Category: Turkey

Oct

24

Last Dive in the Aegean Sea

Posted by Larry Habegger

The water below barely rippled, a sheet of blue reflecting star sapphire or lapis lazuli, brilliant in the morning sun. From my spot on the bowspirt it looked impossibly distant. For more than two years I’d dreamed of being in this place, high above the Aegean Sea with the sun on my shoulders and that deep blue bleeding into indigo like a memory long forgotten.

I took a deep breath, gazed at the horizon, looked down once more, then dove toward that memory. Down, down, arms reaching, chin tucked, feet pointed, down to the sea, slicing without impact into that lapis pool, cool silk caressing my skin. Down, down, into that radiant mystical sapphire that dazzles like a sunrise, like a shooting star, like a full moon glimpsed through autumn trees. Down into that blue that is so blue it feels like it’s reaching into the cosmos. Continue reading »

Leave a Comment | Filed Under Adventure Travel, Canoe/Kayak, Cruises, Feature, Sailing, Travel, Turkey

Oct

19

Yellow Tea in Bozalan

Posted by Larry Habegger

In Turkey, the ritual of tea colors everyday life in ways not seen in many cultures. Sit down in a carpet shop with little likelihood of buying anything and tea will be served as long as you remain. Make a modest purchase in a shop—as I did in Bodrum when I bought three skirts for my wife and two daughters—and the owner will send out for tea, apple or black, your choice.

But I’d never seen or tasted “yellow tea,” served to us in a café seldom visited by tourists in the village of Bozalan. The men of the town had congregated there, as they no doubt do every day, and welcomed us to their fraternity. Continue reading »

Leave a Comment | Filed Under Cruises, Sailing, Turkey

Oct

14

Hospitality in Bozalan, Turkey

Posted by Larry Habegger

An experience that’s hard to avoid in Turkey is a visit to a carpet shop. In heavily touristed areas the hustlers descend upon foreigners and seldom let go until the tourists are rounded up and brought to the shop. On our gulet cruise we were invited into a home, not by a hustler but by our ship’s captain, to see how carpets are woven and to get a glimpse into the lives of the people who produce them.

Carpet merchants from the cities know that the women of Bozalan make some of Turkey’s finest carpets, and they come regularly to buy finished carpets or place orders. The labor and skill involved in weaving these carpets staggers the imagination. Continue reading »

Leave a Comment | Filed Under Cruises, Feature, Sailing, Travel, Turkey

Oct

8

Dolphins on the Aegean near Oren

Posted by Larry Habegger

We were waiting on the dock at Oren for our dinghy to fetch us back to the Kaptan Sevket when Nicola asked Captain Mustafa about the sculpture of a dolphin with a child on its back high atop a pole there. Evidently there is a legend here, similar to the Greek Arion the Dolphin boy, that many years ago during a shipwreck dolphins appeared and rescued the children. The sculpture is there to remind the villagers of the kinship they have with dolphins.

It was a charming story and I thought little more of it until about an hour later when we were cruising toward our next anchorage. Suddenly Jennifer shrieked “Dolphin!” and Captain Mustafa dashed to starboard and up to the bow howling with joy. He grabbed a steel rod and began banging it against the anchor pulley and calling to them. One after the other they leapt out of the sea alongside us, a dozen or more sleek gray creatures arcing above the surface like dancers. We leaned over the rail, too awed to do more than shriek and wail. Continue reading »

1 Comment | Filed Under Cruises, Sailing, Turkey

Oct

5

Market Day in Oren

Posted by Larry Habegger

The Aegean seaside town of Oren is not the sort of village that would register on the must-see lists of many travelers, but when our gulet dropped anchor there and we set out to explore we found a slice of Turkey as old as its traditions - with a modern overlay, of course, of cell phones and calculators and vehicles to transport goods. We arrived on a Wednesday, market day, when merchants from miles around roll in to sell their wares. And they sell just about everything: seasonal produce of all sorts, housewares, handcrafts, saddles for donkeys and cloths for the table, essential oils, farm goods, clothing. Continue reading »

