Note: The Turkey Chronicles are an ongoing travel journal on a trip Sarah and I took to Turkey from 9/26/08 - 10/6/08. All the Chronicles are collected right here. For more pictures from the Turkey trip, please visit my Picasa web albums here.

When Sarah first suggested a visit to Turkey, I’ll admit, I was somewhat skeptical. I knew nothing about the place, other than it shared a name with a popular meal bird that never tastes quite as delicious as it smells. But our friends Benton and Laura were there with a free place to stay, we had never traveled overseas together, and it seemed like the kind of place where a guy with a new beard might feel at home.

We left Los Angeles on a 6:30 AM flight that required a wake up time of 3:30. The first leg was a completely unremarkable 5 1/2 hour flight to JFK. From there, we transferred to another plane that took us 9 1/2 hours across the universe to Istanbul. This is what people look like on a plane:

(Note how pumped the guy in the background is about being on a plane. Hooray, plane!)

We landed at 9:30 AM, Turkey time. We spent about 20 hours in transit, and then we lost 10 hours because of the time difference. Laura and Benton picked us up at the airport. Laura works at the US consulate in Istanbul and Benton is doing some community development work in the Kurdish area of Iraq. I say that totally nonchalantly but the facts are: they are much more badass than you, me, or any combination of us, our offspring, or our offsprings’ offspring. We were famished when they picked us up, so we enjoyed some exotic local cuisine at the airport.

After leaving the airport, we went back to Laura and Benton’s. They live a 45 minute drive away from the airport in a neighborhood that I never quite caught the name of, even though it was repeated to me several times a day. Turkish is an interesting language. Its sounds are all English sounds, so pronunciation isn’t tough. Also, as I learned from my Lonely Planet guidebook, it is the basis for Esperanto, because the rules of Turkish are impressively regular. I learned a few words and phrases over the course of the trip, but I am ashamed to say I was unable to become fluent in the 10 days we were there.

L & B live in a nice apartment in a complex that is guarded by guys with machine guns. Here is the view from their window:

Sarah and I were wrecked from our 20 hour travel day, so we crashed in their guest bedroom for an hour. I slept like blinking.

It was rainy in Istanbul and we were tired, so we had a pretty low-key afternoon. We ate some fish soup and flaky cakes at a restaurant near their house, just one of what was to be many delicious meals in Turkey. Turkey reminds me a little of France. According to Laura, this is not a mistake - Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, was a big francophile. Ataturk loved the French, and the Turks loved Ataturk, et voila.

We went to a grocery store and picked up stuff for dinner. It was not radically different from an American grocery store, although the names of the products were all in some kind of foreign language. We ate dinner and turned in early. This is what it looks like when people eat dinner:

Only, with plates.

On to Day 2