A Turkish Delight on a Moonlit Night

Let me say up front, that Istanbul is one of the most amazing places that I have ever been in my entire life. I will qualify this statement later, but first I must relay the story of my journey. It is long, it is mostly unpleasant, but it provides great material.
Time- 5:30 am. I wake up to catch an early taxi to the airport. The ride is uneventful for a Cairo taxi (the cab has seatbelts and there are no "near" collisions). However the cab driver charges me not only for time he stopped to get gas, but also the gas itself. It was only $1 approx, but it's the principle of the thing.
Next, I get to the Cairo airport and experience great confusion over where to check-in, and am passed around from ticket booth to ticket booth until someone figures out that the check-in counter I want is not open. So much for getting to the airport early. In true Egyptian fashion, the ticket booth employees arrive only an hour before boarding time.
A side note: I spent about two hours waiting for the check-in counter to open, and was wowed by the cleverness of the flight announcements. Before announcing a flight to France, they would play Edith Piaf, for Italy, Andrea Boccelli, for Spain, matador music, and so on and so forth.

When I get to the gate, I sit down and wait some more and then the power goes out in the airport. Again, typically Egypt.
The seating area is filled with a group of Japanese who amusedly watch overdramatic Egyptian soap operas, and again I think about the strange situations that globalization creates.
When I finally get on the plane, I am seated next to a most temperamental Australian, who rudely yells at the woman behind him for pushing his seat when she is settling her bags underneath. For the rest of the flight, he continues to be unpleasant.
But it doesn't really matter, because I get to see amazing views of the Mediterranean and Turkey. After being deprived of natural beauty for so long, I almost cry when we pass over the blue sea sparkling with the reflection of the sun, and the Anatolian mountains reaching up into the clouds.

I also get to eat one of the most amazing meals (Turkish airplane food) that I have had in the last two months. That's not saying very much for Egyptian cuisine, by the way.
When I arrive in Turkey, I obtain my visa in thirty seconds flat, but have to wait for almost an hour to go through a passport check. Then when I leave customs, I see dozens of people waving signs for passenger pick-up, but I do not see my name. After half an hour I almost give up hope, and ask a tourist information desk worker about alternate routes to my hotel. He suggests the subway, and I politely decline, and decide to wait a little longer for my hotel shuttle. Fortunately, my persistance pays off.

(now I'm going to switch to past tense, because I'm tipsy, and I'm not sure I can handle present tense any longer . . . too confusing!)
Good thing I waited, because I was able to enjoy the company of a Swiss woman and her teenage son who are vacationing at my hotel and had just arrived from Zurich for their week long getaway.
The ride was a long one despite the fifteen kilometer distance, and I was able to see Istanbul in the way only a long car ride can give. The city is very modern, very European, and (with Egypt as my reference point) very very clean. As for the people, we passed school girls, men in business suits, Aeropostle-clad teenagers, light-skinned mothers wearing hijab hurrying their blond children down the street, and women wearing short skirts and tight shirts. At the risk of sounding like an Orientalist, it really seems like a place where East meets West. Fitting for a city that straddles two continents and was once the focal point of an empire that stretched across three.
How do I describe Istanbul? Or, specifically the area around my hotel, that encompasses the "old city?" I would have to say, for those of you who have been to Georgetown, or another quaint cobblestone colonial (i.e. 17th, 18th century) neighborhood or city on a body of water; just imagine it with some Islamic architecture, and you pretty much have the general picture. In other words, it is adorable.

To end my day, I decided to treat myself to a celebratory dinner at a ethnic fusion restaurant right down the street from my hotel. The place was as nice as one of the trendiest restaurants in Manhattan, and the decor was very contemporary.

I ordered myself a nice glass of white wine, and a kebab platter with rice which was amazing, making it the second meal today that ranks on the top four meals I have eaten in the last two months.
For those of you interested, here's the list:
1) Marriot Hotel-Zamalek, Cairo
2) Mrs. Keshk's house- Maadi, Cairo
3) Dubb ethnic cuisine- Istanbul
4) Turkish airlines food- 40,000 feet above sea level.

Afterward, emboldened by a little bit of alcohol, I decided to walk the area around my hotel and found a Turkish bazaar. It was just what I would expect from a bazaar: oriental rugs, lanterns, scarves, statuettes, and plates. Though, it wasn't tacky . . .
It was truly enjoyable despite the fact that I got catcalls from Turkish men, who are not quite as hostile or aggressive in their pursuit of women ( a generalization, I know) as Egyptian men seem to be, but still a bit annoying. I got calls of "sweetheart, are you lost?" or just men calling from cafes saying "hello, hello, salud" or any other greeting in as many languages as they knew in order to get my attention. This, I find, is the unavoidable experience of being a single woman traveler.
Anyway, I can sum up my day as "exhausting", and my brief time in Istanbul as "amazing".