Leave a Comment | Filed Under Cruises, Sailing, Turkey

Oct

2

A Short Jaunt on Cleopatra’s Island

Posted by Larry Habegger

When we dropped anchor in the harbor at Sedir Adasi, commonly known as Cleopatra’s Island, I expected to poke around the ruins of the Hellenic city, sink my toes in the famous sand found only here and in Egypt (from ground-up seashell, and according to local legend a place where Cleopatra and Anthony bathed on their honeymoon), and contemplate the Aegean Sea from an ancient stone wall before returning to the boat to swim. I did all of those things, but I was wholly unprepared for the sight that greeted me when I topped the rise of land protecting the modest dock, boardwalk and ticket shack where all visitors pay 10 Turkish lire (about $8) to set foot on the island. Continue reading »

Leave a Comment | Filed Under Cruises, Feature, Sailing, Turkey

Oct

1

Sailing Turkey's Turquoise Coast

Posted by Larry Habegger

I first heard about sailing along Turkey’s Turquoise Coast a few years ago when I read a story by San Francisco Chronicle Executive Travel Editor John Flinn, a story that was reprinted in Travelers’ Tales Turkey. From that moment on I wanted to do what he had done, and I had the opportunity in 2006. Setting sail in Gocek we meandered to Bodrum, stopping at the ancient city of Knidos and many other sites along the way. But once was not enough, so I returned in September, this time to explore Gorkova Bay in a loop out of Bodrum. Continue reading »

7 Comments | Filed Under Cruises, Feature, Sailing, Travel, Turkey

Sep

19

Kindness Given, Kindness Received

Posted by Larry Habegger

The apartment I’m staying in in Cihangir, Istanbul sits at the bend of a steep, narrow, cobblestoned street, the kind of lane one car can drive down comfortably but two need to suck in their stomachs to squeeze through. This evening when I stepped outside to go register my cell phone so it would work in Turkey (an apparently silly government regulation designed to combat phone theft) I encountered a man resting against a two-wheeled cart burdened by a rusty piece of equipment that looked like an oversized air conditioner long past its useful life. He was calling out to someone when I stepped onto the street and we made eye contact. I then became the object of his appeal. He rolled out a stream of Turkish that sounded like a question but I answered apologetically that I didn’t speak Turkish. That was OK because his gestures up the hill and toward the cart told me all I needed to know. He needed help pushing his load. Continue reading »

Leave a Comment | Filed Under Feature, Istanbul, Travel, Turkey

Sep

18

The Pleasures of Istanbul’s Ramadan

Posted by Larry Habegger

I took a ten-minute tram ride from Cihangir to Sultanahmet as dusk settled over the city on a day that had gone from cloudy to patchy to clear. By chance I had made my journey to Istanbul during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and heard the evening feast in Sultanahmet was quite a celebration. When I arrived at the open space known as the Hippodrome between the two grand monuments of the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, I found more than a celebration; I found a carnival. Continue reading »

4 Comments | Filed Under Festivals, Istanbul, Travel, Turkey

Sep

18

On Not Buying Carpets in Istanbul

Posted by Larry Habegger

One of the cliches of Istanbul (all of Turkey, for that matter) is the skill and persistence of carpet salesmen. In the main tourist district of Sultanahmet it’s hard to walk far before finding a friendly salesman sidling up to you to urge you to come to his shop to look at his wares. Some prove virtually impossible to shake and you end up either getting angry and losing your temper, remaining implacable and having an uninvited guest along on your sightseeing walk, or going to his shop all the while insisting that you will buy nothing. You then sit through a presentation of undeniably exquisite carpets and drink cup after cup of apple tea and either break down and buy something or accept the hospitality with a smile and emerge, some indeterminate time later, a bit dazed by it all. Continue reading »

Leave a Comment | Filed Under Feature, Istanbul, Travel, Turkey

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