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do to do to do
UA 16 SAN ORD 0618 1221 752 2D
UA 151 IAD ORD 1221 1322 752 4D Ch9^ Empower:td: I got to IAD early and had a Red Carpet Ale, fairly decent, like a Killian's but with a little more punch, made by Dominion Brewery, which is no longer in Virginia, I am told, but in Delaware. We boarded at one of the D gates with the tiny waiting areas; I don't know what they were thinking when they designed them. Didn't pay much attention to what was going on; after some mild pleasantries with my seatmate, I conked out; slept through the snack service. The rest of the flight was uneventful and early; lili's was late, and so we met sort of halfway between gates. After the usual greetings, we decided to go out to Andiamo at the Hilton (elite security is really pretty fast here except at peak times), where I had a big dish of fried calamari (fairly ordinary); then we went back to the RCC to drown in the now-free cheap red wine, which surprisingly is (for now, at ORD) the Concannon Merlot, a not unpalatable little tipple. UA 940 ORD FRA 1818 0955 777 30HJ Ch9^ Empower^ Our upgrades didn't clear. My fault for not trying to dodge this hazard of Sunday travel between centers of commerce. The exit row is quite adequate, though, if one enjoys (but not too much - the armrest doesn't go up) the company of one's seatmate. Don't remember the meal, other than that it was some chicken curry substance over pebbly rice with peppers and squashes, vaguely nourishing. I forgot my drink coupons (which had expired anyway), so we had to fork over for some Chivas. They parked us at a remote stand, of course, and we went through the usual idiotic routine, and at length we were bussed to the customs and immigration booth, went through, followed bad signage through these twisty corridors and up and down escalators and elevators,, only to find ourselves bussed again via a completely different route to a stand only a few hundred feet from where we had been before (this happens altogether too frequently). TK1588 FRA IST 1145 1545 321 28DE Up those darned airstairs - people keep asking me whether I can physically stand the wear and tear of all this travel, to which I answer if I can negotiate Fraport, I'm in pretty good condition. Which reminds me that I promised lili I'd write to the guy who'd given us that lovely tour last year and had promised that this kind of nonsense would stop. A warmish greeting by the cabin crew, to whom one wonders if one should be saying Guten Tag, Merhaba, or what. The plane was mighty full, and the way wayback was the best we could get. In these far reaches the help help us with a compromise between Turkic hospitality and Teutonic efficiency. A smile here and there. The meal was about as much as one might get in coach on a transoceanic on a US carrier - beef and zucchini rice with some prepackaged snacky things and cheap red wine ad lib. We landed a bit late. Being spewed out into the caverns of IST was sort of a shock; luckily outside immigration I saw the welcome familiarity of an HSBC machine and soon was rich. Be that as it may, I resisted the information booth girl's strong encouragement that we take a taxi and at length wrested out of her that in order to get where we needed to be (the Pera Tulip hotel) by public trans, we had to take the Metro to Aksaray and then find our way via other means, as there is no appropriate service beyond that. While we were talking, some guy insisted in his hard sell that he was destined to be our taxi driver, a minor annoyance. It is not hard to use the Metro, with caveats. From the terminal it's a long walk down to the rather Soviet-looking train station, where one puts one's dough into the machine, which takes nothing bigger than a tenner, after the ATM of course has dispensed only 50s, and gets a handful of tokens and change. Luckily there is an attendant not in the attendant booth, no, but by the pass gate, who can break larger bills. A fairly comfortable hour through industrial neighborhoods to Aksaray Metro, which is not particularly close to Aksaray tram/bus stop, being separated by several hundred feet and a tunnel. After purchasing a fairly useless city map (the names of the stations had been changed since it was issued, for example, as well as the allegiances of half the hotels spottily depicted therein - the best part was a little attached phrasebook and descriptions of the major museums, and even here, the museum times were wrong, and there were included in the vocabulary the words for knickers (bayan kulotu) and dirt-track race (kul tablasi) but not for train station or directions (neither directions directions or north, south, etc.)), and inquiring nicely of various local folk, we found a bus that was going the right way and left us off over the bridge across the Golden Horn in the dusk for only a buck each. Thus began our sort of random walk, which was complicated by half the establishments in the neighborhood having names starting with Pera. With the aid of the desk clerks at various of the competition, we at last found our Pera Tulip, actually quite a nice boutiquey place with Internet stations and breakfast included. I had a fairly nice little room; lili's down the hall was completely different and I thought fairly nicer. Welcome amenity of fresh but tasteless fruit, something that I found wherever we went - the stuff looked good but generally was insipid, unjuicy, unsweet. After freshening up, we decided to walk around - Beyoglu appears to be a pretty fashionable and artsy district, and I could have spent more time there. It has the disadvantage of being next to Taksim, the happening part of town. So we walked up Istikal Street - musical instrument stores and little bars and burger joints made me feel right at home. The way became more chockablock the closer we got to Taksim, so we turned around just before the square, returning to a cafe near the hotel, where we had our first tastes of Turkish food - palatable but run of the mill lamb kebap and kofta at what I thought was a slightly elevated price (but turned out to be pretty much standard through the city) - and, more importantly, Efes beer, with which we became very familiar over the next ten days. Slow but adequate Internet in the library. The Turkish keyboard has two kinds of letter "i," which kind of threw us off a bit. Also I'd forgot that AltGr-2 makes the @ sign. |
An elaborate breakfast buffet - odd pastries, cheese omelet,
some peculiar sausage things, lots of kinds of cheese and dried fruit and numerous jams and sweet spreads. Cherry and orange juice. Coffee, the decaf version of which was I swear stronger than real caf coffee in the states. Also nice tomatoes but tasteless fresh fruit. Breakfast cereal was available. We found a similar assortment wherever we stayed. The morning was beautiful, so we decided to spend it walking around: down the hill, past the Galata Tower (refrained from climbing it), across the Golden Horn on the Galata Bridge, by the train station, and to the park around the Topkapi Palace (which was closed on Monday, as was the History of Islamic Science museum). There didn't seem to be any sense sticking around, so we took the tram back to Kabatas and the funicular up the hill to Taksim (we didn't particularly feel like climbing all that way) for the walk back to Beyoglu, which in the daylight looked even more fashionable than it had in the glittering night lights. Istiklal Caddesi wasn't so crowded as it had been that night, so we didn't feel hurried as we poked our way along, looking at menus and dining rooms. We ended up at Konak Kebap-Lahmacun ve Tatli Salonu, which we later found has a reputation as one of the best local cuisine places in town. I had patlican kebap - grilled eggplant and lamb chunks; lili had the standard doner, which tasted like doners everywhere. To drink I decided to try turnip juice, which came as "purple carrot juice" and looked like beet juice. It was fermented and sour and salty, the taste quite like pickle juice. Live and learn! So I needed an afters and jumped at the chicken breast pudding, which was blander and more unsightly than I had hoped; plus it tasted like and had discernible fibers of chicken. This recipe is how they used to make blancmange before there was Knox gelatin: Chicken Breast Dessert 1 1/4 coffee cup ground rice 1 1/2 cup granulated and bleached sugar 3/4 coffee cup corn starch 7 cup milk 1/2 chicken breast 1 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 cup warm water 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon Turkish coffee cup: 50 ml cup:150 ml tea spoon: 5 ml Cook chicken in a boiling water lightly. It should not be overcooked. Take half of the breast. Only the white breast meat will be used. Take away the skin and fat. Breast should be cooked such a degree so that it can be fibrilized. Fibrilize the breast so that the yield is fibers of meat. Wash the meat several times with hot water untill there is no smell of meat (wash and squeeze). Put milk in a pot on a fire. when it starts to boil pour sugar and stir well. When sugar dissolves put salt and remain boiling (low fire). Furnish starch and rice well in a cup. Add warm water slowly while stirring. Add this mixture to the boiling milk slowly while stirring. Stir and cook until the viscosity decreases (like the viscosity of honey). Before it reaches to above viscosity take two scoopful of milk on meat. Stir well with fork untill it become a uniform mixture. Add this to the cooking milk. Continiue stirring until it cooks. After it is cooked pour in to the plates and remain for cooling. Sprinkle cinnamon on plates. Serve cool. Hints: To understand if it is cooked or not; take a teaspoonful of it in a glass plate. when it cools turn the plate upside down. If it releases the plate easy, without remaining any resedue, it means it is cooked enough. If not cook a little more. Washing meat, until the smell of chicken disappers is very important. Bon appetit Murat Gurler, NCE 7-30-95 |
After finding our way in the dark with a defective map to
our hotel, getting back to the airport was child's play: a stroll down the hill to the bus stop, find a bus that said "Aksaray" on the list of destinations, and good to go. We were quite early, but a little song and dance at security chewed up some time - apparently, lili had travelled tens of thousands of miles with a standard issue lever corkscrew, no problem, but it caused a tizzy here and was confiscated. In the process, she mislaid her passport; after much angst and thorough reinvestigation of every possible hiding place, it was refound, and life was good. We celebrated by going to the Beer Port for more Efes and a glass of a local wine called Yakut Kavaklidere. When check time came, and no change was forthcoming, it became clear that the rather cute waitress was stalling so we'd have to hurry off without our substantial change. We didn't fall for that and kept calling after her until she poutingly forked it over. Put lili off Beer Port, to the degree that when we found another one at Besiktas some days later, she shuddered. Anyway, we strolled to the gate in plenty of time. TK2332 IST ADB 1700 1805 321 19EF Another crowded flight, a mercifully quick one. Dinner was a cheese sandwich, which I didn't eat. Pickup at Izmir was seamless; a jovial driver picked us up along with the Lieberherr family, here from Australia, and deposited them after the 45-minute ride at their hotel in downtown Selcuk and then us at the Kilisealti Guest House in Sirince, a hill town apparently in the middle of nowhere. Our place was up a hill on a cobbled street - very atmospheric but not terrific to walk in the dark. It was a clean but sparse accommodation, rather B&Bish. We asked the guy for a good place to eat, and he led us to (of course) the nearest restaurant, Dimitros, which was sad and empty, while down the way there was another filled with sounds of music and jollity. But we stuck with it and were glad we did. lili's lamb sis was pretty nice; I had a properly oily and savory imam bayildi followed by a meat crepe, which was floppy and crepelike. The Akberg Cabernet 04 was dreadful to the point that I thought the place must have refilled the bottle with cheap swill. Suddenly the other restaurant went silent, and one could hear dozens of tramping feet in the dark, then the sound of a bus going off in the distance. After which there was an influx into ours - apparently, when the other restaurant gets rid of its tourists, the staff comes here to relax. We stayed for quite a while, our evening enlivened by several glasses of raki, the last few of which were on the house, or, at least, we didn't pay for them. We got kind of silly and giggly with the Turks and then staggered the few steps up the hill to our rooms. |
