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Cool Istanbul

The largest city in Turkey, and for centuries the confluence of East and West, is now just a budget flight away. Vanessa Able, editor of Time Out Istanbul, reveals the smartest places to stay, eat and party

Stylish dining at 360, Istanbul's award-winning rooftop restaurant. Photograph: Seval Karatas

In Istanbul, history and tradition are piled layer upon layer. Stately palaces, mosques and cathedrals lie beside chaotic bazaars, steaming hamams and poky nargile (hookah) joints. Ottoman Constantinople sits easily with ancient Byzantium, but emerging on top of them is a new stratum: Istanbul the cool. .

In the past decade, development has transformed ghetto-like no-go zones into hip and vibrant neighbourhoods whose stylish clientele spill out into the streets, eating and drinking until the small hours. Clubs, bars, cafes, restaurants, shops, hotels and galleries are springing up at an explosive pace.

If you go to Istanbul expecting belly dancers, you might be surprised to find yourself watching the sunrise at a nightclub on the Bosphorus; if you imagine a diet of greasy kebabs, you'll be stunned at the range of haute cuisine options fusing traditional Turkish food with cutting-edge international styles. And if your idea of shacking up in Istanbul is a second-rate pension, you'll be amazed at the range of chic, sassy and downright sexy boutique hotels you can stay at.

Istanbul will be a European Capital of Culture in 2010 and now that the first low-cost flights there have been launched by Easyjet, hip weekenders will be flocking to soak up the excitement. Here's what they need to know:

Chic eats
If your idea of Turkish dining is tucking into slices of greasy meat carved off a cylindrical spit, ingested on a pavement after eight pints of beer, then think again: Istanbul is brimming with stylish restaurants.

The city's smart staple is the multiple award-winning 360: a glass-walled rooftop extravaganza with a popular bar and a circular view of the metropolis. The culinary influences hail from all around the world, and dishes include delicious Lebanese kibbe meatballs stuffed with walnuts, veal-and-prawn surf and turf or lamb loin confit, expertly poached in olive oil for five whole hours.

Alternatively, head up the Bosphorus to Ortakoy, one of outer Istanbul's quaintest villages and hottest nightspots, and the Banyan Ortakoy (00 90 212 259 9060). Sit on the terrace beside the tiny banyan trees if the weather's still warm enough and feast on their Oriental delights while gaping at the stunning view of the neo-Baroque waterside mosque. Another option in this part of town is Erguvan (00 90 212 327 6075) in the newly built Radisson SAS hotel, also on the waterfront and perfect if you fancy fresh seafood.

Bar life
You might be offered endless cups of cay, the local tea, from ultra-friendly locals by day, but only a concerted survey of the city's bar circuit by night will reveal what Istanbul really has to offer in terms of a good bottoms-up. For beer, try the ubiquitous native brew, Efes. Turkish wines generally have a lot to answer for in the hangover stakes; however, there is one diamond in the rough and that is the Sarafin brand, available in red and white varieties in most good restaurants and bars.

A fine place to start an evening's jaunt is at the local favourite Leb-i Derya, an effortlessly chilled establishment featuring fantastic views and an extensive cocktail list, including the notorious Balalaika, Caipirovska and Monday concoctions.

Zoe is another venue in Taksim that makes the most of the city's incredible vistas. In colder weather you can hang out in the stylish bar area, but join the crowd on the roof to party under the stars in the summer.

Also very popular with Istanbullus is the Nu Pera, an umbrella name for a constellation of joints housed in the same building. During the summer months, attention is focused on the rooftop terrace, for which you'll certainly need a reservation at weekends. But be aware of the door policy: as with many clubs and bars in the city, men are rarely granted entry if not accompanied or outnumbered by females, and smart, fashionable dress is essential. There's also been a recent rise in the number of requests to see passports at the door.

If you prefer something a little more laid back, check out Cezayir (00 90 212 245 9980; www.cezayir-istanbul.com). Housed in a 100-year-old school building, this chic cafe, bar and restaurant is composed of a number of rooms of varying levels of noise and energy, with sofas, a dancefloor and great mojitos.

