Istanbul’s lovely little secret

In fact, most of what you can get up to on the Princes’ Islands — of which Heybeliada, at a single square mile, is the second largest — is pretty fun, and charmingly old-fashioned, revolving as it does around eating charcoal-grilled fish, drinking 45%-proof alcohol, swimming, riding bikes and mucking about in beautiful, big old boats.

We did what Istanbullus have been doing since the days of the Ottoman empire and got on a boat to the Princes’ Islands Istanbul IS a great city. Its big sights — the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi Palace and especially the Hagia Sophia — are big sights for a reason, and the crowds must be conquered to see them. Across the Bosphorus, in the Beyoglu district, restaurants spill into the streets and designer boutiques hide down side alleys.

The Grand Bazaar may have become a mall for the high-pressure peddling of tat, but the new landmark art galleries and extortionately priced rooftop and riverside bars show that Istanbul is no longer a backward backpackers’ stopoff, but a European capital rocketing into a trendy future. After four days, though, we’d had enough — of the heat, the tourists, the £6 bottles of beer.

So we did what Istanbullus have been doing since the days of the Ottoman empire and got on a boat to the Princes’ Islands. Hundreds of local families thronged around the port at Kabatas on Saturday morning, hauling bags of beach towels and packed lunches. Over the centuries, the Princes’ Islands have been home to writers, poets and a lot of monks, as well as exiled politicians, sultans and princes (hence the name).

The region’s well-to-do began summering on this Turkish riviera in the 19th century. Ataturk was a member of one of its sailing clubs. Now, we’d heard, the islands were a sort of Istanbul-on-Sea, a slightly faded Victorian resort attracting weekend day-trippers and nobody much besides. So we’d booked ourselves in for a week.

In summer, a fleet of noisy, ramshackle ferries steam out of Istanbul, down its Asian coast, and wend their way between the nine Princes’ Islands. Up on the busy, breezy deck, we ordered a glass of caramel-coloured tea (for 20p — take that, P&O), and by the time we’d slurped it down, forested humps were rising from the haze, like eggs bobbing in the salty sea. On their slopes, we spied Orthodox churches next to minarets, and whitewashed clapboard mansions that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an episode of Murder, She Wrote.

We ploughed on past tiddly Yassiada (980ft x 620ft), where, in 1960, the new military regime tried and sentenced to death the deposed prime minister. We missed out even pokier Sivriada (820ft x 590ft), whose only inhabitant is a fisherman-hermit (though he has just married a Romanian woman). You’re meant to see dolphins; we didn’t.

As our ferry bumped against the quay at Heybeliada, we were saluted by a student from the island’s naval school, looking like an extra from A Few Good Men. On the front, a line of restaurants unreeled, serving mussels stuffed with rice and “aubergine salad”, garlic-laden pulp as delicious as it is stinky. Old-timers sat under canopies, drinking tea and squinting over cards. Stray dogs, ranging from cutest puppy to mangy fleabag, slept in the sun.

We hailed our horsey taxi and trotted up a fig-lined street, past antiques/junk shops, to our very own bright-white wooden mansion, the Karamanyan, built as a hotel in 1875. Our apartment on the first floor, with views out through the shutters over the sea to Asia, was so good, we didn’t mind when it rained. The 80-minute voyage from Istanbul had set us back a century and some.

How the Princes’ Islands have stayed free of costa-style overdevelopment is largely a matter of sand. The lack of it. Wooden-decked private beach clubs have cornered the market in littoral activity here. The closest we came to a bona fide beach was on a short island hop to diminutive Kinaliada, where we joined the leather-brown local mums, children and gossiping retirees on the narrow strip of massaging/agonising pebbles by the pier, with the hourly ferries sending the swell up to our toes. The sea, though, was warm, deep, saltily buoyant and clear enough to spot the jellyfish well in advance of accidentally leaping off a pontoon onto one.

We’d come to the islands to escape the sightseeing treadmill of Sultanahmet, but even we couldn’t quite manage seven days of lolling on sunbeds by the sea and reading in hammocks in our shaded garden. On a gentle cycle through Heybeliada’s pine forests, with a post-shower rainbow arcing overhead, we stumbled across old monasteries, the hulk of an abandoned 1920s TB sanatorium and a Greek Orthodox cemetery abutting a Muslim one. Nothing much to trouble the Istanbul guidebooks, but eerily fascinating nonetheless.