Breakfast was copious and similar to the fancy place in the
big city except for no breakfast cereal. The driver came to pick us up right on time for our trip to Ephesus (Efes). Turns out the van just took us to the travel agency in downtown Selcuk (15 minutes), where we waited for a bunch of other diasporaed tourists, and we coalesced into a group that would fill a vehicle. As lili and I both tend to be prompt, we were among the first there and had to chill for a considerable time. Eventually our cute, well-educated guide, who, in contrast to most of the people we met, spoke excellent English, fetched us and combined us with a motley group of Anglophones from England and Australia. Our first stop, which was not advertised as far as I know, was The House of the Virgin Mary, a newly developed place of pilgrimage, now sanctioned by the Holy See, where Mary is supposed to have spent her last days. Apparently a German nun had had dreams about the place, and as normal most people colored her insane, but a journalist heard about her and wrote a novel on the subject, which somehow caught the eye of some Catholic priests who went and investigated this place and found the ruins of a 1st century house just as described by the visions as transmitted by the novel. And so a rapid reconstruction was effected, and voila, instant holy shrine and tourist destination. It wasn't bad, actually. There's a weeping wall whose waters are said to be holy (as well as potable); its natural exudations are now aided by modern plumbing, and one can fill any vessels one has handy with this elixir at no cost. Then to the archeological site of Ephesus, which at one time was one of the most important Mediterranean ports and the site of one of the great libraries of classical antiquity. Toward the beginning of the tour a rather athletic-looking girl named Sandy became ill, and being the only male nearby able to carry a burden, I did so. The guide and I stayed with the patient until the ambulance came (the sight of same made the girl perk up and say she didn't need any help, but we loaded her on anyhow), and then we caught up with the rest of the group. It's like a museum, only in the bright sunlight, with examples of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine architecture; and on this gorgeous day it was hugely crowded, especially near the library of Celsus and the street leading to it: it gave us an idea what a city of 200,000 strong would have felt like on market day in year zero or so. Highly worthwhile. We returned to Selcuk for lunch buffet at a tourist trap; there were enough buses in the lot that the guide said, oh, let's wait at the lokoum shop, one of my favorite places. How transparent is that. I refrained from eating samples or otherwise encouraging the natives, preferring to stay close to the entrance and laugh at the strange aphrodisiac offerings, packaged in jars shaped like satyrs, essentially pagan godlet figures with their long-standing fallacies. A few of us got some stuff at about 4x what one might pay at the bazaar, but whatever. Eventually we got to lunch, which was okay, but the wine at TL5 a glass was utterly horrid - reminded me of the stuff we'd had with gvdIAD in Frascati early this year (when in Frascati, do as the Frascatoons do and drink WHITE WINE). And then to the leather factory fashion show, where most of abused the hosts' hospitality by drinking our apple tea (why do all these places serve apple tea, a rather silly concoction that has little or nothing to do with apples?), laughing at the models doing the show, and sneaking out the back door and sunning ourselves on the porch while our co-victims wandered through the store being encouraged to buy jackets and stuff. At some point the manager came out and made some pointed remarks about how the economy has been bad everywhere (he placed the blame on W) but worst in the UK, a zinger that we shrugged off, even those of us who were actually from there. Eventually he gave up and just chatted for a while. Next stop, the Ephesus Museum, which might not have been worth the trip, because it recapitulated what we had already seen in situ - but there were a couple impressive statues of the goddess Artemis (who, the guide told us, was adorned with necklaces of bull testicles: not the many-breasted figure she is reputed to be in the textbooks), some very nice narrative carvings (orthostats, a word I learned later at the Archaeology Museum in Istanbul), and assorted small excavation finds. And finally the Artemis temple, once one of the seven wonders of the world and now a pathetic ruin, with one haphazardly reconstructed column and assorted pieces of scrap marble lying about, the touts (selling postcards and fake antique coins) being of a lower and more downtrodden order than usual. We were given the option of another artisan tour, but that was soundly voted down, so we got back to town a bit early. |
The van was ready to take us back to Sirince, but we decided
we wanted to wander around town just because, and maybe have drinks and dinner. The Pink Bistro is right near the travel agency that seems to be the headquarters for all tours, and it has a big beer for E5, so we plopped ourselves down for a couple cold ones. Then a random walk that eventually took us to the TAT restaurant, where pretty good musaka and lahmejun filled us up for not very much money. The rather oily proprietor was just a bit too friendly, but once we ignored him everything was fine. We picked up a van at the travel agency and were shortly in Sirince, the guardrail-less curves even more impressive in the dark. Once there we decided to explore town a bit and found the wine-merchant district; parked ourselves at a bar lined with local carpetry to taste various Akberg products: Bogazkere - your standard overripe wine but not bad for that. Flavor of prunes and grape stem, medium dry, okay. Okuzgozu - this variety, with the previous, are the mainstay of the Anatolian wine industry. I don't know if there is any relation, but it tasted kind of like Merlot to me, which is funny, as the Merlot didn't. Cabernet - surprisingly, it was as horrid as what we had been served at Dimitro's the previous night - the aroma slightly cheesy, no discernible fruit, a strange mouth- coating blandness such as one gets in homemade wine that has been infected with a trash yeast strain or something. Merlot - a little better, with cherry and herbal flavors and actually tasting almost right, but if you should encounter them on their native soil, do go with the native varietals. After a few glasses it was clear that it was time for all to go home - staff, customers, bystanders - and so we did, quite happier for the experience. We poked around a little on the way back and found that there was plenty to explore just in this quaint little town. Next time. |
We got our traps loaded up early onto a van and said goodbye
to Sirince; again we were dropped off at the travel agency. This time a different assortment of tourists and an earnest young guide who had learned English in the army. Our destination, the travertines of Pamukkale, was a 3-hour bus ride each way with 3 hours at our destination. In retrospect an inefficiency, but what did we know. Perhaps the destination was worth it - certainly it was unique. We started out late, and then there was this obligatory rest stop, where lokoum and pomegranate juice were being sold at double what they cost even at the other tourist traps ... I just went to the gas station next door and got a liter of Efes Dark for about the price of a juice. And then there was the flat tire, which stretched our short stop into quite a lengthy one, with the result that we rolled into town nearly an hour late. During the trip our guide was very dry and very earnest. Informative, too, I grant, and charming in a charmless sort of way. Lunch at another tourist trap right within sights of the famous travertine terraces was somewhat better than the previous lunch at a tourist trap, with more selection, fresher food, and actually some protein dishes. The weird tasteless desserts, which were sort of like the Chinese agar unspeakabilities, only less sweet, were a source of hilarity among those at table. Pamukkale Senfoni 07 (a Shiraz-Merlot blend) is quite respectable, not overwrought or oversweet or any of those common things: good but subdued black fruit, licorice, longish dryish soft finish. It tasted like an older wine, to tell the truth. We later found it available another place at E75 the bottle, about 8x what we paid. A slightly rushed trip through Hierapolis, the Greek/Roman city built around the baths, Cleopatra's Pool, where for an extra ten or so you can soak your troubles away in the mineral waters, and the travertines themselves, impressive formations formed similarly to cave deposits, only with warm water rather than cold. We had the chance to wade in the waters, piped in to artificially enhanced structures (if the public were given access to the real ones as they were being formed, they would never be formed, let's face it). The Hierapolis museum, which gathers some of the more interesting finds from the city digs, is small but nice. We were supposed to get back at 6, but with the delay, that was pushed back to 6:30. Supposedly, the van was supposed to leave at 7, so we showed up at 7, not having time for supper but just a beer at the Pink Bistro. No van. Turns out others were told 7:15. You should see lili's eyes flash when she deals with an idiot. She turned into a tigress at the nonplussed travel agent as apparently everyone takes the budget airline at 9:30 (At-a-loss or Onan or something) and there's no allowance in the system for anyone on TK at 9, which we were. The agent tried to maintain his joviality as he promised us that the van would leave immediately; so we were trooped to the parking lot where - of course - we waited on board for a huge time. Even my patience was tried, as if we'd known we could have had a nice little supper. It turns out two guys figured they weren't going to show up until 7:40, which was the time they figured was appropriate for the 9:30 flight. They were located, with recriminations all round, and we got underway about 7:30. Arrived at the airport at 8:15 for a 9:05 flight. Luckily security was pretty quick. We hadn't had Internet and hadn't been smart enough to ask the travel agent to get seats for us, so we were assigned two middle seats. At least mine was in the exit row. In our 15 minutes in the TK lounge, where I had decent lentil soup and some bad cake, I tried to enlist the agent's aid in getting us seats together; she checked and regretfully said that we had the best seats available (no op-ups for Star Golds even on a medium-priced fare, H or something). 1007 TK2337 ADB IST 2105 2215 321 11B, 12B Flow control made this a later departure and a longer flight than it should have been, so I grabbed the seat in front and pulled often, something like that, just for giggles. I can be extremely juvenile when I feel like, and it's a wonder my travel partners put up with me. A meal of sorts, not bad for what it was. A chicken sandwich - flavorful marinated chicken breast on flavorless American- style sub roll - was sided with salad, minty tabboule, and a pleasantly flabby pannacotta that reminded me of that chicken-breast pudding, only without the chicken. No alcohol as it was a domestic flight, so I just had water, which seemed to distress the pleasant FA. No coffee? Tea? Juice? No, thanks, if you don't have that lovely Efes beer that I've become accustomed to, I'll close my eyes and imagine that this water in front of me is Miller Lite. We screeched in for a very hard landing, which caused shouts of dismay on board and a bit of buzz on the jetway after. |
Our driver was waiting patiently for us. In common with all