Club hits
Travel before the beginning of October and you'll catch the city's infamous Bosphorus nightclubs: outdoor complexes of restaurants, bars and dancefloors right on the water, with a refined clientele who park their yachts alongside the private docks and make their entrances like royalty. The most prominent of these is the world-class Reina, for which you'll need to book ahead if you want a table, and the female-accessory rule applies to appease the stony-faced bouncers. Blackk) is just across the road, and open year-round. Excelling in sumptuous decor, it's an eating, drinking and dancing venue with a moody, dark-leather interior and an open conservatory designed in the most lavish rococo upstairs.

If serious dancing is your thing, get down and boogie in an original Seventies disco, Godet (00 90 212 243 8143). This late-night venue on top of the Surmeli Hotel rarely gets going until well after midnight and has garnered a reputation for its innovative DJs.

For live music, head to the number one concert spot, Babylon (00 90 212 292 7368; www.babylon-ist.com), an unpretentious and intimate venue which has hosted scores of international ensembles including The Fall, and Stereolab.

Classic must-sees
The morning after, you may want to tick off a few of the classic sights, and for these head to the historical district of Sultanahmet. Don't miss the Aya Sofya (00 90 212 528 4500), formerly known as the Hagia Sophia, which was the biggest cathedral in the world for 1,000 years and has a splendid vast dome, or its giant neighbour, the Blue Mosque (00 90 212 518 13 19) with its six minarets.

Within walking distance of the two is Topkapi Palace (00 90 212 512 0480). Set in the gardens of Gulhane park, the palace is a network of stunning, perfectly preserved tiled and marbled buildings that accommodated official events and the private residences of the Sultanate in the days of the Ottoman Empire.

The Basilica Cistern is an old Roman well that was used for storing water channelled into the city along an 8km system of aqueducts from nearby Belgrade forest. Don't just expect a hole in the ground: the Cistern was used as a set for From Russia With Love and is the size of a cathedral, with more than 300 supporting columns and 80,000 cubic metres of water.

The Grand Bazaar is a shopping experience par excellence. The giant covered market, the centre of which dates back to 1461, twists and turns, and can swallow you whole if you're not careful. Aside from the belly dancing outfits, ornate mirrored caps, and fake labels, it's worth checking out the selection of pashminas, jewellery, and leather jackets and handbags.

Alternative must-sees
After the rabble of touts and salesmen at the Grand Bazaar you might crave a more subdued shopping experience, so hop on the metro at Taksim Square and go a couple of stops to Istanbul's latest retail wonder: the Kanyon mall in Levent. This is not your average enclosed American-style colossus: it's a climate-controlled outdoor complex in the form of a canyon, with towers and cooling or warming breezes, depending on the season.

To escape the spending trap, flee the mainland altogether on a ferry from Eminonu, Kabata or Bostanci ports (www.ido.com.tr) to one of the four Princes' Islands in the Sea of Marmara. The trip takes an hour-and-a-half at most, and you can disembark at any one of the relaxing little isles. Buyukada (literally, 'the big island') has, like all the others, forsaken motorised vehicles (with the exception of the startlingly numerous emergency services) in favour of bicycles, horses and donkeys. If you have time, take a ride up the road strewn with prayer ribbons to St George's Monastery, go for a walk among the trees or just chill out in one of the cafes in the main village, like the trendy new Gr.ile (00 90 216 382 1630).

Back in the city centre, another fascinating and less frequented spot is the Galata Mevlevihanesi (00 90 212 245 4141), an old Sufi lodge converted into a museum. If you're there on a Sunday or the first or last Saturday of the month, buy a ticket for the Sema ceremony and get dizzy watching the renowned whirling dervishes, who chant and spin in meditation for up to an hour.

