"Turkey!?! What on earth made you choose Turkey for your vacation?" That was how most people reacted to our planned holiday, and we realized that most Americans only know Turkey from the movies, like "Midnight Express" and "Lawrence of Arabia" -- how beastly those ugly, cruel Turks treated poor Brad Davis and Peter O'Toole. Actually, before David Munro and I read up about it, we were equally ignorant, but the books we read made it sound exotic and intriguing. And after we spent 10 day there, we discovered that all the bad concepts we ever had about Turkey were completely unfounded. It was clean, safe, friendly and absolutely beautiful. The reason we initially considered Turkey was that it was much cheaper than any other European country and the Dollar was a lot stronger. This proved to be true, but oh, there was so much more:

Chin-up Arriving in Istanbul's Havalamani (airport) at 4:00 PM, we were greeted by an affable, English speaking man named Çinop (pronounced "Chin-up) an ex-tourist guide, current carpet seller (our first of many), and driver for the hotel. On the our drive into the Istanbul, we fell in love with the city. The route took us along the seashore, with hoards of Turks enjoying a Sunday on the beach, and then up the hill into the old part of town, the Sultanhamet section, and to the Ayasofya Pensyons, our first hotel in Turkey. Our initial reaction to the city was completely different from what we expected, but we knew that this was going to be one remarkable town. After getting our room (more about the hotel later) we felt the need to see some of the city, even though we'd had a completely sleepless 22 hours, so we set out to view what was in the vicinity of our hotel.

Tacky Turkey Walking down the hill we stumbled into an "amusement park" (later we found that it was on the grounds of the Topkapi Palace). Now this was definitely not a tourist place, it was a place for the working class Turks. It had a "zoo" (one camel, some ducks and a goat), some simple games (a string with balloons tied between two trees to shoot at with BBs) food (pop corn, cotton candy and something unrecognizable), and a couple pathetic rides; it was truly 'Tacky Turkey'. Even though it was an extremely low grade affair, we never felt it was dangerous (I only regretted that we were the only ones in short pants). It was full of Turk families enjoying themselves, and people smiled at us now and then, but didn't pay much attention to us. It was an fascinating start to our Istanbul experience.

First Impressions We then strolled up to the beautiful park surrounding the Hippodrome, which lies between the Ayasofya Museum and the Blue Mosque. We were immediately approached by a charming young man who asked where we were from and then started an elaborate, chatty conversation with us. After much idle chit chat, he got to the point which was to bring us to his family's (three generations) carpet shop for tea and an explanation of how carpets are made (we didn't have to buy, just come to learn). We pleaded exhaustion (true) and finally broke away, only to be caught later by another friendly fellow with the same purpose. We learned later in our travels how to avoid these nice, but crafty people, for they are everywhere, where there are carpet shops (which is everywhere).

We also learned that these guys are mostly, genuinely friendly people, who would talk to you anyway, but they have a job to do and they do it very well. Anyway, on our stroll we were even more taken with the city, which was breathtakingly beautiful around this area, but we had to retire and get some sleep, so we had a quick 'kabob' supper on a very busy street (as if we hadn't eaten enough during this endless day) and went back to our hotel.

The Dogs of Ayasofya Pensyons It was the only hotel we booked in advance, because we wanted a 'nice' place to go when we arrived in this strange town. It was also the most expensive ($100 for a double room), except for the airport hotel on our final night. It is located behind the Ayasofya Museum and right on the walls of the Topkapi Palace grounds. A whole block of old Ottoman houses were converted and fixed up by the Automobile Association creating an unusual hotel made up of 10 individual houses. Each house has a parlor and living room on the first floor, decorated in the Ottoman style with rich carpets and antique furniture; then the bedrooms are upstairs, like in a real house. It sounds wonderful, and looked wonderful, but we didn't have a good night's sleep either of the nights we stayed there. As tired as we were, we were kept awake by: 1. mosquitoes, 2. the mildew of the old house giving Munro asthma (neither of these problems occurred in any other hotel), and most of all 3. DOGS.

The Topkapi grounds, as well as some of the surrounding streets, were full of stray dogs, which carried on barking contests all night long. Two other things that made this hotel less than satisfactory were that breakfast was not included (unlike every other place we stayed) and that you had to walk up and down a long, cobblestoned hill to get rid of or pick up the room key. Anyway, we switched hotels after two nights and were much happier.

Language, Money, and Cats We realized, early on, that not knowing much Turkish (I had learned a few simple words and phrases and the numbers) was no handicap at all; everyone that deals with tourists speaks English to some degree. Until we traveled into the provinces, I almost never used my Turkish. The money, however, was hard to deal with. $1.00 = about 47,000 Turkish lira (tl). So when one is confronted with a hotel that costs 2 million lira a night, it's a shock until one realizes it's under $50. This problem never really disappeared in the 10 days we were there.

And finally, one of the most unusual things about Turkey, unlike any other country in my knowledge, is the preponderance of public cats.

Everywhere one goes one sees cats, sitting and looking soulful or mysterious, rummaging around, sleeping, but rarely playing because they really have to get on with the business of survival. They aren't scrawny or sickly, but they aren't fat cats, like Max either. They seemed smaller than American cats, but they all do the same, cute feline things. We never sat down to a meal in Turkey (most of them being outside) without at least one cat quietly keeping us company, in hopes of a morsel dropping on the ground, either on purpose or by accident. If you pet one, they are friendly because they don't get much attention, and they are very at ease with people and with other cats. Anyway, being cat lovers it was a treat to have them around, all over the country, so we didn't miss ours so much.

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