the drivers we had on this trip, he commented proudly on the historical and cultural sights we passed. On some of the rides, the guy's English was barely enough for him to grunt things like "buyuk hospital," "school," "ambassade," "football stadion"; this one had some grasp both of English and what Anglophones might be interested in, "Byzantine castle," "original city wall," that sort of thing. He was pleasant, polite, and, as it was a fixed fare, quick. Though he took us to the wrong place, as our accommodation, Sultanahmet Suites, is the blanket name for four properties. On the second try we found the offices, which are in a little coffee house in a traditional old neighborhood. For our prepayment, the night manager gladly took a mixture of lira, Euros, and dollars for our rent - and gave us a quite favorable rate, according to my calculations, and then showed us to our rooms, in an odd building in the middle of renovation, on the southwest edge of Sultanahmet district. The digs were comfy though peculiar: we were split up into basement and attic rooms, each with its own pecularities. lili's room, a deluxe, was too cold; mine, a standard, was too stuffy. In the morning, when I went up to discuss the plan for the day, hers had become too hot - no surprise as mine had gotten too cold. Hot water: day 1, plenty; day 2, little or none; day 3, plenty of decently warm water but no cold! Our time in town was mostly preternaturally cool; the first day was unbelievably wet, to the degree that I feared that my room, being in the basement, might flood (it didn't). Every day someone we encountered would apologize on behalf of all of Turkey about the weather, saying it's never this cold [or wet] this time of year. Fat lot of good historical meteorology did us. |
Topkapi area
Day 1
Woke up to heavy rain, and it rained steadily through the day. We tried to be out and about during the lulls and be indoors when it was more downpourish. Mixed success. As the museums weren't open until 10 (said all the literature), we slid our way up and down the cobbled streets and eventually found a little place near the train station for breakfast. I had cake (rather coarse but good, soaked in a not too sweet syrup); lili had what was characterized as an omelet - essentially eggs beaten with lots of butter and cooked over a very quick fire until quite hard, but not bad for that; with three teas, TL10. This was the cheapest meal we had in a country of surprisingly costly food. Our first stop was the archeological museum, which contains an astonishing plenitude of stuff. One starts at the Museum of the Ancient Orient, with amazing stuff, then to the archeological museum per se. We stopped on the way at the Tile Pavilion, which used to be one of the satellite buildings of the Topkapi Palace but was ceded to the control of the archeological museum in a rare triumph of logic over territoriality. It contains a beautiful selection of Islamic ceramic tiles and decorative art and is well worth the trip, especially given that it doesn't cost any extra. Then on to the main museum itself - enormous, overwhelming, worth several visits for the antiquities hound, just plain too much for the rest of us. There are displays dedicated to all the major Fertile Crescent civilizations, each containing hundreds of artifacts; to the history and cultures of Istanbul; to Troy and Ephesus; and the main floor has hundreds of Greek and Roman sculptures, dozens of sarcophagi (and a mummy), scores of orthostats (that word again). Just amazing. We had to tear ourselves away, encouraged by an alarm that had been ringing at the end of the Roman sculpture rooms but was audible for hundreds of feet ... it was there when we arrived and there when we left three-odd hours later. And we'd budgeted the afternoon for the Topkapi Palace. I wasn't thrilled by the palace itself: it was big, it had nice stuff, but it really looked to me like an extra nice hidey-hole for hundreds of bureaucrats or something. The hall that contained relics of various prophets was to me the most interesting part: we got to see the original Sword of Ali, Muhammad's footprints and beard (trimmings thereof, divided into many lockets), Moses' cooking vessel, ... It was lunchtime, so we headed for the restaurant and its supposedly elegant food and dazzling vistas. Well, as far as the vistas go, the Bosporus was totally fogged in, and the rains were coming in almost horizontal. We got seated by a heat lamp, which helped a bit. I guess we could have gone to the cafeteria on the other side, but we figured we'd get better service, food, and shelter here, given that we'd be paying between twice and 3x the price. Service was alternately willing and sort of bumbling and totally absent. The menu listed steak at L42, entrecote at L43; lili asked the difference - a waiter, not versed in such distinctions, replied "steak is ... steak; entrecote is ... is ... ... same." Steak turned out to be a nice-size but rather thin cut of rump; entrecote, true to its name, was a rib steak, kind of fatty. One didn't get a choice of doneness - both came medium, but the quality of the meat was good enough that medium wasn't bad. These came with terrific heavily smoked baba ghannouj, delicious meat rice with currants, and an odd mishmosh of carrots, zucchini, and peas (on the menu as "boiled vegetables"). The wind howled louder and louder, and our umbrellas shook, and suddenly one of the many waiters danced by with a pashmina for lili's shoulders. As I started reflecting on reverse discrimination, someone gave me one, too. The prices for wine looked absurd, so we had a bottle of water for 5 bucks or so. There was another lull in the weather, it seemed, so we paid the bill and headed back for the palace proper. While we looked for restrooms we discovered that the restaurant has an indoor part! This was crowded, noisy, stuffy, and objectionable in the mirror way from the way our setting had been objectionable. We figured, eh, six of one, half a dozen of the other; but I was slightly irked that we hadn't been given the option. |
Topkapi palace in the rain isn't so much of a must-visit.
We spent more time shivering than seeing, and the enormous crowd in the treasury was actually more welcome for its generated heat than annoying for its jostling, shoving jam-packedness. Some neat stuff here, gifts and tributes to the sultans from rulers from Queen Victoria to the various shahs of Iran, and millions' worth of other shiny things. Okay, it was well more than neat if you're into shiny things, as the rest of the hundreds of people in each room jostling for position or just a glimpse of the shinier treasures must have been. And, oh, there was the giant diamond about which they apparently had made a movie some decades back. After a bit of thought we gave the harem a miss (as it were); others and their writings indicate that we made the right choice. the Sultanahmet Suites, tried (somewhat vainly) to dry off, and then walked around that conservative old neighborhood, trying to find a place that sold beer. There was a little store a couple blocks up the way, where the guy sort of scowled at us alcohol-swilling infidels, but a big smile and a heartfelt tesikkurler got us a bit of a nod in return. It was Marmara beer, and I thought, aha, the guide who told us that it was all Efes was wrong. Turns out this stuff is made by Efes, though I found it a tad maltier perhaps. We returned to one of the places that hadn't sold alcohol, got some potato chips and nuts and deemed that a sufficient meal. We had use of the building's computer for our e-mail and FT and such, and while I was tapping away, I was approached by the guy who had checked us in, who informed me that because of a miscalculation of the exchange rates, he had undercharged me. How much, I asked. US$10, he replied, I didn't fuss that it had been his mistake or accuse him of shaking me down. He had indeed given me a good rate before, and with the correction it was still quite fair. So I paid. |
Do; Ihsan
Up early, and guess what, no rain. So we trudged up the hill
to Yeniceriler Cadessi, the road at the northern boundary of Sultanahmet, where there was cell service, and tried to get in touch as previously agreed with Where2next? ... telephone problems scotched this plan for a while, but thanks to intermittent signal and much persistance we eventually met at the Blue Mosque. Where2next? had found this Ihsan guy, who had been Anthony Bourdain's driver for the No Reservations Istanbul: he was quite a showboat, perhaps naturally high, talking ninety miles an hour and driving almost that fast; later on his status was upgraded to a bit of a madman as he chatted, showed us where we were on the map, and did a facsimile of a belly dance, all while driving top speed and with no hands or other visible means of support on the wheel. Other than seeming to be on constant audition for a TV presenter spot, and ignoring the apparently obligatory show of Mediterranean libido, which got a little silly at times, he was pretty amusing. on this trip: Where2next?, Lori_Q, totmode, lili, gvdIAD, me After admiring the wonderful architecture and ceramics of the Blue Mosque, we headed the few steps north to Hagia Sophia, where we were allotted half an hour or so, a really insufficient time (one could spend all day there marveling at the architecture of the place and oohing and ahhing at the Byzantine art and the Islamic accretions). Steep, worn steps and insufficient lighting provided a hazard for the old and infirm, in which company I count myself, but the glories were well worth the rather high admission price and the adventure. From which Ihsan led us (on foot) down one of the shopping streets and ended up, not surprisingly, at a rug shop, name redacted to protect the innocent, where we were treated to the rug version of a fashion show. Surprisingly, the quality, selection, and price were all good, and the sell was not hard. Nonetheless, I don't thrill easily to the routine of apple tea, historical lecture, demonstration, lecture on why our stuff is better than anyone else's, and showroom. Okay, a guy's gotta make a lira, but. Ihsan pointed us in the direction of the Grand Bazaar and essentially said, walk this way, which we did, and he would pick us up at one of the gates in an hour or something. I'm not fond of shopping or of large noisy enclosed spaces, so the time allotted was more than ample; luckily Where2Next? thought to take us to a lokoum shop, much more my style, and we sampled and bought various kinds of sweets - I got 100 g of prepackaged halvah, which I offered around; but people said, like, no, you try my halvah (hand cut from the big block in the window); and it turned out to be the same, except that mine was marginally fresher, being packed for travel. Some of the lokoums were interesting. Back through the purgatory of the Bazaar, where I tried to lead us in the most expeditious way to the exit, but certain of us reveled in the experience and tried to lead us astray. I think plans were made for future investigations of various shops, corridors, and districts at a future date. Ihsan's smiling face was there to greet us; he enthusiastically drove/guided us around town for a while before giving us two choices for lunch; first he poked into a divey-looking place, where I would have been happy to eat, but almost without stopping turned around and drove us to what he characterized as a somewhat nicer place called Yildiz, which seemed to be a foregone conclusion and where he seemed to be well known. It was a pretty good choice: we were first served big sheets of puffed pocket bread and a pillowy round bread, both nice, with various dip things. Most of us ordered variations on doner, for what I thought too much money: they were good, though. Bucking the trend, I had cig kofte, a very heavily paprikaed version of raw kibbe, and icli kofte, fried doughballs filled with ground meat. I enjoyed my foray into the unfamiliar, washed down with cherry juice (far more enjoyable than that turnip juice at the other kebap place). |
After lunch, we piled back into the car, wandered through