The Istanbul Modern (00 90 212 334 7300; www.istanbulmodern.org) is the city's first institution dedicated to contemporary art. Situated in a former shipping warehouse by the docks, it houses a permanent collection of Turkish art from the last century, as well as an upcoming exhibition of picks from the last Venice Biennale that will be showing towards the end of 2006.

To experience the best of Bosphorus village life, travel north along the strait from the museum between the two giant suspension bridges that connect Europe to Asia, to the buzzing Sunday market in Ortakoy and the fishing village of Arnavutkoy. One of the best walks in Istanbul is along the Bosphorus from Arnavutkoy to the old castle at Rumeli Hisari, past scores of fishermen and great fish restaurants, boats and yachts and a fantastic view of the tankers travelling to and from the Black Sea, with the glittering backdrop of the Asian continent just across the water.

Istanbul insider
My favourite place is also my home: Cihangir, a section of Beyoglu that's undergone a facelift. I am drawn by the fact that it is cosmopolitan, multicultural, central, and for professional reasons, since there are many actors, writers, directors and producers in the area. There's also a good number of foreigners with flats here.

The main street has a few very popular cafes including Leyla, Porte, the excellent fish restaurant Doga Balik and Miss Pizza. My favourite cafe is Smyrna, which has kooky decoration. It's the kind of place where you feel like you'll always bump into someone you know.
Devrim Nas, actor

Sunday August 27, 2006
The Observer

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Ortakoy: Istanbul's Playground

The Ciragan Palace on the Bosporus, former home of the last Ottoman sultans, is now part of a hotel.


ORTAKOY, Turkey -- By day, long red and black freighters slide by on the Bosporus. By night, well-lit touring boats send faint sounds of music and laughter to the shore. Ferries and sailboats ply this 20-mile-long channel that connects the Sea of Marmora and the Black Sea and divides Istanbul into Europe and Asia.

From a waterside cafe on the European shore, looking across at Asia, the romance of this historical waterway is inescapable. Its legends go back into time, when Jason and the Argonauts, seeking the Golden Fleece, sailed through to the Black Sea. Ulysses probably navigated its waters.

On the European side, around the base of the Bosporus Bridge linking the two continents, a warren of small streets and alleys marks the village-like Istanbul suburb of Ortakoy.

Long favored by artists, hip young Stamboulis have made Ortakoy a newly trendy spot to hang out. On weekends especially, morning isn't too early to settle in at one of the cafes that crowd the cobblestone waterfront plaza by the mosque for a traditional Turkish breakfast of bread, honey, white sheep's milk cheese, olives, yogurt and tea.

On weekends shops, galleries and a funky open air street market teem with local browsers and buyers. Artists hang their framed compositions on the sides of buildings. Street vendors stand behind tables laden with beaded necklaces, hats, scarves and leather bags. An old woman, head wrapped in a scarf, watches over dozens of colorful earrings.

Picture frames, lamp shades and candle holders made of pink, purple and amber beads crowd one table, intricately rigged sailing ships another. A rack of wigs sports long blonde, brunette and auburn tresses. Nearby, in a narrow alley, an elderly man sits at a cafe table painting the mosque and the Bosporus Bridge, even though the actual models are just a block away at the waterfront.

Filled flatbread wraps are made and served at the Ortakoy market.



Somewhere along your wanderings, you'll come across an open plaza with a variety of local street food. Try a baked potato stuffed with vegetables and yogurt at one of the outdoor counters. Watch women bake rounds of flat dough on a hot griddle, like a thin pizza crust, then fold them over your choice of fillings, perhaps spinach or ground lamb or feta cheese. It's a popular village dish called "gozleme."

Street life in the narrow, cobbled alleys and at the waterside cafes is the lure of Ortakoy. There is not much else to explore. Ortakoy's 17th-century Etz Ahayim synagogue, on the shore road, burned down in 1941; only the marble ark survived, now a monument in what is now the garden. A nearby schoolroom became the acting synagogue.

