South and east of Istanbul in the Sea of Marmara lie the Prince’s Islands, convenient repositories for a recalcitrant prince or other royalty taking them out of the political game.  Nice duty if you can get it.

A convent on Büyükada was the place of exile for the Byzantine empresses Irene, Euphrosyne, Theophano, Zoe and Anna Dalassena. After his deportation from the Soviet Union in1929, Leon Trotsky also stayed for four years on Büyükada.

In the early twentieth century, the Prince’s Islands faced the same decision as Islesboro  but took the other route: they chose not to have gasoline powered vehicles and today, though they do use garbage and fire trucks and a few commercial delivery trucks for furniture and building materials, the populace and visitors travel by foot, bike or horse drawn carriage.  Oh, what a difference that choice could have made for Islesboro!

For me, working long hours and often not leaving the campus of Robert College for days, and Sue, making her way through the intense streets of Istanbul in pursuit of a hook and line to hang a hammock or sea bass for the nights supper, a weekend in the Prince’s Islands was a grand respite: quiet, peaceful and, at least in some stretches, rural.

An hours ferry ride ($2US) which stopped at four of the nine islands, landed us Friday night at Büyükada, the biggest of the group and though only little more than 2 square miles, possessed of dramatic changes in elevation reaching heights of 500 ft. 

We stayed in a nice small hotel and on Saturday we walked probably eight miles and saw the sights.

Children skipping rope and dogs in the street are familiar the world around.

See the beautiful houses of Büyükada in the gallery below.

Jesse left us after lunch and returned to the city alone to meet friends for their regular Saturday night club outing.  I hope he will soon write of his experiences here, certainly different from mine.  I have not stayed out dancing until after the buses quit running, coming home at first light though Jesse has more than once.

We walked to the west end of the waterfront one evening and sat on the concrete bulkhead.

Sitting and standing next to us were a group of young men who, after we settled in and we all became comfortable in each others' presence, resumed not conversation but song, singing one to another, at times the group chiming in together.  Delightful.

Returning home on Sunday we stopped on Hebeliada and walked again.  Looking back to the mainland the rambling extent of Istanbul became apparent: the coast for ten miles, twenty miles was completely developed with dense hill sides of housing punctuated with modern sky scrapers.  And then I realized I could not even see the Istanbul I was familiar with: it was around the next peninsula where the Bosphorus begins.

Though we took to heart the warnings by several that we should avoid the common tourist destinations until the vacation season wound down, we haven’t encountered hordes of international visitors but instead hordes of Turkish tourists are always filling the tour boats up the Bosphorus, the streets around the Spice Bazaar and the ancient mosques.  Nonetheless, we have had pleasant Saturdays and Sundays seeing some of the sights.

Though Sue and Jesse have made numerous forays to Eminönü (that’s a short e, all the vowels are short here and mixed with numerous diphthongs the words roll out punctuated by an abrupt b or z; the ö and ü require you to purse your lips like the French oui)–don’t you like the way the word rolls out of your mouth–the heart of the ancient walled city, with a history of more than 2,000 years, with both the Spice Bazaar (huge) and the Grand Bazaar (incomprehensible; you have to be a focused navigator to ever find the same store twice) I have accompanied them only once.

The Golden Horn, the mouth of a river which flows out into the Bosphorus and defines the old city, is crossed by the Galata Bridge to enter Eminönü.  Up on the hill stands Topkapı Palace, the Blue Mosque (Sultanahmet Camii) and Hagia Sophia (Aya Sofya) all of which we will visit later.
But one Saturday we rambled across the Galata bridge and visited the New Mosque (Yeni Cami), begun in 1597 and completed fifty years later.  An inviting open courtyard with benches and faucets for foot washing led into the peaceful interior where people knelt and prayed, often parent with child, though women were segregated into a back area partitioned off by lattice work.  The soaring graceful interior was encompassed by intricate blue tiling.  Though we did not come to pray, we felt welcome and calmed.

Just across a plaza is the entrance to the Spice Bazaar, crowded, busy and energetic.

The goods inside are of high quality and priced accordingly though I was warned that for me, a florid obvious alien, I should take any price and offer half.  We did not buy anything inside but gravitated to the warren of streets surrounding the bazaar. 

Here, wandering up hill, around the corners, along narrow streets little more than alleys you find first an array of wooden ware: spoons, cutting boards, carvings, bowls, clothes pins, anything made of wood.  A block away you enter a plumbing district, then an area of plant seedlings, seeds, puppies, leeches, birds, then the living things district gives way to metal: stoves, gutters, tin boxes as some organic sorting takes place among the merchants.  We bought a cutting board for $7 (though after my purchase I saw a similar one go for $5) made from a single board eighteen inches wide and sawn with a protruding handle at one end; I probably sanded the rough edges for as long as it took to saw the shape originally.  Later Jesse and I agreed on a backgammon board and we’ve happily played each evening since.

Last weekend we walked north up the promenade along the Bosphorus through our quaint village of Arnavutköy to chic Bebec and onto the Fortress of Rumeli (Rumeli Hisar) in the shadow of the second bridge, the north bridge across the Bosphorus.  Built in 1452 in a four month span by Sultan Mehmed II to finalize his conquest of Constantinople and end the rule of the Roman Empire.

After lunch we walked the return (more than two miles each way) avoiding the hooks of the fishermen thronging the quay. 

It is possible to walk along the Strait from village to village for more than ten of the twenty miles of the Bosphorus and with some effort you could walk the entirety from the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea.  I expect Sue will do that before we are done.