the old city (including Sultanahmet, where we were staying), and alit at Eyyub Mosque, apparently a great destination for Muslims but mostly unknown by non-Islamic tourists; this, with the tomb of Muhammad's friend Eyyub Sultan next door, is, if I understand Ihsan rightly, the fourth most holy place, the first three being Mecca, Jerusalem, and I forget. On leaving, he showed us the nearby market (for locals, not tourists, he said - lili bought a rather nice pashmina for five bucks) and attempted to teach us the iconography of Muslim tombstones. There was an awkward moment when he asked about our religious beliefs and got more nonstandard responses than he would have liked. Perhaps as punishment, we made a detour to Yedilkule Zindanlari (7 Tower Prison), where he made us climb a slightly vertiginous stair with no rail to the battlements, which we walked, and then down a set of quite steep outside stairs with rickety railing. Some of us found an alternate inside spiral stone staircase that seemed a little less exposed. Ihsan showed us various low points, including the imprisonment places, as well as the execution room where various captives, criminals, and even the odd sultan or three had their lives terminated. I think perhaps this was intended as a memento mori and a spur away from secular humanism or something - certainly his presentation was. If he hadn't persisted in playing the lustful Turk I might have sort of felt sorry for him in his earnest wish that we repent our ways; but as it was I think I laughed a little too much inside. There was this big old amphora in the courtyard with a catalogue number painted on it. Nobody seemed to have a plausible explanation for its being there. We had pretty much covered the perimeter of the old city wall through the day, and there was still a bit of time, so we voted to go to the famed Spice Market, which was very like urban food markets anywhere, only noisier, more |
crowded, and more chaotic. I'm not sure if the visit was
worth it except for the being able to say we'd been there, even though a couple of us bought a few things. There was a huge traffic jam getting to the Park Hyatt (the designated end point, where Lori_Q, totmode, and Where2next? were staying), so Ihsan dropped gvdIAD, lili, and me off partway down so we could walk down Ciragan Street to szg's birthday party. gvdIAD wanted to freshen up at his hotel, so our slightly diminished party headed to the Kempinski, where after an airportlike magnetometer scan we were allowed to go to the bar, where we met szg, flysurfer, and rcs85551 and spent an unconscionable amount on drinks - two Efes, a glass of Sarafin Merlot, a Coke, and a fruit smoothie: E100. We were served peanuts, chickpeas, and other fairly tasty munchies, though. It was coming on time for dinner, and the rest of our party had arrived, so we strolled over to the restaurant area, and guess what, they couldn't find our reservation; after some mutual confusion between the staff and us the lightbulb went on - instead of the hotel restaurant, where the prices were high but manageable, we were supposed to go to the grander dining room, Tugra, in the palace itself. |
I was given the task of finding something we could afford to
drink on a list where Mondavi Woodbridge products as well as the Pamukkale Senofon stuff were marked up to L75 a bottle. I chose a pleasantly neutral Thracian Cabernet at a price that I could get a bottle of Pichon-Lalande of a good year for at the wine merchant's. Water was L18 for sparkling, 20 for still. We apparently drank one each. Okay, we were in this incredibly luxurious setting magically overlooking the Bosporus, with the twinkling lights of the shipping and of Asia in the distance. The appointments were fit for royalty, and there was a waiter for each person. Cavils about price are minor by comparison to the rarity of the occasion. The food was pretty decent, too. Amuses came to the table: a little plate of baba ghannouj came with a sort of bolognese sauce next to it, the effect being a deconstructed moussaka; beautiful soft sesame flatbread served with black-eyed peas, olive spread, and cheese mousse was appetizing as could be. The menu itself is of a conceit - half classic Turkic cuisine, half modern riffs on ancient themes. I ordered three appetizers at about 25 or 30 each, instead of a main course at 64, which I thought excessive and probably not as interesting as three appetizers. A morel bourek with morel sauce was liked but not well liked - probably because it was like any mushroom and puff pastry dish you've ever seen. I'm sure some unfortunate apprentice spent hours in the back room stretching the pastry, and some saucier imported from France or at least Cordon Bleu trained put the final fillip on the dish, but you or I could take a block of Pepperidge Farm dough and make something maybe 90% as good (i.e., good enough to make friends squeal with delight) for a couple bucks. Large duck manti with duck liver (their description) had unexpected aspects. The large manti were maybe medium size, the filling sort of mystery poultry (to me it tasted, appropriately, more like turkey), and the wrapper kind of coarse. I'd made lobster manti once off a remembered recipe, and the outside was not to my liking - it's nice to know that perhaps the unniceness was authentic; but the liver ... I'd hoped for foie gras, but this was a sizable chunk of liver garnish that was as good as possible without being that costly substance. I've seen the puree the liver and mix it half and half with duck fat trick, but an integral piece? the only thing I can think of is a sous vide in extra fat in a water bath preparation. I'd ordered the sour lentil soup as dessert, but after tasting this truly aristocratic substance, I changed my order to a second serving of duck liver. As it turns out, nobody else at table wanted any dessert at all, and I didn't want my gluttony to be stared at, so I cancelled the order, saving my bank account for another day. Joining the 6 Musketeers as described earlier were birthday boy szg, flysurfer, and rcs85553. The party broke up pretty late, everyone wanting to savor to the fullest the experience of being in a palace and treated (albeit with a dubious eye) like nobility. Afterward, lili and I joined szg for what he characterized as a beautiful boat ride on the Bosporus from Besiktas to Karakoy: unfortunately the service had ended for the season, and we had to take the bus (same price, not so much fun) to Kabatas and then the tram. He had to go to the Crowne Plaza, a couple stops farther than ours. I hope he stayed dry, as we got back to the Sultanahmet Suites just in time, as as soon as we got in, the heavens opened up. |
Day 3 started out moist, as the previous one had ended.
Gradually the rains abated, and it was just a little misty and squishy when it was time to walk to Yerebatan Cistern (the famous underground reservoir built by Trajan or somesuch megalomaniac emperor) to meet our friends at 10. We got there a bit early and wandered around, thereby getting to endure two impassioned appeals from the carpet seller nearest the attraction. The cistern is really enjoyable: atmospherically lit, just a little spooky; and, as it was made quickly out of salvaged materials, a sort of Janson in the flesh, with variations on Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian columns everywhere to look at. Two of the columns in one corner got pediments of recycled Medusa heads, one upside-down, the other sideways. Amusing. It also smells like a swimming pool, which, I suppose, is due to the fact that it would otherwise smell like a sewer. We walked our people to the Topkapi Palace grounds and left them off around 11; being a little peckish, we tried to find the place we'd had breakfast before - it was closed on Sunday, though, so we spent a while looking at menus. We chose Faros, a hotel restaurant right on the main drag, which the map that I just happen to have beside me tells me is called Hudavendigar Caddesi. Reasons: it had been open for breakfast, which meant that the kitchen had probably already been fired up; it was crowded, albeit with tourists; and the menu had things on it that I found intriguing. Being the culinary adventurer, lili ordered a cheese omelet. It looked as if all the other women in the place also did - next to us there was a 6-top of reasonably cute ladies of various ages, the proprietor flirting nonstop with the whole table during their meal, which was six cheese omelets, and there were other sightings of same in the rather busy room. I had mince and kidneys in tomato sauce, apparently a famed Turkish dish and not at all cheap, kidneys not being held in the same bad odor, har har, as they are in the west. It took a long time for the food to come out, and I envisioned someone in the kitchen washing pee out of the little organs and cursing at the strange Asian tourist ordering kidneys for breakfast instead of the much easier and more profitable cheese omelet. The omelet came out more omeletlike than others we had encountered in this un-omelettish country and was pronounced good. For my dish, the mince (beef I think) was gristly, which I don't mind (what's mince for but to use up the more dubious parts of a critter), but the kidneys (lamb) had not been cored, a problem I'd encountered at fancier places but that still is wrong wrong wrong. These came in a simple but good tomato puree, sided with excellent mash that seemed to be half butter and some wet zucchini under the monicker of "boiled vegetables." On our first walk through the Topkapi park, we'd noticed the (then closed) Museum of Islam and Science; this day it was open, so we went in. Most impressive in scope, but the exhibits consisted of very artful reconstructions and replicas of Arab-invented measuring, surveying, astronomic, and calculating instruments; models of ingenious engines of war and peace from ballistas to steam turbines; and plenty of laboratory glassware. You do know what chemists do in a situation where they don't know what else to do? They make a rude retort. There was a lot of stuff, which we barely had time to look at; but the stuff wasn't original, which should not make a difference but somehow does. To marvel at an elaborate mechanism and read that it's a model the original of which is in the Louvre or the British or somewhere in Hungary or Iran just causes a little feeling of disappointment. The weather had turned gorgeous by the time we reconnected with the crew for the tram trip to Kabatas and the waterside walk to Dolmabahce Palace, the last home of the last sultan and the home (and death site) of the first prime minister Ataturk. It exemplifies 19th century grandeur a l'Europeenne and, though enormous and opulent and though it gets great notices (and came highly recommended by some tourists we met at Topkapi), is just another palace only bigger. The tour takes you through the harem and then the state chambers - culminating in the great hall, with its, if I heard right, second largest crystal chandelier in the world, gift of Queen Victoria herself. Okay, it was interesting in its way, but I'd just as soon have been looking out across the Bosporus in the golden sunlight. We did stay until approximately closing time; bade our friends goodbye; and walked back to Besiktas to see if there were any appropriate ferries we could take for an obligatory trip on the strait (no); and in addition we were caught up in the crowd of a Walk for the Cure event. So we skedaddled out of there and took a bus to Aksaray, a more faceless part of town, slightly dingy but getting nicer but still faceless as you walked back toward the Bazaar and Sultanahmet. So we cut over and found the fish restaurant district ... but lili isn't fond of fish, and there were only the two of us, and I like sharing meals and this is a tourist-trappy constructed attraction if I ever saw one, anyhow, so after poking our nose in a few places (where we were almost bowled over by maitres d' looking for a sale) we went back toward the hotel. Luckily, it didn't get dark until we were at the little park near home, so I didn't fall into a hole or get run over by a taxicab. For dinner we ended up at a place a few blocks from the hotel that we'd been chased from once before by a particularly repellantly oily tout; but this time Efes, hard to come by in this old conservative neighborhood, called louder than the tout, so we dined at the Koy Sofrasi (Sef: Davut Urey). What was characterized as a Big Beer came as a small beer glass filled to the brim, so sort of 0.4L as opposed to the 0.33L of a small one or the 0.5L of a proper big one. I wasn't complaining, as I had good company and the prospect of a good meal. The menu had no English or German, odd for a restaurant that was working hard for tourist Euros; and our proprietor/waiter had little of either, though the few other people hanging around the restaurant were gabbling on in some Germanoid tongue about how terrific the food was. I was immediately suspicious of these people (shills?), but in fact the food was perfectly fine and the prices decent. As we were seated at the front, we could keep abreast of the indefatigable efforts of that same tout; it was vaguely amusing that this person was sufficiently obnoxious and unskilled that he scared away all the potential diners he approached. Eventually the proprietor too over, but even with his more sedate extollings of the wonders of the menu, he was not substantially more successful in encouraging custom. lili had the ground veal kebab, which came with a salad and an intriguing kamut pilaf. My eggplant and lamb was a vegetable stew with a very scanty amount of lamb - plenty of tomatoes, onions, and olive oil gave it flavor, and it was very good despite the dearth of meat. Baklava, which we split, was light on the nuts (bad) but light on the syrup (good). We were tempted by after-dinner drinks and coffee, but there was still a liter of Marmara beer to be consumed back at our place, and so to bed. |
