Turkish Delight

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Istanbul is a very cool city. It straddles two continents, tens of centuries and multitudes of little neighborhoods, each with its own feel and character. The most impressive thing about Istanbul, though, is absolute cacophony of sound and chaos of the city.

Sunday, May 11th:
Up early today to beat the rush to the shower in my 30-bed dorm room, so after the shower and a quick bite in the hostel, I was off to the Ottoman Palace and museum. After paying my entry fee for the palace as a whole, I saw a couple from New York that was looking at the guided tours. I spoke to them for a few minutes and we decided to see if we could get a guide together. We ended up with a little old Turkish guy who charged 10 Lira for an hour each (about half the price of everyone else). The problem was that he had a bit of an attitude, and did the tour of the first courtyard faster than the husband in the couple wanted to go and refused to do the Harem at the start. He had good info, but was more than a bit frustrating sometimes. It was kind of funny, as the husband also thought he knew everything about the Ottoman Empire from 1 or 2 books he had read and leaned over to me or his wife constantly to comment. An hour was enough for me with these three, so I paid the guide and went onto the rest of the place by myself. It was a wonderfully interesting museum, with great structures and some interesting items on exhibit (supposedly, they have the turban of Abraham and the sword of David - reminds me of how Constantine's mother gathered enough parts of the "true cross" to build a house), still cool to see, though.
After the palace, I went down to the train station to book my train to Sofia, grabbed lunch on the street and headed for the Basilica Cisterns. Very cool, 1600 year-old cistern that is one massive open space with hundreds of columns holding up the roof. The capacity must be in the hundreds of millions of gallons if/when it fills up. There is always some water in there - some points are even deep enough to hold tons of fish, which is really kind of creepy. There are also 2 Medusa heads that act as bases for two columns. The odd thing is that one is upside down and the other is turned 90 degrees over. Archaeologists know they were put that way deliberately, but can't figure out why.
Next, I was off to the Hagia Sofia. This was really the major reason why I wanted to come to Istanbul, but the infuriating thing is that there is nowhere to stand near-by where you can get a good shot of the whole thing. I decided to head inside, and was amazed. It really is the light, airy, beautiful space that you think it should be. It is understandable how it was for many years the world's largest open indoor space. You can also see the relics of its years as a place of worship (it is now just a museum), more for the Muslim aspects than the Christian ones.
I somehow got it into my head that I wanted to see the Whirling Dervishes today, so I made my way across the Golden Horn (still on the European side) to Galata looking for their little, simple chapel. It is impossible to find. So, I decided to head to the Galata Tower.
Build originally by the Romans, then rebuilt by just about every power that has taken the city, the tower sits at really the highest point in the city and gives tremendous views. Here is where you can see the whole of Sultanahmet (district to the South where the hostel, palace, Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia are) as well as the sea, the Bosporus, the Asian side and parts to the North and West. This gives you the great view of the Hagia Sofia, as well as 4 or 5 other mosques that seem just as impressive and built in the same style. A short walk from the tower is the Tunel, the world's shortest subway. It has 1 train, is a funicular and has 2 stops. I took it, basically just to say I took the world's shortest subway. The funny thing, though, is that because it is a funicular, the floor is slanted when at one stop, and the driver had one leg dramatically shorter than the other. The two were meant for each other.
As I had covered a lot of ground today, and still wanted to see the Dervishes (if possible), I headed back to the hostel, stopping by the train station on the way back. I needed to make my reservation for tomorrow night's train to Sofia, and they also have Dervish shows on Sunday nights for 30 Lira. I made reservations for both - only needing to pay for the train. I got back to the hostel, checked the emails and had a beer in the bar with a few of my hostel-mates. I ended up chatting with a Canadian named Michelle who was also traveling on her own, and we decided to grab a bite later on. Ended up getting some really good Turkish food for practically nothing ($12 for 2 of us) on the roof deck in the shadow of the Blue Mosque. It was great except for when they had the last call to prayer of the day and the sound was absolutely deafening, as there are loudspeakers on the minarets. After dinner, it was back to the hostel for some more drinks with the co-stayers and the cool bartender from San Antonio, then to bed. Michelle had complained about being harassed, as is typical of single females in the city, so we decided to meet up tomorrow after I hit the Grand Bazaar and she the palace.

Monday, May 12th:
Up early again to hit the Grand Bazaar for a bit of haggling and gift-buying. I did stop off at the old hippodrome, with its 3 Byzantine columns. Not a whole lot there, really. It was cool to see that the street level had risen at least 15 feet over the centuries from where the base of the columns once was to where we stood. Turning around took me right into the Blue Mosque. Unlike the Hagia Sofia, it is not a museum, but an active mosque - they ask that you not take pictures or enter when the service is in session. I think it is actually a more beautiful building than the Hagia Sofia, though not as big of an indoor space. The park at the exit also offers a splendid view of its more famous neighbor.
The Grand Bazaar is not at all what I had expected. I was looking for a tightly-built maze teeming with people. Instead I got what has clearly been rebuilt a number of times over the years into what amounts to an open, indoor mall with wide boulevards for shopping and electric lights, with people selling everything from magnets to diamonds. Still the haggling, though. Did pick up a pair of gifts - the recipients will find out when I get home. I extricated myself after a few hours, watching it go from basically just me to thousands of people filling the grid of shops.
I bumped into Michelle on my way back to the hostel, which is certainly luck enough. As she owed me money last night from dinner, I was happy to find her. She had, unfortunately, slept in very late and decided to head out with her one roommate, an Aussie named Nick, as her escort to the bank (she needed to pay me, the hostel and the laundry lady). After a definite adventure of the 3 of us running back and for to the hostel and the bank and the currency exchange office (Nick and I all the while making fun of Michelle for having no sense of what she needs to do anything - and basically extrapolating her to every Canadian anywhere), I got my money and the two of them ran off to do the cisterns and the palace.
On my own (not as planned, but not exactly surprised), I headed East across the Bosporus to the Asian side of the city for some lunch and wandering. Grabbed a great little kabob at a local dive and headed up the hill into the working-class part of the city. I basically just wandered for a few hours, buying a Borek (little filled pastry) in an absolute abomination of a conversation with the shop-owner and his assistant. Managed to grab some things for the train ride from a supermarket with much less hassle. I eventually found my way back to another dock to take the ferry back to Sultanahmet and the hostel.
I grabbed a beer and shot the shit for a while, then Nick and I went off and grabbed dinner with a Dervish show. I am very glad I didn't pay 30 Lira for it. It's kinda cool, but gets boring watching some dude spin for a few minutes at a time. Nick proposed his "Turkey as Star Wars" theory, citing Cappadocia looking like Tatooine and the Blue Mosque with the park in front of it looking like the palace on Alderaan. I had to agree when I saw that the Dervish looked a lot like a Jedi Knight.
After dinner, we parted ways, I grabbed my pack and I hit the rails for Sofia.

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Photos

fishing
There are tons of people, locals and tourists, fishing for their dinner off the bridge over the Golden Horn