Friday, April 23 – Flew from Larnaca to Jordan to Istanbul via Royal Jordanian – awesome service, seats, food, wine, and newspapers! We got to Istanbul about 1:00 and immediately started to experience the Turkish hospitality. Everyone was so nice to us, even our airport shuttle who gave us free snacks and water. There were Turkish flags everywhere, so we asked our driver if there was a reason for it; he couldn’t tell us in English, so he called a friend and had him explain it to us – so nice! Also, there were flowers EVERYWHERE! Designs in the medians and shoulders of the roads and gardens everywhere you looked; it was GORGEOUS!! Our hostel was nicer than some of the hotels we stayed in throughout Europe! We locked our stuff up and started our explorations.
We found the Blue Mosque – it was beautiful! We stayed around there by the fountains and, yes, more flowers! Then we found our way to the Grand Bazaar – huge and stimulus overload! It is the biggest covered bazaar in the world with around 4,500 stores! They had everything from mosaic lanterns and handmade ceramic bowls (beautiful!) to watches and bags, etc. While we were looking around a store, one of the store owners gave us more snacks and water – these people are overly nice! Similar to Egypt, we got a lot of weird comments/pick-up lines (although, not as bad) like “Let me change your life!” to “How can I help you spend your money?” haha, always amusing.
Then we walked to the Spice Bazaar (above). It had spices galore – everything for cumin to chili pepper to curry to all sorts of different kinds of tea. It smelled delicious! After a Turkish dinner (beef in pita with veggies and yogurt) we walked back towards our hostel, but not before stopping and taking more pictures in front of the Blue Mosque/fountain lit up!
Saturday, April 24 – Breakfast on the roof of our hostel, then we walked to the Hippodrome, which used to be the center of the Empire of Constantine the Great for centuries. There was an Egyptian obelisque (it was huge, but apparently used to be 3x the size it is now!) that was originally built in 1500BC and Constantine brought it to Istanbul (Constantinople) in the 4th century (I think). The street around it is in the shape of a horseshoe and was the same road/place where they used to race chariots – crazy! We started walking towards the mosques and stopped to watch a woman weaving a silk carpet/rug. A Turkish man came over and started explaining it to us – he said to make a 1m x 1m silk rug it takes 1 year! He proceeded to ask where we were from – he went to school at UW-Lacrosse and now owns this rug shop – small world!
Then we walked to the Blue Mosque (above) – it was enormous!! When it was first built it was thought to be blasphemous because it had 6 minarets and people thought it was trying to out-do Ayia Sophia. It is named the Blue Mosque (or Sultan Ahmed) because it has over 19,000 blue tiles inside. It was absolutely amazing! My pictures don’t do it justice, but they are better than any explanation I could give...
We walked out to more flowers and flowering trees (ahh, I love this place!) and walked across the street/the fountain area and went to Ayia Sophia or Hagia Sophia (above). It was originally built by Constantine in the Great in 360 AD, but was rebuilt to its present form between 532 and 537. It served a church until 1453 when the city was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and it was converted into a mosque. In the halls before entering the main part there are tall ceilings and arches that yellow with red and black trim/decorations – it almost looked Spanish style. Inside the main part/nave = GIGANTIC! They were doing some renovations on the huge circular Arabic signs, so there was scaffolding up on both sides. The second level was a museum which had a lot of mosaics from when it used to be a church. When it was converted, the Muslims covered all of the Christian pictures and imagery. It was interesting to see where they covered up some of the crosses, but over time (or renovations) they have become somewhat visible. Ayia Sophia was astounding!!
We walked to the Topkapi Palace. We had some snacks on the grass outside the Palace and enjoyed the sun and flowers. We went into the Imperial Council Hall then into another building with sacred possessions – we saw the Prophet David’s sword and the tablet that the story was written on, lots of Islamic possessions (i.e. Mohammad’s swords, footprint, etc.), and Moses’ rod (I tried my best to get a picture without them seeing, this is the best I got) – so cool! We walked into the second Treasury and saw countless jewels, diamonds, and gold. The most impressive was an 86 karat diamond with 49 large diamonds surrounding it!! Apparently it was found in a dump and sold for 3 spoons, then it was sold to a jeweler who eventually figured out it was diamond. It was made into a ring (that thing would be bigger than the person’s hand!) and then a jewel decorating a turban – crazy! We walked through some gardens and overlooked the Golden Horn. The Palace was big, but we were ready to be done sightseeing, so we didn’t pay to go see the other major attraction area in the Palace.