The domed, 19th-century Ortakoy Mosque, built in Ottoman Baroque style, occupies a small waterfront promontory in the shadow of the bridge. A pair of slender white stone minarets flank the entrance; large windows let light pour into the interior, illuminating its marble, mosaics and chandeliers. You can visit whenever it's open, except during prayer times.

Ortakoy is a perfect place to catch a Bosporus cruise, one of the city's great pleasures. Boats periodically leave the Ortakoy dock for an hour's sail up the Asian shore and down the European side between the two bridges that join the continents. There are longer excursions from the city center that are popular with tourists, but this route takes you past some of the same historic landmarks and is filled with jolly local families enjoying their city.

From Ortakoy the ferry crosses under the Bosporus Bridge, the first to span the strait and one of the longest suspension bridges in the world, opened in 1973 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Turkish Republic. Next to it on the Asian side is Beylerbeyi Palace, one of the more intimate 19th-century palaces the Ottoman rulers built on the Bosporus. Its terraced gardens, pools and fountains, ornate furnishings and crystal chandeliers were more than sumptuous enough for the Sultans and their visiting royal guests.

Cruising north along the Asian shore, you pass lovely wooden and stone houses called "yalis" behind flower-decked stone walls in upscale residential areas. Sail and power boats tie up along the waterfront promenade where men tend their fishing poles. Waterside cafes look inviting.

Further north, just before the second suspension bridge, two mighty Ottoman fortresses face each other across the Bosphorus -- the vast Rumeli Fortress in Europe and a smaller counterpart, Andolu Fortress in Asia. They were built by Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II in 1452 during his conquest of Constantinople to control the strait and cut off help from reaching the city. The next year he took Constantinople in a single day, destroying the last of the Byzantine Empire. The bridge is named for Mehmet the Conqueror.

After transforming its churches into mosques, Mehmet renamed the city Istanbul, and several years later, built Topkapi Palace where the Ottoman Sultans lived for 400 years. In the mid-19th century they succumbed to the pleasures of the Bosporus and built a grand imperial palace on the European shore just south of Ortakoy. Called Dolmabahce, one facade stretches almost a quarter mile along the strait; its 285 ornate rooms, grand salons and sumptuous furnishings are an extravaganza of marble, gold and crystal. When it was finished in 1854, the Sultans abandoned Topkapi and moved into this Ottoman Versailles.

Next to Dolmabahce, and even closer to Ortakoy, is Ciragan Palace, another one-time home of the Sultans and now part of the Ciragan Palace Hotel Kempinski. The grand 19th-century residence was virtually destroyed by fire in 1909 and eventually restored by Kempinski Hotels, which re-created the marble hamam (Turkish bath) and marble staircases.

From the palaces of the Sultans to picturesque Ortakoy, it's not hard to see why Turks find life by the Bosporus so appealing. After you've visited Istanbul's Blue Mosque, ogled incomparable mosaics at the Hagia Sophia, checked out the harem at Topkapi Palace and haggled for a rug at the Grand Bazaar, this is the place to unwind.

SIGHTS TO SEE
Dolmabahce Palace, Dolmabahce Caddesi; Phone: 212-236-9000. Guided tour required, separate fees for the Sultan's Quarters and the Harem. Closed Monday and Thursday.

Etz Ahayim Synagogue, Muallim Naci Caddesi 38; Phone: 212-260-1896. On the shore road in Ortakoy, but has been closed for repairs.

Ciragan Palace, Ciragan Caddesi 84; Phone: 212-258-3377.

Beylerbeyi Palace, Abdullah Aga Caddesi; Phone: 216-321-9320. Closed Monday and Thursday.

Rumeli Fortress (European Fort), Yahya Kemal Caddesi; Phone: 212-263-5305. Closed Monday.


June 04, 2006
By Joan Scobey, Travel Arts Syndicate

(Joan Scobey has covered travel and food in Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, India, the Mideast, South America, Australia, the Pacific and North America. )

Copyright © PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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In Turkey, Sailing Into the Exotic on a Blue Cruise

There are numerous coves to explore along the coast, especially in a smaller boat. . .