Day 4
I woke at 5 feeling not so much like a sultan but managed to get ready and drag my bag upstairs around 5:30 (the cab was called for 5:45). I went up to lili's room, two more flights up, and in the time it took to get up there and escort her down, a minivan had come and the night manager had loaded my bag into it. Only it wasn't the right conveyance - it was headed for the other airport with other people, and I snatched my bag out just in time. Our cab, a regular one, came just a little late. We'd been promised that our fare would be 30 ... on arrival the meter read something like 30.45; he asked for 30; I gave him 35. The airport was buzzing, and only one TK chicken was working. Furthermore, people were cutting in line - some brazenly, some masterfully - for security. Chaos. Beware old imams who pretend not to know anything. Especially when they have canes. Especially when they have canes and large middle- eastern looking escorts. This time we had no contretemps at screening (the screener did throw some checkpoint louse out of line, which provoked much approval from the crowd) and got to the gate just around boarding time, only to see the display flashing "30 minute delay." We had just secured a couple places together in the lobby (there is no Star lounge in the domestic part of IST) when we heard them calling boarding all rows. So much for 30 minute delays. TK2010 IST KSR 0720 0845 321 22BC We got the nonreclining double in front of the exit row, but both of us managed to sleep reasonably well. On TK you can't get the exit row with OLCI. A short flight that came with sweets and coffee; afterward the line for the restroom was huge, so I decided to go look for our van. Discovered there was no re-entry into the area, I tried to get in the departures side, bladder complaining: no luck. So I looked forward to the prospect of an hour plus on a minibus with my eyeballs filling with yellow fluid. And we waited quite a while for someone on the roster who didn't show up; eventually we decided she probably had missed the flight, and the driver drove us off after giving instructions to one of his cohorts on what to do should the person eventually get there. Kayseri is an industrial town, and the landscape, here merely bleak, turns to blasted but otherworldly as one got closer to our destination. The minibus system has evolved peculiarly, with vehicles crisscrossing paths on apparently no particular schedule with rendezvous probably much aided by modern cellular technology. It's a mix and match situation for the passengers, who get traded back and forth between buses depending on their destination, but it seems to work, except that this unfortunate Salvadoran and his wife were caught in between when the next van didn't show up; they were told to get into the car owned by the local tea joint, and the proprietor promised to drive them wherever they were supposed to go, improv at its best. === Our destination, Goreme, is the site of the most famous cave dwellings. I'd expressed interest in inhabiting same, so lili had found us accommodation at the Sultan Cave Suites (as opposed to the Sultanahmet Suites, where we had been in Istanbul). This facility is part of the Kelebek Hotel, the first luxury facility to take advantage of the tourist potential of this area. We were greeted with true Middle Eastern hospitality and were offered breakfast before check-in: breads, cheese, fruit, jams, olives, and beverages, all of exemplary variety, quantity, and quality. The hotel (supposedly, according to the literature) occupies a former cloister carved into the cliffside: the austere monastic cells have now been turned into rather luxurious accommodations. In order to afford these, we took one suite in contrast to our usual splurgy practice of getting two rooms (beforehand lili had sent me a link to photos of our digs, which looked big enough so we could have our privacy as necessary). It turned out to be enormous, luxurious, and modernly appointed. On negotiating the staircases and twisty turns on the way from the office, first we encountered the dining area in front, a patio with a nice little table that might seat four; then the anteroom, with an armoire and an antique chest of drawers, as well as plenty of room for lounging around, but no chairs; off that the front bedroom, quite attractive, with a queen-size bed; then the bath, about the size of your ordinary motel room, with a whirlpool, an old-style sink (with no drain, but I didn't notice that until I used it) such as we saw in the harem of the Dolmabahce, a modern sink, a smallish but adequate shower, and a toilet with about 15 of feet space in front. Upstairs to the living room, with an apparently nonworking fireplace, and then the back bedroom, up two giant steps (they should have made 3 steps, maybe 4); this was actually inside the cliff proper and very cozy, fitting the king bed with not an enormous amount of space to spare. In respect of my Lasix habit, lili took this room. After getting settled we walked downtown and then the extra kilometer or two to the open-air museum, a former Orthodox monastery carved into the mushroom rocks, with frescoes in some of the churches dating back to the 7th century (though the nice ones, done in tempera, were maybe 4 or 5 hundred years later). This is said to be the quintessential cave community, and it was amazing. On a clear day, which this was, you can stay forever. We stayed until we got tired of having bonked our heads on the short doors and until our feet hurt, having seen many chapels, many frescoes, and many tourists. Camels, too. Across the road, outside the museum proper, there's a bigger church, dear to me because it has a painting of St. Michael in it. And beyond is the community tucked into the cliffs and mushroom rocks from which the monastery got its clientele. The walk back, though largely downhill, seemed harder and longer, and so when we got back to town we strolled through the streets of downtown at a relaxing tourist's pace, poking our noses into stores and restaurants and making plans for the evening's entertainment. After this surprisingly refreshing activity, we had the energy to climb up the hill behind town for a lovely view of the open-air museum and its nearby valleys. We came down as it was getting cold and dark and stumbled into a restaurant called Silk Road, on the main drag, and, as it turns out, recommended in Lonely Planet. As tourist season was winding down, there were only a couple other tables occupied; and as it was cold, portable heaters were deployed and welcome. lili had the traditional warming comfort meal of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich, neither of which was quite the same as what one had when one was a kid, and hurray for that. I had the famous Cappadocian pottery stew - you lop off the top of the jug, and all this delicious lamb and juice bubble out, making a mess, in anticipation of which they put a paper napkin under the pottery, and the juices make a mess of that, too. This version was lamb, zucchini, eggplant, and potatoes in 1/3" dice (the potatoes twice that size), in a thin brothy tomato sauce. Pretty good. For her: cheap red wine; for me, Efes. We returned slowly and satisfiedly to our room, where I showered with the Kelebek Hotel's custom-made thyme soap. Made me imagine I was a stew myself. There's a mosque just down the way. Its auto-muzzein was out of synch with itself, and the canonic effect was amusing or annoying ... our quarters were not so soundproof as one might wish of a cave, and my front room was downright noisy at times, with revelers coming and going through the night. |
The same breakfast as before, only as we were at prime time
we were reduced to picking up our food in the regular room cafeteria-style and moving it to the restaurant next door. One does eat a bit less under this system, I admit. We'd mulled over the possibilities for exploring the region. It is said to be possible to use the bus system as described before, but one might have to stand around a bit or even be put in a situation similar to that of our Mesoamerican colleagues the other day; car rental is a possibility; or, for not too much money, one can take a tour. Okay. We reported to the parking lot at 8, where our young guide Adem, who also had learned his English in the military, met us with the minibus and driver. As usual, lili took seat 1A, and I necessarily took 1B (we did switch between us, but nobody else got the prime seats, ever). Our first destination was actually within walking distance - the Rose Valley, so called because at dusk the failing light tints the cliff walls - in the morning, you don't get this effect, but on the other hand you see stuff: vertiginous cliff dwellings (apparently in use until the 1920s, when there was a mass trade between Turkey and Greece, each sending its ethnic minority to its place of origin), slot canyons, exotic fruit trees now gone wild. Adem was both knowledgeable and enthusiastic as well as a good hiker. Oddity: right before a slot canyon, in the middle of nowhere, there was a little makeshift pub under a tent, selling mostly pomegranate juice at not-too-inflated prices but decorated with wine fiaschi, so they must sell that too. Having been suitably tired out by a several kilometer walk, we trooped meekly to the bus for our next destination, Pasabaglari, home of the most striking mushroom formations (the tourist brochure photos are mostly of this place) but now quite overrun with vendors of rugs, knickknacks, camel rides, Fanta, ... . we were given half an hour here, which was fine, as though one might want to go off and explore at length, there were just so many touts and shops that one's thought was mostly to get out of there as soon as possible. Of course, there was the obligatory visit to a craft store: this was an actually pretty good one, Kaya Seramik in Avanos, the famous pottery center on the Red River (source of a distinctive red clay since Hittite times). Adem had shown himself to be quite a rug enthusiast so this stop instead of one to a rug store was slightly puzzling, until we saw the handiwork here, which was exquisite. After the tour of the workshop and a demonstration, we were given ample time in the company store, which had everything from museum- quality handpainted work (3 to 6 months' attention by an individual artisan, if the guide-demonstrator was to be believed) to middle-of-the-road stuff, to mass-produced everyday ware whose only handcraftsmanship was the word Avanos scrawled onto the bottom of the pieces. Our group bought exclusively from the last category. We returned to Goreme for lunch at Aydede restaurant, apparently a mecca for tour guides - the place was crowded with groups, and many travelogues of the region mention it. Not bad, the appetizers much better than the main course. Our meze included yogurt, which I didn't taste; hummus, quite good; lentil-tomato patties, rather spicy and my favorite dish