- Solo travel to a major city can be a wonderful way to discover the culture and savor new experiences on your own.
- New York Times travel columnist, Stephanie Rosenbloom, found that solo travel helped her absorb local cultures in a new way.
- In Istanbul, Rosenbloom traveled to a mosque, where the people captured the true beauty of the city more than the architecture that had led her there.
The below is an excerpt from "Alone Time" by Stephanie Rosenbloom.
The ferry arrived on the shores of Üsküdar, an area of Istanbul once known as the City of Gold, where Ottoman-era mosques stand silhouetted against the sky. Yet I was there to visit the Şakirin mosque which, of all the mosques in Istanbul, most captured my imagination with its singular style that brings together the sleek aesthetic of a modern art museum and the spirit of the Ottoman Empire — an almost futuristic, aluminum dome; arabesque-patterned metal screens; gilded calligraphy — as well as its distinction as being the first mosque interior designed by a woman, Zeynep Fadillioğlu.
"No woman had ever designed a mosque interior, neither in the Ottoman Empire nor in the Turkish Republic, nor to the best of Zeynep's knowledge, anywhere in the world," wrote the journalist Andrew Finkel in Zeynep Fadillioğlu: Bosphorus and Beyond, which showcases Fadillioğlu's work from glossy nightclubs like Ulus 29 to the Şakirin mosque. The architect for the project was a man, the book said, though he collaborated with Fadillioğlu, making certain changes at her request.
From the harbor of Üsküdar, it's about a half-hour walk to the Şakirin, across stone pavers arranged in elaborate patterns, under tall trees, past cats sleeping on windowsills. A woman leaned out her apartment window and pulled up a bucket on a string with a loaf of bread inside. Damp laundry hung from awning poles. I passed a small mosque made of wood, like the delicate pastel yalis along the Bosporus. The sloping residential streets were intimate and inviting; tree-lined refuges from the organized chaos at piers and tourist zones.
Under soaring cypress trees, Ottoman-style headstones with turban headpieces rose from the edge of a hill on a high wall in the old Karacaahmet Cemetery. I stopped on the sidewalk beside a bed of bright yellow and orange mums. Through the trees I could see a minaret, white, almost chalky blue in the light, with a crescent at its top. On the side of a nearby building, gold letters spelled the name of the mosque that, up until then, I had seen only in the pages of a book: Sakirin Camii. I turned and went up the steps toward the courtyard where, outside the entrance, were a few pairs of sandals and sneakers. I stepped out of my shoes, and into the dark hall.
I wasn't sure where to go next. A couple of women had gone in before me, though by now there was no trace of them. So I made an educated guess, and began slowly walking up the stairs toward the rose-colored dome. Near the top, whispers trickled down. When I reached them, I found myself in the women's prayer balcony, smaller than the area downstairs where the men were praying, yet open and airy with a prime view of the dome above. The balcony was also closer to the vast three-ring chandelier with its twinkling glass droplets, and the sinuous calligraphy of the dome belt, iridescent in the sunlight.
A woman prayed. Children flitted about. A few women spoke softly and laughed without making a sound. One took photos with her smartphone. I stood at the back of the gallery, tracing the paths of thin gold lines pinwheeling out from the center of the great pink dome. It looked like an open flower.
After a little while, I went back down the stairs where, at the bottom, a girl with a bob in jeans and a pink T-shirt was barefoot and motionless, peeking around a screen to where men were praying. I was about the same age when I used to eavesdrop on my parents' dinner parties from a balcony in our house. As I reached the last steps, she turned and saw me. I stopped; smiled.
When preparing for a trip, we can read about architecture and restaurants. But what ultimately breathes life into the daydreams of anticipation are the people we encounter when we're actually there, including those we merely pass on the street or, in this case, the stairwell. I thought, too, of the man on the pier who offered his hand to steady me as I stepped off the ferry, and of the old woman in the public restroom who motioned for me to come and share with her the sole tiny sink. When anticipating my days in Istanbul I had envisioned ships and minarets, the Grand Bazaar and the Hagia Sophia, yet not these faces, not these wordless interactions that silently transmit the warmth of a city.
When imagining the mosque, I didn't imagine the things I might pass on the walk there from the harbor: the woman in the window raising a bucket on a string, the men with pushcarts of fruits and vegetables, cats dozing between the flowerpots. These are the street scenes that whisper, the particulars that make a place real, that make a trip our own. The Şakirin mosque appeared more vivid in photos in the book than when I stood before it. Yet there was no little girl at the foot of the stairs. There were no women laughing. What is a place of worship without people? What is Istiklal Avenue, Istanbul's fashionable pedestrian boulevard, without crowds strolling it in the evening, stopping to buy ice cream cones and eat fish in the cozy restaurants on its side streets?
To anticipate is to court joy, to fall in love with a place the way it is in a book or a movie. But to stay open to the unexpected is to truly embrace anticipation — to know that it serves its purpose before the journey begins and must then be set aside for reality, for whatever beautiful, strange, unpredictable thing awaits when we step off the ferry.
Outside the mosque, I tied on my sneakers and made my way through the courtyard where patterned screens threw arabesque shadows on the ground, past the mums, the cemetery, and the cypress trees, back to the harbor, to a ferry full of people, on our way to yet another shore.
From "Alone Time" by Stephanie Rosenbloom, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2018 by Stephanie Rosenbloom.
Stephanie Rosenbloom is the staff columnist for the Travel section of "The New York Times," where she has been a reporter for various desks (including Styles, Business, and Real Estate) for more than a decade. She has appeared on CNN's "American Morning," NBC's "The Today Show," and NPR's "The Takeaway."
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