DRIFTING in and out of sleep, I hear a song. Very loud, though slightly muffled, a man's monotone singsong chant is at one moment a rude wake-up call, at the next a soothing lullaby. In the waking moments, I begin to wonder where I am. I open my eyes and see a small wooden cabin; three feet above my head is an open window, from which the voice calls through an inky-blue sunrise sky.

Diners in Gumusluk on the Bodrum Peninsula. The many smaller ports along the Carian coast offer glimpses of local everyday life and are more about culture than about international second-home escapes. More Photos >

I think back: There was the 22-hour trip, from my home in Nashville to Chicago to Istanbul and on to Bodrum on the Aegean coast. There was the taxi and the public minibus and the drive through the parched, hilly countryside, past the giant Greek amphitheater, to the small port town of Turgutreis. Then there was a walk through the old town center, a warren of narrow stone streets and closely packed shops, and then, finally, a glimpse of my home for the next week: the 40-foot sailboat Adele.

It was there that I now found myself, in a disorienting dreamland, eventually realizing I was being called to prayer by the muezzin of the local mosque. It would be only the first of many times that the religious and the secular, East and West, ancient and contemporary Turkey would combine to make this a sailing trip like no other.

My sailing companions — a friend from New York, the boat's skipper and his friend — and I had varying reasons for traveling so far to go sailing last June. The skipper, Cengiz Onuk, who spends most of the year teaching futures and options at New York University, knew that the Carian coast, in southwestern Turkey roughly between Bodrum and Marmaris, is Turkey's most popular sailing area, thanks to its large, protected gulfs, secluded bays and coves, tranquil waters and wild coastlines. Not to mention ideal weather and, more often than not, wind. So he was spending his summer in his homeland skippering the Adele, one of the few American boats in these waters — "Brooklyn" was emblazoned on the stern, the Stars and Stripes waved on the port side; it had been piloted across the Atlantic from Brooklyn to Greece the summer before.

Cengiz (pronounced JENG-iz) had put out an invitation to other sailors, and eventually three of us joined him: myself, eager to learn a bit about sailing and see a Turkey removed from the traditional tourist experience; my friend Carla Murphy, who normally sails smaller J/24's in New York Harbor with the Manhattan Sailing Club; and Oytun Altasli, a Turkish businesswoman living in London (and a former student of Cengiz's), who was looking for a week away from big-city life.

We would soon learn that sailing in Turkey is very different from sailing in the United States and Europe, where port towns are often playgrounds for the world's rich and famous. The smaller ports we called on were more about local, everyday life than international, second-home escape, more about culture than consumption. And the people welcomed us more like guests than like tourists.

We set sail from Turgutreis, on the western side of the Bodrum Peninsula, and headed for the Gulf of Gokova, a national park area stretching some 45 miles east from Bodrum, where the warm, salty water ranges from brilliant turquoise to seductive sapphire. Pine-clad mountains unmarred by human development enclose every view, and few other boats spoil the fantasy that the water is all yours and only yours.

With the two novice sailors — Oytun and me —having experienced their first, and fortunately last, bout of sea queasiness, we stopped in Bodrum. When its native son Herodotus, the father of history, wrote about what was then Halicarnassus, it's doubtful he would have envisioned modern Bodrum, a beautiful old town overrun in high season by vacationing Europeans and Turks.

After midnight, the main pedestrian artery is so clogged with people it comes to a standstill. Before noon, however, while they're sleeping it off, the streets and beachside cafes are blissfully empty, revealing Bodrum's considerable charms.

The next day we stood on the bow until we lost sight of Bodrum's imposing coastal fortress and 15th-century castle (with its wonderful Museum of Underwater Archaeology) or, in other words, until civilization — the sugar-cube towns and holiday resorts — faded from view. The waves were frothy, the wind 15 to 20 knots — "a sailor's dream," Cengiz said. He stood at the helm and told Carla when to raise the main sail.