Waiter holding a tray containing glasses of tea in Istanbul (Gary Yeowell)

One sight certainly worth changing out of our trunks for was on Buyukada, the “big island” (but still a traffic-free one), where up a hill stands a little church dedicated to the BNP’s favourite foreigner, St George. Getting there was half the fun. First, a ferry ride. Then another phaeton, past more amazing mansions, including one to which Trotsky exiled himself. For the last, steep, cobbled leg, we forwent the donkey-ride option and walked, sweatily.

The beauty of the little blue-ceilinged chapel was made all the more rewarding by the kebab house next door. Seriously. It’s called Yucetepe Kir Gazinosu (00 90 216-382 1333, yucetepe.com). A cold bottle of Efes, beef koftes and some super-fresh salad out on a dusty terrace overlooking cliffs — it’s what St George would have wanted after a hard day’s dragon-slaying.

The week slipped away in a procession of lie-ins, lunches, seaside afternoons and the mildest of explorations, undisturbed by tourist touts or petrol fumes. We’d then make our way back to our apartment (via the fragrant patisserie at the bottom of our road, hopefully timed so its cornflake and chocolate cookies had just come out of the oven) to brush up for another balik-raki dinner.

Balik means fish; raki means raki. Go steady. Wanting to look my best one night, I called in on Ertay, Heybeliada’s lone barber. Using my best Sweeney Todd sign language, I arranged myself a cut-throat shave. He scraped me smooth in record time, dabbed away the blood like Florence Nightingale and slapped on the aftershave like the Marquis de Sade. For no added charge, and to the giggles of his young son/apprentice, he rammed scissors up my nostrils, removed unsightly neck hair and made my single eyebrow two.

Time is not entirely standing still on the Princes’ Islands. On Buyukada, a glam-looking hotel, Terrace Lido, is going up. Next door, Eddie (382 1881, eddiebuyukada.com/english.asp) is a new bar kitted out like a Ralph Lauren beach-hut fantasy, in lemon-yellow deckchair stripes. It’s been featured in Turkish Vogue and has the drinks prices to match. Signs, perhaps, of a new generation of wealthy Istanbullus adopting the islands as their summer playground.

A short cycle south of Buyukada’s mosque-like port building took us to an old helicopter hangar, now the Museum of the Princes’ Islands (entry £1.60; adalarmuzesi.org), full of lovely sepia photos of paddle steamers and a jumble of idiosyncratic memorabilia, from raki bottles to an early-1990s wetbike. The last display was a board bearing 52 proposals for the future of the islands. Among the suggestions were improving phaeton drivers’ manners, instigating a recycling programme and making municipal vehicles electric. You could cast your vote in a ballot box.

I declined to comment. Yes, recycling and electric vehicles sound good, and there are still some horse-bottom issues to resolve. But I’m pretty happy with the Princes’ Islands as they are, thank you very much.

Martin Hemming travelled as a guest of Istanbul Islands and British Airways

Getting there: British Airways (0844 493 0787, ba.com) and Turkish Airlines (0844 800 6666, turkishairlines.com) fly to Ataturk airport from Heathrow. Turkish Airlines also flies there from Stansted, Birmingham, Manchester and Dublin. Or fly to Sabiha Gokcen, on the Asian side of Istanbul, from Gatwick or Luton, with EasyJet (easyjet.com); or from Stansted with Pegasus Airlines (0845 084 8980, flypgs.com).

The most convenient port is Kabatas. The crossing to Heybeliada takes about 1hr 20min and costs £1.20 (ido.com.tr). If you must, catch the modern fast ferry, which takes 50 minutes (£3). Crossings between the islands cost £1.20.

Where to stay: the Karamanyan apartments sleep 4-6 and cost £490-£990 a week (020 7436 8009, istanbulislands.com). Also on Heybeliada, the Halki Palace (00 90 216-351 0025, halkipalacehotel.com) has doubles from £130, B&B. Though it looks like a lovely old wooden building, it’s concrete beneath the clapboard — the 19th-century original burnt down. On Buyukada, the Splendid Palas (382 6950, splendidhotel.net) is a lovely old wooden building (from 1908). Doubles start at £71, B&B.

Tour operator: Anatolian Sky (0844 571 9133, anatoliansky.co.uk) can tailor-make a trip with three nights, B&B, on Buyukada, and two in Istanbul, from £749pp, including flights and ferry crossings.