We sat by the Blue Mosque for lunch – roasted chestnuts and corn on the cob – they have venders selling these all over Istanbul. Then we walked across the bridge to Asia (picture above)! We were so excited to have walked to another continent! At first it seemed poorer and we rarely saw a woman out on the street, similar to the North side of Cyprus (but not that extreme). We walked up a long hill and got to the main street. There were people everywhere, gypsys dancing for money (pictured right) and stores, restaurants, and shops lined the street for as far as we could see. We walked for about 30-45 min and finally got to the square at the end of the street. We were getting hungry, so we walked back down the big hill to the water again and were trying to find the bridge back to the Europe side. We asked for directions to see which bridge was closer and they looked at us like we had 5 heads…we were still on the Europe side!! We were so confused, so we opened up the map…all the way, and found out that we had just crossed the Golden Horn, not the Bosphorus! (We tried to keep the map as small as possible to avoid looking like lost tourists…now we looked even more stupid!) So, we had spent the entire afternoon thinking we were in Asia! We were determined to get to Asia, so we ran to the first ferry we saw and jumped on it; luckily it ended up taking us to the Asia side :) Although, we had no idea where we were, and not many people could speak English, so we stayed close to the port. 
The Asia side looked very different than the Europe side (above). It was much more metropolitan, signs and advertisements that showed men without shirts and women in bikinis (you would not see that on the more conservative, European side), no huge mosques dotting the skyline, and fewer women covered. Had a chicken kebab for dinner and they gave us free honey soaked dessert – so good!
Back on the ferry to the part of Istanbul where our hostel was (with the mosques and palace, it seemed much more sketchy at night). There were quite a few children out working or selling things or playing music trying to get money, it was sad. I was getting sick of people trying to get us to buy things or eat in their restaurant, so every time they started talking to us, I would just start making up words and speaking gibberish, literally. One guy goes, “You don’t know how to speak Turkish!” clearly. They didn’t bother me after that! :)
Sunday, April 25 – We walked to Cagaloglu Hamami. It was built in the 18th century and is one of the oldest Turkish Baths, 300 years old. It is in the book “1000 places to see before you die” and it’s where a lot of the famous people go (John Travolta, Cameron Diaz, etc.). We were brought into our own rooms and were told to put a towel on…just a towel. I opted out of that one and kept my swimsuit bottoms on. We put on wooden sandals and walked into the main room (the hararet). It smelled so good! It had all marble floors, walls, and seats that were all heated – it was hot in there. The ceiling was gray cement and had holes in the top that made it look like we were under a starry sky. We each got a little basin and a small bowl and were supposed to wash/wet ourselves. Then we went and lay down in the sauna room – again, it was all hot marble walls, floor, and seats. So nice and relaxing with just us in there! We got called to go back out into the hararet and we directed to lie down on the raised marble floor in the center. This umm…very large woman grabbed me. Her one-piece suit was useless because every time she moved it came down/fell off her shoulders…Well, I paid for this, so I might as well pretend this is normal and enjoy. She poured water over me and put some soap on me and proceeded to “message” me – it was more of a rub-down, everything from my face/head to my feet. Despite my attempts to relax and enjoy, it was SO awkward and weird at first (well, throughout most of it). Half way through she motioned for me to turn over, much better….until she thought it was necessary to pull down my swimsuit bottoms…had those on for a reason. Once that was over, she shampooed and conditioned my hair and rinsed me off one last time. During this whole time, there were other people in the hararet, and a mother and daughter (about 11ish?)… I walked out, got a towel and got dressed. They gave me some free soap – it smells so good! Well, despite that whole…umm…process, my skin was so smooth and I felt so clean! It was definitely an experience.
We walked around a bit more, sat by a fountain for a while to waste some time, then got back to the hostel to catch our shuttle to the airport (where we saw all these men wearing towels…just towels (about 3 on each person), that’s it. We later found out that they were wearing those because they were on their pilgrimage to Mecca? Something like that). Anyways, time to go to the Middle East! :)
Istanbul was one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen!! The first day we were there it seemed to have a combination of the good parts of Egypt and the good parts of Europe. It was very unique. The main, tourist par of Istanbul (with the mosques, palace, and bazaars) was so pretty! On the other side of the Golden Horn it seemed to be poorer near the water by the bridge, but up top on the hill it was shopping central. The Asia side was very metropolitan and less conservative. Also, everyone was very nice and hospitable. And, as you can see, the flowers were one of my favorite parts! I absolutely LOVED Istanbul! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment