This weekend, I made a quick trip to Bursa with my friends Mary and Lauren. Mary is leaving Turkey soon, and she wanted to get souvenirs from the silk markets in Bursa. When we left Sarıyer in the afternoon, the skies were dark and grey, and the wind was picking up. We were taking the metro all the way to the end of the line to get to the ferry boat port. When we got to the escalator to the street, it was pouring, and in the three minutes from the metro exit to the street, we were completely soaked. At least it wasn't a cold rain. We took a tiny cab ride to the port (it would have been a 10 minute walk), and arrived with all of the other soggy passengers for the ferry.
Three Hour Tour
There are two boat options: the car ferry and the "sea bus." The sea bus only takes foot passengers while the car ferry takes both. We had thought it might be less hassle to take the sea bus, but we didn't count on it being a much smaller boat that would get buffeted about in the choppy waves. When we got to the Bursa port (about 1.5 hours later), they could not dock safely for nearly 20 minutes. The boat kept rocking and smashing into the wall of the dock. All the impatient passengers were crowded by the stairs, lurching with the boat. We sat, and waited. Just before they let passengers off the boat, these two very young men in pilot?? uniforms exited the front "personnel only" section of the boat. They looked about 14 years old and were blushing pretty deeply. Oh my. Even though passengers could get off the boat, it was still moving unpredictably, and it was a real relief to get back on land!
After we checked into the hotel, Mary and Lauren's first order of business was to buy new shoes--theirs were too soaked. We got that done around 7:30pm, and we started walking around the area looking for a place to eat. Of course, it's Ramazan, and if it hadn't been so close to sunset (8:48pm), we would have found a place relatively easily. There were attractive restaurants all around, but they were set up for the iftar meal. We finally figured out that we would have to wait until sunset, too. By chance, we found a welcoming, small restaurant, with a table for three on the patio. The other lucky part was the iftar menu wasn't meat heavy. We sat and waited for another 15 minutes, others have been waiting since sunrise by the way, for the canon to sound the end of fasting.
On Saturday morning, the souvenir shopping extravaganza began! Bursa has countless intertwined covered markets, passages, and hans. Each han is a remnant of the Silk Road, where caravans would stop to rest and to sell their goods.
We arrived around 10am, and most shops were just opening up. At the first place, Lauren bought a scarf and when she put the money on the counter, the shopkeeper grabbed it and threw it on the floor. What? Later, at the next shop, Lauren asked the shopkeeper about this and he told us that it was an old tradition to throw the money from the first sale of the day on the floor, just a superstitious gesture, not a comment on Lauren's payment!
Here are a few details from my photos:
Lunch time!
One major item on Mary's agenda was to eat Iskender kebap one last time. Neither Lauren nor I were interested in this, so we had our lunch at the Arkabahçe Cafe (pictured above). We sat with Mary, though, while she enjoyed her meat-fest of a meal:
Lamb, tomato sauce, bread, yogurt, hot pepper; all drenched in browned butter... mercy!
After our late lunch(es), we had a little more time for shopping; then it was time to collect our bags from the hotel, and make the trek back to the ferry port to return to Istanbul. The trip back was much smoother because the only option was the car ferry, not the sea bus. We had seats close to the front windows, so I was able to get a few shots of the approach to Istanbul.
Welcome back!