of the meal; and some diced eggplant-potato stuff served cool. The main was pottery chicken, overcooked and not nearly so good as the pottery lamb at the other place. Semolina pudding, a riff on cream of wheat, for dessert. More Efes, more cheap red wine. It is said that one shouldn't leave Cappadocia without visiting an underground city, so our tour took us to the second most famous and second largest, Kaymakli. The other, whose name I'm not sure of (Denizli?), is twice as big and has two more levels down and is said to be overkill. The cities were originally constructed in early Christian times under the threat of various sorts of marauding and rapine; then they were mysteriously abandoned and forgotten and were rediscovered just in the last century and half or so - and more are still being found. Anyhow, imagine a rabbit warren seven or more layers deep, but with passages big enough for humans. Imagine the amount of effort went into their making and the terrible things outside that would cause people to live in these conditions. I was impressed by the structure and what it said about the human will to survive under the most adverse circumstances. Speaking of adverse, I was getting a little parched by the time we emerged from Kaymakli, and the Kocabag wine-tasting room was most welcome as the last stop on our trip. Opened for tasting: Emir white, a neutral, pleasant wine, slightly too sweet for me; Kapadokya, a blend of the local grapes Bogazere and Okuzgozu - uncomplicated but also pleasant, and not too expensive at about L20 a bottle; Kalecikkavasi, the premium wine - made of Rhone and Bordeaux varietals, this cost twice as much as the above, but aside from being plummy while the other was cherryish, and having a bit more body and perhaps depth, the difference was not substantial. I got 2 bottles of Kapadokya, figuring they would come in handy someday. We were dropped off at the hotel, from which we went back into town and dined at the Local restaurant (that's its name), which had come highly recommended and, importantly, had a fireplace. We asked to sit by the fire, as the temperature had begun to plummet. I ordered Sultan steak, essentially about a half pound sirloin smothered in sour cream and mushrooms - sort of a deconstructed stroganoff; lili ordered lamb chops. A language contretemps - we asked for our food rare, and the waiter, confused, called over the owner, who translated for him - the word he used sounded like "ipshmish." Unfortunately, it all came out medium well, so we had to call him over again and explain again, after which he apologetically offered to take our plates back. lili decided that there was some charm in medium-well lamb chops, so only my steak went back, shortly replaced by a more satisfactory one. It was all done in seemingly good humor, and we did I think leave enough money. But for future reference, any Turkic speakers out there who could tell me what the real word for "rare" is - and what "ipshmish" really means? |
The plan was to use this as a random walk day, but it was a
really drizzly gray morning, so we stayed in extra long before finally deciding to check out another town - so we walked to the town square, where we found that the next bus was to Nevsehir. Whatever; the round trip was only 2 or 3 lira, so no great loss any way. It's about a 20 min ride, and we alit in a bustling and very foreign-feeling town. I believe that none of those we encountered here spoke any English at all, and why would they? Tourists are few and far between as there's little to distinguish the place, despite having been claimed to be the site of the Roman city Nyssa. On the hilltop overlooking the city is the now mostly unmaintained castle, which shows signs of having had some tourist-oriented sprucing up several decades ago, but in order to get there (which we wanted to do ever since espying it in the distance from near the bus stop, which is just a collecting and distribution point on a shop-jammed street downtown) we had to negotiate disused, rocky, and steep tracks that at one point may have been actual paths. The castle so-called is actually a Byzantine fortification built to lord it over one of the branches of the Silk Road; I suppose there was nothing for it to do after a while, so it fell into disuse. There wasn't a whole lot for us to see, so we went back down via a set of steps that petered out a few tantalizing and overgrown yards from an actual street, found a several-hundred-year-old Orthodox shrine that is now just a target of graffiti, saw a rather nifty Monument to Peace in one of the main squares, toured a nondescript residential section of town, and rode the bus back. The main reason for our not having lunch here (doner kebap at 3 TL and looking pretty good - quite a bargain) was that there was no beer available anywhere we saw in town. Our first order of business on returning to Goreme was hitting the grocery store for Efes Xtra (sort of the Turkish equivalent of Bud Ice) and Efes dark (ditto Amber Bock) and a bottle of local Turasan wine, which had a picture of the rock formations on it. The restaurant Dibek, in the former stables of a 475-year- old building, had caught my eye, so we went inside. A small child greeted us and apparently said that it would go upstairs and fetch its parents; presently some guy came down and seated us in a very ornate and darkly atmospheric room that appeared empty but turned out to also be housing a young Japanese couple smooching in the corner. lili ordered manti - these came as little coarse dumplings stuffed with who knows what, swimming in an extremely sour yogurt flavored copiously with dried mint. It was probably pretty authentic, but neither of us much liked it. Guvec here was an essentially meatless eggplant stew, but not bad. I'd take the atmosphere here and the food at Silk Road any day, but we don't have that pick and choose luxury. We went home to consume our beer acquisitions and lounged about a while - it was still not nice enough to do much more exploring. As Fat Boys is just down at the bottom of the hill, on this side of town, that's where we had what passed for dinner: she ordered a burger, which turned out to be a weird kofte thing; I just had beer. Pleasant stroll up the hill home, where my bed felt really good despite some of the cave ceiling having crumbled onto the covers (a hazard, one supposes, of living in a cave). |
Our agency had booked us a Metro (one of the major brands in
these parts) bus at 8:30 that turned out to be a shuttle van to the Nevsehir bus depot, which in contrast to the local station is a large and impressive edifice, recently built a ways out of town for the benefit of the longhaul trade; its architecture, modern in a sort of folkish way, reflects the mushroomy rock formations for which the region is famous. Here we waited for the big bus, which showed up late enough that we were given that little frisson of uncertainty as to whether it would show up but early enough to make the 9:30 scheduled departure, plus or minus a few (plus). As the bus is to the rural Cappadocians what air travel is to us, service is fairly elaborate; there are two attendants in addition to the driver, with frequent offerings (free) of tea/coffee/water; about a third of the way to Ankara we had a snack, the rather Twinkie-like Solen Luppo Tropic, whose supposedly chocolate filling had long been absorbed by the dryish cake. The road to Ankara may look like a superhighway on the map, but it's a pitted relic, sometimes four lanes, sometimes two lanes with two more in construction, sometimes just the two lanes, plus you get to hope for two more for your next trip. So it's 4 hours and change for about a 130-mile trip, counting stopping in every town plus being flagged down once by someone at an intersection in the middle of nowhere. We had a rest stop; while the others were filing into the facility for toilets and Turkish delight, I stayed outside looking at the big bleak lake in the distance and the less than welcoming sign that advised tourists of what to do in the unlikely event of a bandit attack. Ankara has a huge depot, the Heathrow of bus stations. Luckily it's reasonably well signed (in Turkish), plus I'd read that the taxi stand was at the far side of the place, so it was easy to find a cab to the citadel, about a half hour trip, where we dropped our stuff off at Angora House, the only hotel inside the citadel proper. The attendant spoke not a single word of English but smiled nicely and gave us our room keys with good grace. lili's room on the second floor was pleasantly reminiscent of the guest room at a friend's house; mine, on the third, was darker and spookier and reminded one of the guest room at one's grandmother's house, if one's grandmother happened to be a rich Turk. Both rooms had two beds, and I suppose we could have economized had we thought to do so, Ankara being somewhat more cosmopolitan than the rest of the interior. It hadn't started to rain yet, so we did a short examination of the neighborhood, including the extremely uninviting and disused fortress on the crest of the hill. Interesting that the capital of the most important country in the region has this instant attraction, and it just sits there moldering. Nice views from near there over the city, though. After a bit of this we hied ourselves to the Museum of Anatolian Civilization, which was just down the hill a (rather strenuous especially on the uphill return) quarter mile. Amazing place, of which it's claimed as having the world's greatest collection of Hittite artifacts (and a pretty good assortment of neolithic, Ephesian, Roman, Hellenistic, what have you - all the civilizations that have left their mark on Cappadocia. We soaked it all up for over an hour and then returned to the hotel and the restaurant next to it - I never found out the name, but its address is Kalekapisi Sok. 16, in case anyone's in the neighborhood. There was something Fawlty about the place from the very beginning. We were steered away from the apparently busy downstairs (a bar I think) and sent to a deserted upper floor, open to the outside; presently we were joined by a pair of Russians who were sent diagonally to the opposite end of the fairly large room. Service, such as it was, came from the proprietor, who trekked up the stairs from time to time as he saw fit. First we ordered one wine and one beer, as usual, and what came out was the usual red ink and Efes. Then we tried to order appetizers, but everything we ordered was out: the ritual was. Oh, we'll get the X; then he went downstairs to fetch X and returned with the news that X was out. Then this procedure was repeated with Y, Z, and the main courses. Once we found out by trial and error what on the printed menu was actually available (not much), food was quite good. I had lamb stew (et guvec), and aside from the meat being a tad chewy, it was excellent; lili's shishkebab was also nice. I'm guessing that someone's wife was cooking whatever she felt like downstairs and passing the savings on to us. The Russians didn't seem thrilled with the treatment and decided to leave, so we were the only ones again in the restaurant, and it was getting cold. Eventually the proprietor came by with some raki, and all was well. It was only a 50-foot stagger to the hotel, though the steep and now dark and wet steps were a bit of a hazard. We used the hotel computer to try to check in for our flights. There was no problem with mine, but lili was unable to check in at all. Called UA on a fading-in-and-out cell signal: a 20 minute roaming call mostly related to getting her upgrade straightened out - the 1K desk read the dread computer-generated note "not supported by a Mileage Plus member"; as I was the supporting member, and as I'd signed the bluey in Los Angeles with lili watching, some months ago, I too extreme exception to that, and after a bit of effort on both ends, her check-in was completed - with her restored to the waitlist, but in a most unadvantageous position. That was all the very apologetic agent could do. I was suitably miffed by this, but the bottle of Turasan Cappadocia 06 red that we'd picked up in Goreme helped out a bit: it was a bit too acidy and light cherryish, but not bad: probably more of that Okuzgozu and Bogazkere stuff. |
During the night there was a huge intense thunderstorm.
