This blog post is one of many in my drafts folder that is long overdue. The events it describes took place on December 26, 2013.
After a very busy Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, you’d think that I would want to take a day to relax on Boxing Day before flying to Paris on the 27th, wouldn’t you? Well, sorry, but if I’m in İstanbul, I’m not going to just lie around. There was one last thing on my must-do list and I managed to get the family motivated enough to do it: a day trip to Heybeliada, one of the Princes Islands of İstanbul.
These little islands are about an hour by ferry from Beyoglu and are officially still a part of the city. During the ferry ride, the city did not stop. It just kept going and going and going. I knew intellectually that Istanbul is the second biggest city in the world, but to see it like that, all stretched out, from the vantage point of a fast ferry, really hammers home the point: it’s a massive place. (As as aside, I love the list of signs you’re going native in İstanbul here. Number 7 talks about how obsessed İstanbullus are with how beautiful and historical their city is. I agree with them! Also, I get 7/10 on the list after three months in Turkey.)
As we left the port, we got to see Dolmabahce Palace again (we had seen it previously when we took a tourist ferry during our November trip to Istanbul). Here it is adorned by a puff of smoke from the ferry we were on.
Arriving at Heybeliada was like going to a different world. The contrast between the quiet of the island and the chaos of the city can’t be overstated. We went for our last Turkish lunch (I had shrimp casserole, one of my favourite Turkish dishes) in a restaurant in the town where we were the only guests, and then we walked up into the forest.
I’ve been wanting to understand more about the halis, wooden mansions from the Ottoman era that have mostly burnt down in Istanbul. I think this is an example of one.
Kids made a beeline for the swings, as per usual.
I have never seen chickens roaming free in a public park before. Here was a flock of thirtyish that belonged to a neighbouring house. This was a beautiful serene moment, just sitting in this empty, treed park at the top of Heybeliada, communing with the chickens and cats.
After about an hour of walking through woods, and seeing only one other person, we found ourselves back in the town. Heybeliada does not allow cars, so some of the residents ride large trikes like this one. Most of the houses are holiday homes, and stand empty all winter, giving the whole place the feel of a ghost town.
Collecting sticks and fighting with them never gets old, apparently.
Just a quick boatride away, hyperurban İstanbul rages on.
Eventually our walk took us to a park that charged an admission. It wasn’t much, maybe 4 lira per person, but we paused to decide whether we should pay it or not. We had no idea what the park had to offer and the island had already provided a lot of bang for our buck. We decided to go for it, in case there were some pretty things there that we hadn’t seen elsewhere. And it was quite nice. There was a çay bahcesi (tea garden) where we waited for five minutes and no one came. It was the first time I have ever found a çay bahcesi where you could not actually get çay. Tobias slammed his fist on the table and said “That’s it, we’re leaving Turkey!” Which we were, of course, the next day. (For a slightly different version of this hilarious joke, see here.)
So this little park was the last official site we saw in Turkey. It was a good way to end.
Since I am in Ireland while writing this, it’s hard not to feel that these next scenes look way more typically Irish than Turkish. But the red flag on the top of the hill in this one (just above and to the right of Tobias’ head) gives it away.
In this pic, the dirty-looking cityline in the background is the hint.
The only way I can tell that this isn’t Ireland is that I haven’t seen any Irish villages that are terraced, like the one in the background of these shots. If it was Ireland, there’d be one row of white cottages, not two. 
After the park we made our slow way back through the town to the ferry dock.
Here is a Heybeliada fayton (Turkish for chariot or phaeton). 
Here is a bread store. Bread is important in Turkish culture (as in so many others) and that lips-shaped loaf is the classic shape. Just like a Frenchman eats his baguette per day, Turks buy ekmek every day. We used to send Sebastian downstairs to the tekel (corner store) for our ekmek in the mornings. It cost about 60 kuruş, or 20 euro cents. Months after this day, the ekmek loaf became one of the symbols of the resistance movement against the reigning AKP party when a young man who got shot with a rubber police bullet while on a bread run for his family died from his injuries. So when I look at this photo I think of Berkin Elvan.
We had some extra time before our ferry would leave, and we took the opportunity to have one more Turkish treat. For me, it was a balık ekmek (literally, fish bread), a popular street food which is mackerel on a bun with cabbage. For the others, it was Turkish pastries, custards and cay in a muhabellisi (pudding shop). Then we took the ferry back to Beyoglu and walked back to our Çukurcuma apartment for the last time.
Rebeca Dunn-Krahn 