This afternoon we went across the Golden Horn to Fener, a sub-district just beyond the dramatic bits of Sarayburnu – an old Greek/ Jewish/ Bulgarian/ Armenian neighbourhood which recently received a UNESCO imprimature for heritage for its churches, synagogues, mosques, and scores of graceful Ottoman era row houses, tall and narrow, with moulded ceilings, wooden floors and frescoed walls. It was, as is much of Istanbul, absurdly beautiful in parts, with the usual mouldering grace. Some areas had been thoroughly cleaned up and they were thronged, generally, by fashionable young women (almost all hijab wearers) posing, with their male attendants taking photos. It was a curious spot, very much in the early-gentrification and early-tourist hotspot phase. It reminded the GF of Dalston (except no one ever accused Dalston of an absurd beauty), with its mix of high-end boutiques and cafes, and the local caffs and plastic homeware shops, of hipsters and abaya clad women sharing the streets but inhabiting different worlds. It also had a slight end-of-the-line feel to it – perhaps unreasonably, but as though it was an enclave or a cul-de-sac of the city. There are a few remarkable houses here that would easily fall within our budgets – one Ottoman era place which looked like a small castle, another with frescoed walls and a black-and-white tiled courtyard. But that area is not for us.
I was not feeling terribly bright and it was hot, so our exploration was not very thorough, but we did walk through a number of streets, up to the patriarchate and down to the cast iron church, and then finally took a taxi back to Galata where, as usual, I am ensconced on the balcony, watching the Hagia Sophia turn pink at dusk.