HAVE A ROYAL TIME IN THE ISLANDS
By Erik Fearn

Malaysia Star
Saturday September 15, 2007
Malaysia

I’ve always had a fondness for ferry rides. Ferries are the trains
of the seas, as Agatha Christie, an ardent traveller, used to say.

Ferry trips are little adventures, packaged around predictable
timetables. For us landlubbers, it’s a chance to have a brief
flirtation with the sea; to get close enough to smell – perhaps feel –
its fine, briny spray.

And occasionally, just occasionally, we get the chance to take the
ferry – and its small, temporary family of fellow passengers – to a
destination as enchanting as the journey itself.

Island life: (Top to bottom) Holidaymakers stream off the old
Istanbul ferries; villas from a bygone era are still the summer
homes of Istanbul’s elite; the main square in Buyukada town. – ERIK
FEARN Such a place is the Princes’ Islands, a sprinkling of nine tiny
islands off the south coast of Istanbul, Turkey, in the Sea of Marmara.

A heady, seductive blend of history, seaside culture and horse-drawn
carriages makes this getaway the most popular for Istanbulites, who
strain to breathe in their megalopolis just an hour away, and within
easy view of the breezy islands.

But it wasn’t always so. The Princes Islands were always a place of
internal exile. During the Byzantine Empire (330-1453AD), when Istanbul
was still Constantinople, the greatest city on earth at that time,
disgraced princes and other royalty were exiled to these islands. And
later, members of the Ottoman sultans’ families were exiled here too,
giving the islands their present name.

But in 1849, following the introduction of a steam ferry, the
Princes Islands quickly became a favoured weekend and holiday home
for Istanbul’s socialites.

Back then, Constantinople was an incredibly cosmopolitan city. Much
of the commerce was conducted by the Greek, Armenian and Jewish
communities who had been in the city for generations and had risen
to become wealthy merchants.

And it was these minorities who came in droves to the islands to
build sumptuous summer villas. It was always a strange insight into
Constantinople’s multi-culturalism that here, in the shadow of the
capital of the mighty Muslim Ottoman Empire, were these little flecks
of islands that had been "colonised" by Christian Greeks, Armenians
and Jews who cooked their own food and spoke their own languages!

Evidence of this bygone era can still be found on the islands in the
form of the recently restored Armenian chapel on Kinaliada (island)
as well as the (now closed) Greek monasteries that sit atop Burgazada
and Buyukada, the biggest of the islands.

In Turkish, Buyuk means "big" and ada means "island", and Buyukada
lives up to its name. Some of its 14 churches, its mosque and
synagogues poke above the palace-like villas that proclaim Buyukada’s
sense of self-importance, as does a grand twin-domed edifice, built
as a hospital for the Crimean wounded, now the Splendid Hotel.

But it is this very air of faded grandeur that gives these islands
their charming time warp. The other feature from another era is the
horse-drawn carriages that are the only mode of transport on the
islands apart from bicycles and, of course, strolling.

As the ferry pulls alongside the jetty, make your way to the town
square adjacent to the terminal. You’ll see a queue of carriages made
of painted wicker that can comfortably seat four. The driver may or
may not speak English but is invariably pleasant.

A leisurely tour around the island takes in empty bays, cliffs,
beaches and cool pine forests, but always within view of the deep
aquamarine sea (and oftentimes within view of Istanbul, city of 12
million, just beyond!).

As you ride through the quiet lanes of Buyukada town, with nothing
but the quiet "clop-clop" of the horses’ hoofs for accompaniment,
you glide past splendid wooden gingerbread mansions built a century
or more ago which once vied for magnificence. Some are lovingly
restored while many have suffered over the years, the victims of
family squabbles, economic reverses and cheap internal air travel to
the seaside mega-resorts in Turkey’s south.

Back in town, it’s time for a typically Mediterranean late seafood
lunch at any of the restaurants that line the seafront. Seafood always
tastes better with the smell of the sea breeze to whet the appetite
. . .

This is a perfect place from which to people-watch. As the ferries come
and go, blowing their wailful horn, daytrippers and island residents
ebb and flow along the long pier onto the island, hawkers shout,
families hug, a group of teenagers try to sing their favourite Turkish
pop tune as they giggle and stroll up into the town square, the meydan.

And all this happens under the jetty’s elegant clock tower, where
the clock doesn’t work. How appropriate for these Princes’ islands!

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress