was disappointed, but just figured that it was a very, very small partial eclipse that we couldn't see.

Others in the hostel were basically throwing a house party on the roof,
so I joined them and met all a bunch of Americas, Australians, Romanians, Canadians, and Turks. (Ok, so I might have met some of them before.) And, the time that I got for the eclipse was in GMT! So, at about 9:00pm, the moon had a bit of a smudge out that grew then shrank as the evening continued. Not like the party though... it only grew! We took a short walk to see if we could see any of the hubbub around Gelata Bridge (we couldn't), then rang in the New Year on the roof.

So I've realized as I write this that many of you are still in 2009. Well, 2010 is looking great! (Though I still didn't manage to rack up more than 4 hours of sleep.) And "sheriff-eh", or cheers in Turkish, and Happy New Year!