The setting was rendered extra spooky by spates of gloomy dark punctuated by giant crashing bolts of fire. A black cat would have made the picture complete, but there was that restaurant next door. (joke) I was glad that 1. there was a taxi stand at the entrance to the citadel and that 2. I'd made a reservation for an early early cab to the airport: quote TL55. The guy was right on time, and we loaded up quickly in the rain. I think I caught a few words between the night manager and the driver to the effect that there had been a couple lightning strikes on the hill during the night. The trip was gloomy and rainy, with the driver contributing a few single-word descriptions of the places we were passing, in somewhat understandable French or totally incomprehensible English. He seemed unduly impressed by the factories we passed as we neared the airport, reciting each name as though it were a station of the cross or on the road to national prosperity or something. It had been a fast ride up the deserted expressway, and when we got there the meter read 54. I gave the guy that plus all the rest of our lira, about 5, which made him almost dance with glee. Check-in, via a TK agent, was pretty easy, except I couldn't get a boarding pass for FRA-ORD - all three of lili's BPs printed out just fine, but no upgrade. It was suggested that we work our issues out with a UA rep in Frankfurt. We had an hour to enjoy the Millennium Lounge, nicely catered with breakfasty things. I sampled most of the cookies, some vaguely salty, some vaguely sweet, all very shortbready. lili liked the chocolate chip ones; I was pleased by a kind that tasted like halvah, but not so sweet. There was an assortment of HA RE liqueurs - the usual mint, almond, coffee things and a couple less normal ones, rose I think for instance. Long John Scotch wasn't so bad, other from possessing that normal cheap booze characteristic of tasting like licking an ashtray. The house beer was a name I didn't recognize, starting with B. I believe it too was brewed by Efes. Other things that I just had to try: cola-flavored vodka, which wasn't so bad; and red wine of the usual rotguttish sort, only this time presented in a nice carafe. We didn't bother boarding until they made the announcement in the club, by which time the line was snaking out fifty feet past security. Again there was a problem with security line crashers, only this time the guards just sort of shrugged. LH3363 ESB MUC 0615 0815 321 6AC We were assigned A and C in the same row and had hoped for a blocked middle, but it turned out to be a surprisingly jam-packed flight - when we arrived we found a headscarfed young woman in B who happily traded for the aisle. Breakfast was an okay cold cut plate that included something that looked sort of like ham, but I think was turkey ham or something; our seatmate poked suspiciously at it and put it aside. We got to MUC in time to check out the Senator Cafe, which is quiet and nice but no self service. They were pouring a rather better standard of red - the Nipozzano Chianti from Frescobaldi. Breakfast orders were taken at the counter; I didn't have any of that stuff but contented myself with a nice sour cream poppy seed cake and a very ripe kiwi. |
to do (CHI seminar)
LH 967 MUC FRA 0955 1100 321 24BC
Originally we'd been assigned 21D and 22A, but I'd got us exit row, which was reasonably pleasant. The flight was very short. I don't recall where I was or to whom I posed the question of my mysteriously unprintable BP, butI was informed that this happened all the time, and the Tower Lounge had a dedicated UA lady, and that I should check there. How to cross the border sans document? A quick explanation with a harried, confused look and a verification of the number of the flight worked nicely. lili went off to stake out territory in the very crowded lounge, while I worked with the dedicated UA lady, who offered the welcome news that lili's upgrade had been processed and the less welcome news that her assigned seat was the one just behind mine, with the galley between. Okay, that news was less welcome to me; I didn't ask her opinion. Not possible at this late time to assign two seats together, but a note would be made in the record. I sought lili out in the lounge; she'd ordered me a chicken panino, the only variety that didn't have obvious dairy product. I sent her off to check in at the desk. And was immediately drawn to the Campari lady, who was fixing Campari sodas with orange juice. It clashed badly with the sandwich, so I got me a glass of Blaufranksch. UA 941 FRA ORD 1245 1505 777 9DE Ch9:td: Empower^ Luckily the guy in 9E wasn't too tall and wasn't so attached to his seat, and the trade was easily made - 9E for 11D. A pleasant mostly black cabin crew. to begin Smoked Tyrolean beef and Roma salami with tomato, mozzarella and pesto and Fresh seasonal greens - classic Caesar or roasted garlic red wine vinaigrette All these things were okay and as advertised, the beef being dry, tough, and gamy, the salami rather fatty and therefore better. main course Grilled filet mignon with shiitake Port demi-glace - garlic mashed potatoes with chives and a carrot zucchini saute Utterly mediocre, except that the garlic mash tasted pretty good and soaked up the gravy nicely - no discernible Port or shiitake in this, though. The meat was although pink in the middle some of the most tasteless protein I have ever encountered. Sort of like solid water. Roasted chicken with sweet chili sauce - mixed pepper risotto and green beans with sun-blushed tomatoes Asparagus cannelloni with tomato cream sauce dessert International cheese selection - Bavarian bleu, red Cheddar Specialty dessert As usual, this was ice cream. midflight snack Mini Toblerone candy; Walkers shortbread cookies - please help yourself to assorted snacks located near the galley prior to arrival Tuscan-style wrap sandwich - herb marinated chicken, salami and cheese with tomato and kalamata olives Cheese plate with fresh seasonal fruit - Cheddar, Brie, Chaumes Today's menu features beef from South America Champagne Pommery brut royal NV Champagne white wine Selbach Riesling Kabinett "Feinherb" Mosel, Germany 2007 or Kapuka Sauvignon Blanc 2008 Marlborough Jean-Claude Fromont Chablis 2008 or Errazuriz Chardonnay 2008 Casablanca, Chile red wine Altos "R" Tempranillo 2007 Rioja or Cave La Suzienne Racines Profondes 2007 AOC Cotes-du-Rhone Finca La Escondida Reserva Malbec 2007/2008 San Juan beverages Aperitifs, cocktails, spirits, liqueurs and beer Sandeman Founders Reserve Porto will be offered during the main meal's dessert. STARBUCKS coffee will be available throughout the flight. A perfectly fine flight all round, if one discounts the food, which was as expected. |
Global Entry vs. the real thing: even with the rather long
line, it made 5, maybe 10 minutes difference. lili and I were supposed to meet at the restrooms at the end of the bag claim, so I went straight on there. I waited for 5 or so when someone informed me that the ladies' room was out of service. So I wandered around and eventually went outside to see if she had left. The door guard guy understandably wouldn't let me back in but let me stay just outside and peer in. At some point, getting tired of this, I collared a UA employee whose badge had the promising word "Beer" on it to go inside and check the vicinity of the ladies' room - she came back reporting negative, so, not having much better to do, I stayed put. 15 minutes later I saw lili pacing just inside the secured area as I was pacing outside, and after a joyful reunion we went on to the Hilton, where I got what was called a junior suite: actually a huge and featureless room with the ordinary furniture spread out on the edges, an architectural and interior decorative enigma. Despite the size of the living area, it had a smallish bathroom. We were supposed to meet my friend the Dodger for dinner at six; he was quite late, but that didn't detract from the pleasure of seeing him. As we were on that side of the hotel and kind of tired of Andiamo (which I persist in calling Andale), we headed for the Gaslight Club, which is less crowded and has better food. A throwback to the days when men went to man caves for their steaks and Bourbon and cigars, this is one of the last bastions of a genre that was epitomized by the Playboy Club in the '60s and '70s. Our waitress was appropriately buxom and scantily clad, the Russian bartenders or managers or whatever appropriately adding just a touch of thuglike menace the way a shake of hot sauce adds to an omelet. lili had the filet, which was done as ordered, tasty, and tender. To test my hypothesis that Wiener Schnitzel is better the farther you are from Vienna, I had one: it was pretty good. The Dodger deemed the duck breast excellent. The bill was not too huge, even with various drinks at the usual absurd markups. |
ORD MR seminar do
In the morning we met up for breakfast before going out
to find this fabled Holiday Inn shuttle. The continental was part of my diamondness kowtow, and we were pleased at the price (0), the quality, and the selection, which was a lot more generous than most continentals, including as it did breafast meats and I recall some egg preparation as well as the usual dreary round of pastries and unripe fruit. Too the shuttle bus with a bunch of other FTers to the Holiday Inn Elk Grove, where we found registration and socializing in full swing. The manager invited us to breakfast, even though it was really past time, so we had another breakfast, this time steam table scrambled eggs (okay), sausage (spongy and weird), and home fries (bad). Danish on the side; two kinds of orange juice, one okay, one bad. The easier-to-use dispenser had the worse-tasting. Later we discovered that we might have saved the DO organizers a couple bucks if had refused the meal, which we probably should have done. As we are both IC Nothing and arrived late to boot, we got the slimmest of pickings - smoking rooms, mine overlooking the highway, hers the parking lot. Though I have known him for a decade or more, I'd never attended VJ's presentation, which was nicely done, though the scaling up by an order of magnitude made it less interactive than he was accustomed to - and when the interactions took place, they had more the nature of highjackings than anything else. Happens when the population is largely made up of know-it-alls. Pizza for lunch - I can't eat much cheese, and what I tasted of the pizza was below average. In the afternoon we had an energetic and worthwhile advanced seminar by wannaflyforless, which I thought the meatiest part of the weekend. Certainly the pizza wasn't. At 6 there was a bus to Pappadeaux for a dinner organized by UpgradedFirst; lili was feeling crummy, and it's just as well she didn't go, as most of the food was of the fishy persuasion, the alternative being a slightly higher order of rubber chicken. satori sat at our end of the table and spilled the beans on his hotel points presentation for the next day. Food: I ordered the seafood platter, which was altogether too much food and a little too little sea: stuffed crab, stuffed shrimp, crabcake, fried catfish, fried shrimp, in order of my preference. I wasn't thrilled by the stuffed things: there was a lot of breading in all three of the preparations. But the seafood itself was pretty nice. After the initial welcome adult beverage, every boozal thing was a la carte, and a couple beers did not come cheap. After this massive pig-out, bed was extra welcome. |
I like your writing style. It made me Hungary for a trip to Turkey. Thanks for a fine accounting of your travels, remarkably and admirably accomplished without a single photograph!
|
I'm notoriously unvisual and don't even have a camera -
when tourists hand me theirs with the request to snap their picture (this happens reasonably often, as I am Asian and thus must be an expert with cameras, right), I'm often beside myself with anxiety about figuring out which button to push, and so on. |
Identical breakfast to the previous day. In his hotel tips
seminar, satori shared his experiences, many of which he had tipped his hand on on the previous night at dinner! It was enjoyable nonetheless. Followed by a giant cold cut sub lunch, to which I said bah humbug and joined KMA26, the_happiness_store, and El_Chiflero for beers ($2) and burgers, which were pretty good, at Old Chicago, the hotel restaurant. Legends of FT was very amusing: Pudding Guy, wannaflyforless again, mrpickles, gleff, and beaubo; each of these proffered an amusing and sometimes edifying side to this peculiar obsession of ours. I savored every moment of this one. There was this bus thing to Jameson's for dinner, but lili was still a little under the weather, and by the time we got our act together, it was way gone. We joined up with Frenchie Flyer and her +1 (Texas Viking), who had a car. It's a nice midrange steakhouse; I sneaked a peek into the back room and noted that the tables were overfull already, so we stuck with the four-top they gave us instead of joining the crowd. lili and I split a big porterhouse and some Rodney Strong Merlot; both were good. Via a complex coupon connection-like switch with our friends she ended up with onion soup, I got cream of chicken rice, and Frenchie Flyer and +1 got salads with their burgers, something they were not apparently entitled to without paying a supplement. |
It's always a letdown after a Do.
