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Why haven’t we posted the final week of our, now [in]complete, journey? Maybe we were having a hard time letting it go? Maybe we got lazy, or de-inspired by retuning to Chicago during the winter, to our parents homes, to a shitty job market, and no easy way to ride our bikes out of our suburban neighborhood. Maybe our time spent in Istanbul — really the perfect way to end this leg of our journey — was so rich that we were having trouble coming to terms with its closure or were dissatisfied with trying to relate something whose impact far surpasses our ability to relate through photos and our base writing? Maybe, given the phantom of instantaneous need for gainful employment, we are hesitant, after failing to post the final week from within the time/space of the final week, to return to that space for fear of dwelling?

In fact, these are all probably quite true, determinable from the inescapable need to address our truancy, alone, but that last week, in the sentimental expression of  “oh man” accompanied with eyes looking to the floor and a drop of the chest in a warm sigh,  “that was good”, was really, really good!

To say we were lucky is an understatement; we were downright blessed. In fact, that statement really ought to be spread across the whole of our social experiences of Turkey in the last 35 days of our journey, and the whole of our past three and a half months in general, with obvious standouts. But we reserve that sentence now for the last week, for that is the subject of this post, not a total recall or sentimental recollection of our favorites of the journey as a whole, written so as to find some closure. No, this is just about the last week, which one could argue, does the job on its own.

We arrived to Istanbul a day earlier than expected, and were having some difficulty connecting via telephone with our contact there. We arrived on a ferry just after dusk and decided to grab a hotel room in Sultanahmet, to recoup and attack Istanbul city streets to find Celal (in the Turkish language ‘C’s are pronounced as ‘J’s) the next day. We got a fresh start in the morning, leaving part of our luggage at the hotel we were to check into in four days time.

Riding around Istanbul was a trip and our map only covered, in detail, the center of the city 20 million people. We were in search of Bagicilar neighborhood and kept an eye on our compass to keep us heading generally in the right direction through the labyrinth, until a man on a messenger’s scooter asked us where we were headed – in Turkish, of course – and no sooner had we said, he was off with a wave of his hand indicating his hire as our fearless leader through the muck of round-a-bouts and underpasses and streets nary have seen a tourist. He led us almost nearly all the way to the center of Bagicilar, often blocking traffic to get us through roundabouts safely. It took us maybe an hour and a half to navigate the 20 km to Bagicilar (bah-je-lar) that would have otherwise taken us three on our own.

We got to the Mosque where we had planned to meet Celal and were immediately surrounded by a large group of curious men, intrigued by our bicycles, and amazed there were tourists in their neighborhood. We tried to answer their questions as we waited for Celal and were really excited to find ourselves outside of the tourist center, laden with prodding vendors touting the best of Istanbul in their respective restaurant.

We were to stay in Celal’s uncle’s home, and we didn’t really know what to expect, at all and what we got was far beyond our expectations…..way beyond.  We are enamored with the Aslan family.

There wasn’t a single person in the whole neighborhood that didn’t seem to be one of Celal’s uncles, or aunts, or cousins, and one by one, they came to the apartment to meet us. We were showered with incredible food on the low table in the living room, smoked nargile and worked navigate our language barriers. Luckily we had Celal, a Rotary International exchange student in Woodstock, IL the year prior (hence our roundabout way of getting into contact) to help translate.

We stayed with the family for four or five days until we had to check into a hotel we had arranged, in order to have an address to ship our bike boxes, prior to our departure from the states. It was hard to explain to the family why we were going to stay in a hotel and not finish out our stay in their home, because we couldn’t really explain it to ourselves. We felt a bit empty and insincere when we first sat in our hotel room alone. It didn’t feel right, but we needed to do it. We had work to do, those bikes weren’t going to disassemble and pack themselves and there wasn’t really anyway to sort out our final tasks in the Aslan’s home. Not because it was small or anything had any derogatory characteristics, no we say this because of their overwhelming hospitality, and our incessant curiosity produced an environment that would drive one to tell oneself, on a reoccurring basis, ‘Oh that important task can wait until a little later’.

Of course we saw the sites, feel head over heels with Islamic tiles, found the best bowl of lentil soup, bartered at the Grand Bazaar and strolled as tourists in Taksim. But our Istanbul is in Bagiclar.  We went to the Aslan’s for one last dinner the night before our early morning departure, (this time without, Celal’s translation service as he had to go back to school) and left with open invitations to visit their family in the east of Turkey, and plan to do so on the second leg of our cycling Journey, aka, our Honeymoon!