Less than a week ago, we left Helsinki for our new home in Istanbul. We’re in Fatih, the peninsular, European part of Istanbul that is the historical core of the city. It’s a huge area, so that doesn’t give much sense of where we actually live. Our neighborhood is working-class Aksaray, which is well off the beaten track. We didn’t know that, as it happens, and it’s farther from the the sights than we’d hoped. The Sultenahmet area, with the mosques and bazaars, has few private accommodations. Still, there are upsides to being in an immigrant neighbourhood. Mostly food-related: within four blocks, we’ve seen Uyghur, Somali, Yemeni, Moroccan, and Syrian restaurants. We are very close to public transportation which in Istanbul is fast and cheap ($0.45/40p per trip).
The flat has been very recently renovated, and everything is shiny. But it’s clearly meant for shorter stays; there’s not a lot actually in the place (you’ll see what we mean). The building is an old one, and the entryway a bit dilapidated. We’re on the second of three floors (but there’s also a basement floor), with two flats per floor. It’s a very residential street with a few shops here and there at ground level. But it’s also very lively; people are on even our small street all day and much of the night, and it’s between two larger streets with lots going on.
Kitchen and Bath
As you can see, the Istanbul kitchen is beautiful. We remember looking at the pictures before we booked this place and and thinking that it looked really convenient to work in, because there was so much counter space (=more than in lots of our recent homes). Now we see that’s because there’s nothing on the counters! Microwave and water-kettle, and that’s about it. There is no dishwasher, but that doesn’t matter, because there are not many dishes to wash in any case. We have a very small selection of dishes, pots, and utensils, with no butter knives at all. (Interestingly, we have seen lots of silverware for sale but no knives. So now we are on a Quest!)
We’ve bought two glass baking dishes, a frying pan, a bread knife, a spice grinder and a proper sized tea-mug, and we’re in the market for a dish drainer of some sort. And, obviously, we need a teapot, though the ceramic kind we are accustomed to is in short supply in this part of the world. There are no utensils unfamiliar to us in this kitchen because there are more or less no utensils! That said, the kitchen does have one item which brings joy: this gorgeous pitcher is already full of iced tea, which we have been missing more or less constantly since leaving the U.S. (As you might expect, tea in these parts is pretty darn good.)
Our Istanbul bathroom is bigger than the one we had in Helsinki (it could hardly be smaller!). There’s good water pressure and more marble. And it dries fast, so no complaints here. And the washer, delightfully, is out on the balcony, on which more in a moment.
Living and Sleeping
Our Istanbul apartment opens onto the sitting room, which has good light and comfortable enough chairs. There are, however, very few flat surfaces. And that means everything ends up on the dining room table. (One of our suitcases has become a near-the-door-stuff table.) The dining table is in a space between the sitting room and the kitchen, and it’s nothing special, but absolutely fine. Chairs not so comfy, but the sofa and big green chair are.
A long hallway leads to the private quarters. This hallway, with the door at the end of it, is perfect for TRX! The master bedroom has a bed and a closet; you’ll see that we’ve used another suitcase as a nightstand.
The majority of these suboptimal features are redeemed by the balcony, which is plain (marble, of course) but with a cool view of everything our neighbors are up to and opportunities to learn about the secret lives of cats. We will have lots more to say about cats; Istanbul is a city full of them.
There is a second bedroom with a double bed, two bunk beds, and another closet. We’ve started calling this the ‘room of requirements’ because its closet is where everything we don’t know where to put goes – winter clothes, first-aid kit, books and papers, flashlight – you name it!
More soon on the neighbourhood itself, where we’ve already found two very good restaurants, and on our first impressions of Istanbul.
