Our House

For nine months, we are renting a three-story house in Fener, formerly a Greek area, now a neighborhood in a state of visually beautiful decay. It is on the European side of Istanbul, along the water of the Haliç/Golden Horn, and is a fifteen minute bus ride to the oldest part of the city. The house sits half-way up the side of a cliff-like hill. It was restored by a British diplomat who moved away years ago when his station changed. The first floor has a guest room, bath and a future second guest room (if we get it together to buy another bed.) The second floor is the kitchen and living room. The third floor is our bedroom, bath and a wide hall we use for drying clothes. As our neighborhood photos will attest, there are no electric dryers for miles, and there has been some small disagreement in-house as to whether dryers are strictly necessary. There is a washer in the basement with cyphers on its dials and an adjacent darkroom for photography that we hope to make workable. The multiple fish tanks in the house are a story for another day.

Breakfast

Our kitchen

View from the stairs

Living room

New fish tank

Our bedroom with a balcony

Third-floor bath

Stairs down to second floor

First floor stairs

Guest bath

Guest bedroom

Front door.  Tomorrow we'll post pics of the neighborhood outside. 

Red dot is our location. Left side of the map is Europe, and the right is in Asia. The small waterway near us is the Haliç/Golden Horn, the large waterway in the upper right is the Bosphorus, and the open water on the lower part of the map is the Sea of Marmara.