Oytun and I at first just tried to stay out of the way. But soon we got our first lessons in learning to raise the sails with the winch and how to tie, or cleat, the ropes to hold them. Soon we were zipping along at more than 5 knots, a gentle rock, a nice heel and the first taste of sea spray on our already-browning faces.

OUR plan was to go where our moods took us. After all, the advantage of sailing a small boat like ours is the freedom to check out any island, visit any village or overnight in any isolated cove, all at our own pace. We were sharing the gulf with other sailboats, some private, some chartered, and with magnificent chartered gulets — large, wooden yachts of traditional Turkish design but with all modern amenities.

"Yes, you may be jealous," Cengiz told us, given the gulets' ample room, air-conditioned cabins and full crew, but they rarely raise their sails, spend most of their time motoring and can't dock in smaller coves. "They are not for real sailors."

Hmmm. By the time we'd spent one full morning swabbing the deck and cleaning the head — which, by the way, had to be pumped for every flush — and by the time my eyes had swollen up from an overnight bug bite, Oytun's face had broken out in a rash and Carla had banged up her nose on the metal contraption that held the solar panel, we girls weren't so sure we wanted to be real sailors.

But then we got to Cokertme, a small bay fronted by three restaurants, a magical little hamlet one might miss if on a gulet, since meals are eaten onboard and there's no need to debark to stretch your legs. As we approached, two small motorboats raced out to meet us, each with a man waving wildly toward his own restaurant. We chose one — the one with the skull-and-crossbones pirate motif, the Rose Mary — and they helped us moor at a wooden jetty before ushering us into the simple, open-air restaurant.

First, we went into the kitchen to check out the array of homemade mezes — octopus salad, smoked eggplant salad, tomato-chili salad — before being led into the walk-in refrigerator to choose our fish from the fresh-caught supply. We settled on a giant sea bass, and soon the waiter approached for the voilà moment, displaying a large platter featuring the simply grilled whole fish, served with nothing but a lemon-olive oil sauce, a few French fries and a tomato-cucumber salad. It was so fresh and perfect that we fought over every last bite — including the head.

Another irresistible temptation was a mysterious cafe at the end of the quay. A seriously exotic place, apparently owned by Turkish communists (check out the bookshelves), it was literally a nomad's tent perched on the dock above the sea. "There's not many places sailors can experience desert culture," said Carla, as we removed our shoes and settled into the cushions and carpets on the floor.

Each table had its own water pipe, but our intoxicant of choice is raki, the Turkish anise liquor that's less heavy and sweet than ouzo. Even more intoxicating, a group of young men begin to play the seven-string tambur and other classical instruments and sing Ottoman court songs. Not to be outdone, husband and wife customers break out their own three-string instruments and harmonize on traditional Anatolian folk songs. As the only nonlocals in the place, the others having come down from the nearby village, we marvel at what the Adele has already shown us.

Talking with the cafe's owner, we realize it wasn't too long ago that areas like this depended on the sea for their livelihood, transportation and communications. Roads are an afterthought here. And we are even more thrilled to be traveling by boat.

The next morning, Oytun and I took the dinghy to the next cove for a swim in the pristine waters, the pebbly beach all ours save for a village family on a picnic. Covered head to toe, they were nonetheless seemingly unbothered by our bikinis.

The dinghy was our own little water taxi. At other times and places, it would whisk us across the bay where we moored by the market. Just a few local ingredients and Oytun would whip up an incredible breakfast of lightly fried Turkish eggs in a blanket of spiced feta cheese.

Some days, the wind was weak and we'd have to motor. Cengiz taught us how to read the nautical chart, map the coordinates of where we were headed and load them in the G.P.S. system. Most often, though, we navigated by sight and by the sailing bible for this area, Rod Heikell's "Turkish Waters and Cyprus Pilot."

At Degirmen Bay, quite a few gulets and yachts were crowding the dock, so we anchored in the bay and tied our lines to trees on shore. This was easier said than done for three women who had never done such a thing. Frustratingly, and embarrassingly, this comedy of errors took a couple hours and involved a fair amount of heated discussion.