lili and I were staying an extra day to enjoy the city and also getting much-needed Hilton stay credit. This involved much use of hotel transportation and just a little bit of shenanigans, during which we had some more time constraints. Our plan was to take this shuttle to the other shuttle and then the third shuttle to the CTA so we could spend the day downtown. It sort of worked out. We just missed a scheduled trip to the airport and happily espied a hotel van in the driveway, whose sullen driver indicated he was going "nowhere." Okay, whatever. Eventually a functioning one came and got us to ORD, and then we flagged down the other shuttle (Thrifty Rent-a-Car, which subcontracts to the Hampton Inn next door). lili needed a Hilton stay but wasn't going to stay the night, so as I need no more Hilton stays she checked me into the Hampton, getting the credits, Orbitz-like, while I actually occupied the room. The first room, supposedly nonsmoking, smelled like a chimney, so on application she (I) was upgraded to a room on the top floor with a somewhat nicer desk and a somewhat worse view. The elite amenity: an Oreo 6-pack and a liter of Ice Mountain water. As it was just before 10, they hadn't taken away breakfast - Western omelet and extremely shatteringly crisp bacon along with the usual continental-type things; in addition lili had a waffle from one of those self-serve machines, with some pretty nasty fake syrup. She dropped off her bag, we washed up, and off on another great adventure, which owing to the lateness of the hour and the crankiness of all the shuttle drivers and the even slower than normal behavior of the Blue Line was restricted to the Art Institute. It's all right, I really like the Art Institute and could spend all day there. It has changed quite a bit since I was last there, which was I believe when the Dodger first got his appointment at Northwestern, so that was a long time ago (after a good career there he moved to U of C, where he's been for a decade). So I had a hard time finding things for an efficient tour of the place. Saw the sights as best we could in half a day (a special pilgrimage to Nighthawks, of which we saw a 3-D homage in Rome earlier this year and side trips to American Gothic, La Grande Jatte, and Van Gogh's self portrait complete with ear). I was more interested in Impressionists, but she is sort of tired of them, so we compromised and spent an inordinate time in Modern. We didn't want to cut it too close, so we got on the L before rush hour: back to the hotel, pick up her bag, back to the airport. Interestingly, the shuttle drivers got more cheerful as the day went on. I used one of the many standard methods of getting through security and joined her at the F RCC for some of that Concannon. The bartender, who talked more like a college student FTer than an RCC drone, said that his fiancee, who works for American Eagle, had noted that the Admiral's Club had gone to free booze, so we decided to check it out. That story was indeed true, but the wine was worse than the RCC stuff. On a lark I hunted for the drink coupons we'd hidden the last time we were there together - there was still one, dated September something, in the hiding place. lili rehid it elsewhere. Oh, to be young and living dangerously. I saw her off at the gate, where boarding was just about over but she still got her originally assigned seat in F. Toddled back via the Thrifty shuttle to the hotel, where I promptly collapsed, waking up many hours later in a state of modest disarray. Back to the club to spend a few coupons before they expired forever. premium A glass of Perrier-Jouet Grand Brut made a nice breakfast: lemony, crisp, nice bubbles, and a grapefruit-peel finish. A good deal for two soon-to-be-worthless chits. premium 312 Urban Wheat ale - very much like Blue Moon but maybe a little less spicy. complimentary Concannon Merlot 08 - pretty decent, berries and cherries, a little sweet, slightly coffeeish. Not much finish. premium Forefront by Pine Ridge Pinot Noir (Willamette) 08 - typical - a tad sweet, cherry nose meaty-cherry-plum on the palate; plum finish. premium Tierra Secreta Malbec (Mendoza) 08 - raisins and stems on the nose, pleasing, a bit too acid on the tongue, meaty, long finish, consistent raisin skin character from beginning to end. I didn't have the stomach to check out the other two premium offerings, Ch. Bonnet Rouge (Bordeaux) 05 and Joel Gott 815 Cabernet (California). Speaking of stomach, I needed to fill it, so I headed for the hated Manchu Wok for a respectable spicy tofu and a Mongolian beef that could almost have qualified as vegetarian, as it was mostly mushrooms. |
to the BoXer DO
UA 652 ORD BOS 1203 1517 320 2D Ch9^ Empower:td:
On this flight we had poker-faced but reasonably attentive FAs, both of which traits please me: I'm not in favor of 20-somethings with IQs the temperature of dishwater who prance and dance and smile and get my order wrong, no matter what their other endowments may be. Warm nuts, cold Courvoisier. As it was a noon flight, there was no way even United could deny a meal, but it could deny a choice. So everyone got "cream of corn" soup - this tasted heavily cumined but had little other flavor and just a few dried-up kernels swimming around; not bad for that; a chicken breast (large, very dry) on salad consisting of lettuce, yellow and red peppers, olives, canned Mandarin orange segments, almonds, and edamame, with Conway's altogether too familiar sesame ginger dressing; Vita Vigor breadsticks; and the expected and welcome chocolate chip cookie. Random notes: In the chatter I discovered that a rather hard blonde FA had been in the air on 9/11/01. There's a new show on the IFE: House. We landed on time, maybe early, and I alit to a nice autumn day, a nip in the air. Boston has free wi-fi, so I checked Hotwire for an airport hotel, as all the regular channels reported back horrid prices. I ended up with the Red Roof Inn, Saugus, okay but hard to get to, with neither public trans nor airport shuttle. It's sort of Hamptonish, but a little lower-class. The oddest thing was there was this rather spooky guy in the lobby when I checked in at 5 pm; at 5 am checkout he was still there, pacing around. The best thing about the place is that it's next door to the Midwest Grill. I didn't feel like the whole AYCE churrascaria thing, so I asked the very pleasant waitress for just picanha and rice: $8.95 for a pound of meat, $3.95 for rice, $4.50 for a Sam, and I was happy. UA 897 BOS IAD 0933 1116 320 1D Ch9:td: Empower:td: Had a preternaturally jolly agent checking docs. The line was short, as it usually is here. After the rapescan, a TSA lady, unable to find a justification for manhandling me, did so to my passport instead, folding it almost double and wrinkling heck out of it (which it survived; the last time this particular event had happened it had been done by a very grumpy German border official about 5 years ago. RCC new list of freebies: Jim Beam white Seagram's 7 Crown Dewar's white Smirnoff Gilbey's Sauza Extra Gold Cruzan white triple sec dry & sweet vermouth promo cards: Red Stag (a cherry-infused Beam it looks like) Republic of Tea products I chatted with the club staff about the blending of the UA and CO cultures; they were somewhat upbeat except for the possibility of losing some jobs in the merger. During the conversation the question came up - was DL ever in Star? I didn't think so, though it had a codeshare agreement with UA back in the '90s; but one of the longtime agents swore up and down that DL had been part of Star. I don't know how I got the worst first seat in the fleet, but there I was. Got the purser, a pleasant and energetic Hispanic guy, to give me the makings of a hot toddy, as I was getting a bit phlegmmy. Courvoisier goes well in toddy. Four snack services on an hour flight: the basket, augmented with big navel oranges; blueberry muffins; the basket again; then rather large red packages of trail mix. Toddled to the RCC to complete my investigation of the red wine situation only to find that the IAD selections were completely different from the ORD ones: a Matchbook Lake County Malbec that was the most syrupy, Jell-Oish wine I've encountered lately; Wild Rock Pinot Noir (Central Otago) 08 - pretty standard, low concentration, bright fruit, okay; Joseph Carr Cabernet (Napa) 07 - rather nice, dark and musty, bramble fruit, the one most to my taste of the lot; Hewitson "Ned & Henry's" Shiraz (Barossa) 07 - good standard issue wine, a little sweet, so the black raspberry milkshake effect went well with cheese. Hopped the 5A bus - it now costs $6! - to Rosslyn and transferred to the Georgetown bus, as I wanted to visit either Old Glory or Bistro Francais for lunch. I don't recall what tipped the balance, but French it was. Started with a roasted corn soup that bore a strong resemblance to the cream of corn I'd had on the plane - sort of disappointing just for that reason, though not bad food; followed by kidneys in a cream-enriched red-wine demi. These had that same core issue that I periodically fuss about, so at the end of the course I had a little pile of ugly white things on my plate. Almond tart was rather austere but tasted pretty good. Chateau Haut La Pereyre (Entre-deux-Mers) (05 I think) was a pretty elegant glass, classically cassis and pepper, but a little light for the kidneys, especially not quite clean ones. |
last Do
BoXer DO
This was a preemptive farewell to the DCA President's Club and a welcome into the fold, or rather penalty box, for us UA flyers. Started out with those needing access to the club hanging around near the ticket counter so cova could show us how to get gate passes (it turns out that now RCC members have the same status as PC members to get gate passes for the club). The PC, which I'd not been in in recent memory, is rather nicer than the admittedly quite acceptable other Star choices at this airport (RCC in pier B and the USAC in pier C being the others), but the wine, some pineapply purple dreck, is inferior, not that I didn't take three stomach-churning glasses of it. People gradually filtered in, and we ended up with a table of ten-odd, with a couple of satellite tables; the few other guests looked either nervously or wonderingly at us. Thanks to USA18DCA for the idea; it was good to reconnect with renard, chrisw, cova, and scubaflyer again and to meet the rest of you! On to Lauriol, an extremely happening Latinate restaurant, where drinks were reasonable and my duck with orange sauce, though done a bit more than I expect, was classically palatable. Then a mild barhopping: The priapic Madam's Organ, where we invaded the dingy and dilapidated but somehow rather raffish roof, followed by Bourbon (the Adams Morgan bars vie with each other for catchy names, and what's more catchy than Bourbon?), where a glass of Eagle Rare was most welcome. Some of the younger and more vigorous went on elsewhere, but I had public trans to deal with and an early day the next day and so walked renard and Steph3n to the Woodley Park metro, where goodbyes and promises of a rematch were given. Thus ended four weeks of DO-related gyration, which was followed by 3, count 'em days of respite before Star MegaDO. |
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