I could take bus #139 or 139A from Istanbul to Sile, but today I am in a car. In fact, I have always taken a car up to the Black Sea, because in a car I am better able to feel the gentle, wavelike rhythms, the sweeping curves and the swells and dips of this particular...
I am vacationing in a tiny village on Turkey’s Aegean coast. Less than a hundred people live in this town, perched on a narrow shelf at the bottom of a cliff that from the top looks like it drops straight into the sea. The town is so small, its cobblestone streets so...
Back in 2003, shortly after I arrived in Turkey, I went with some of my Turkish friends to the countryside northeast of Istanbul, up near the Black Sea. We went for a walk along a dirt road, and we passed by a farmer clearing litter from a pathway next to one of his...
Years ago, for dinner on the evening of my first full day in Turkey, I went to a cafe on Istanbul’s Istiklal Caddesi. Istiklal is the busy outdoor pedestrian mall that anchors the city’s nightlife. I had spent the day touring the city’s headliner tourist sites — the...
On a warm summer night the plaza outside the Ortakoy mosque is one of my favorite places to watch Istanbul kick back and relax. The plaza is only 3 miles from Taksim and Istiklal, the stars of Istanbul’s nightlife, but it’s a different kind of place. Taksim and...