"Drop the anchor now," Cengiz yelled toward the bow at Carla during each of several attempts.

"But when do I stop?" she kept yelling back.

"You'll know when."

But we didn't.

We lost track of how many times we tried to get the anchor to hold, but when it finally did, we began to feel that we were getting the hang of this sailing thing.

A week on a boat means lots of time talking to your mates and lots of time thinking. There's no better quiet than that of lapping waves, no better invitation to contemplation than miles of blue or, at night, acres of stars. As we spent one late night sipping raki out on the deck, Cengiz and Oytun talked about the adventures that come with living abroad.

"But I want to come back to Turkey some day," Oytun said. "Turkey deep down is an Eastern culture where relationships matter; in the West it is less so. This can make things very slow, and maddeningly inefficient. But to me, it is a warmer kind of existence that I started to appreciate after living away."

I thought about my own expatatriate years, and how I, too, eventually longed for home.

Cengiz said he couldn't go home again: "I'm a New Yorker."

In the gulf, we always had shore in sight, but we never knew what was around the next bend or behind the next island. A hidden cove would suddenly reveal a gaggle of anchored gulets. Floating slowly up for a closer look, there was an inescapable feeling of entering a pirates' lair.

Timelessness began to be palpable, as this place had looked and felt pretty much like this since the days when a succession of Carians, Dorians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Ottomans all sailed here. Odysseus was here, I imagine.

Cleopatra was definitely here, they say, at Cleopatra's Beach — so named because the Egyptian queen once lived on Castle Island and, legend has it, Antony imported enough sand from Africa to make a beautiful white beach for her to sunbathe on.

It is indeed the only sandy beach of its type in the area. The day-trip boats from Marmaris make regular stops, disgorging hordes of swimmers. But after a hot hike around the castle and amphitheater ruins, you won't care how many people join you for a swim. And it's still incredibly beautiful.

As we pulled into Sogut and the Gokova Sailing Club, its lovely stone clubhouse hidden among the pines, visions of a luxurious interlude with real showers danced in our heads. Decidedly upscale, though a modest intrusion on its surroundings, the club has members like the general manager of Microsoft Turkey and Sadun Boro, a national hero since he became the first Turk to circumnavigate the world in his small sailboat, the Kismet, in 1968. Cengiz was beside himself when we noticed that the Kismet was moored about five spots down from us.

The manager told us about the owners of the club, a Turkish sailor, his British wife and their children, who made the second Turkish sail around the world, in the late 1980's. The large map in the restaurant that traces their route is the stuff of dreams.

On a smaller scale, our own sailing dreams were finally fulfilled. On our last full day, the wind graced us with its 15-knot presence for hours. The novices had learned to help raise and trim the sails, and we all got to practice helming through some challenging waves.

It was so sublime, in fact, that it replaced the memory of previous days' motoring with the sound of only wind and waves, the sight of soaring sails and the feeling of empowerment that comes from harnessing nature for your own ends.

Arriving in the Yedi Adalari, or the Seven Islands, our only quandary was which of the stunning coves to call home for the night. Choosing one called Bekar, we had it all to ourselves, not a boat, dock or restaurant in sight, only a semicircle of protective pines and a vista of receding islands. By now, dropping anchor and taking a line to shore was no problem for the seaworthy women.

No provisions were available there, but we had stocked up — crusty loaves of bread, feta cheese, spicy cured beef (pastirma), melons, olives, local olive oil and quince preserves, as well as very drinkable Turkish wine and, of course, raki. As the sun went down and an appropriately Turkish crescent moon rose, we sat on the deck, having bonded in the way that only four people in a small boat could in a short amount of time, eating, drinking and talking for hours.

A heaven full of stars twinkled on the still-as-glass water, and we gazed up at the similarly sparkling lights of the Adele's mast, toasting our luck that she had brought us safely to so wondrous a place.

By TAYLOR HOLLIDAY

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/travel/02sailing.html?8td=&emc=td&pagewanted=all

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