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Published: July 23rd 2006
view from breakfast
not a bad way to start the morning...though the prevıous entry may have put you on edge about thıs cıty, i cannot even begin to describe how incredible this place is. everyone seriously needs to book a trip here. its worth the money. but back to getting here...
so we arrived in the city at 3:30am. we were too tired to be angry/scared/upset and just figured we'd find some hotel somewhere, put in on the credit card, whatever. a cab pulled up and despite the fact that being ripped off was quite likely, we figured we'd at least go to our guesthouse and see if it would be possible to just get another night there. on the way there, basically a 5 minute ride, we passed the haya sofia and the blue mosque, the heart of old istanbul, which were about hmm...about a block from where we were staying. i was ready to collapse, but that didn't stop me from feeling pure awe as to where exactly we were. we felt really bad ringing the doorbell, but we didn't exactly feel like spending the night on the street, so we did and a girl poked out the window. we told her the situation and came right down,
breakfast
some of you might take interest in the fireking peach lustre mug i drank my coffee out of. you know who you are! telling us that there was a room w/ private bathroom available for 40 euro. whatever, it sounded perfect, and so we went to bed.
by the time we had gotten settled, it was about 4:30 am, but before I could fall asleep I was startled by the Muslim call to prayer about half an hour later as the sun was already coming up. Echoing from several mosques, the beautiful chanting lasted several minutes and left me with chills running down my spine. Eventually I did fall asleep, but only for about two hours because of one of my favorite things ever...rozwolnienie. Those of you who don't know Polish can look that one up. Then came the most awkward shower of my life, and as you all know, I've had some pretty awkward showers. Imagine a regular bathroom with just a toilet and a sink, but then add a showerhead and faucet just randomly coming out of the wall, no tub or anything. I thought I had to be missing something but no, we literally HAD to flood the bathroom by showering.
Once showered and whatnot, we headed upstairs to breakfast. Amazing. Sitting atop our roof overlooking the Marmara
the end of our street
that's part of the haya sofia (plus the shop we bought our tea set at) and you can see the minarest of the blue mosque in the background sea we enjoyed fresh yogurt, olives, cheese, bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, and some tea. It was the most tranquil breakfast ever, with the cool ocean breeze and the warm sun upon our backs. We were greeted by the girl that had let us in the night before, and she said that if we just leave our stuff in our room she would move everything for us and get our other room ready by the time we got back later in the afternoon. We also dropped our less-than-fresh smelling bags of dirty laundry to have done.
Walking down our block after breakfast we realized the absolutely incredible location we had managed to book a place in. At the end of the block is this small, but beautiful old mosque. Take a turn and right past the four seasons is the Haya Sofia, once the biggest church in all of Christendom later converted into a mosque after the Ottomans took over Constantinople, and then turned into a museum by Ataturk in the first half of the 20th century. Walk about a half block further and there is the blue mosque, probably Istanbul's most famous.
Not quite sure what we wanted
Blue Mosque
the only mosque in Istanbul having 6 spires. supposedly the mosque in mecca added a 7th so as to not be one-upped by this place to do, we decided to hop on a city bus tour that left right there in front of Haya Sofia. Might as well get to know the city a bit before attempting to explore it. The bus tour was about an hour and a half long and took us throughout the entire city on both sides of the Bosphorous. The city is sprawling and packed, yet so incredibly gorgoeus- surrounded by water and dotted with minarets. We passed everything from the palaces of the sultan's to ancient walls built by the Roman Emperor Justinian in the god-knows-what century. I was a nerd and listened to the entire tour in Spanish.
Once off of the bus we decided to do the museum that is the Haya Sofia, which means divine wisdom. Having been converted to a mosque in the 15th century, all of the frescos and mosaic had been covered, as 1) the muslims didn't really care about christian icons in their mosque and 2) its not allowed to have images of living creatures inside mosques. The inside was pretty awesome, with beautiful arabic designs juxtaposed against images of the saints. The whole thing was especially awesome after having taken
from the bus...
random view from the bus. the mosques and their minarest pop up out of everywhere. they're quite beautiful. a course titled 'conversion, islam, and politics in the balkans' this past semester.
after that we paroused some shops next to the blue mosque and first experienced the incredible resilience of Turkish shopkeepers and restaurant workers. Its literally impossible to walk buy without being quasi-harassed. Harassed is a harsh word, but sometimes it can be a bit annoying. anyway, we saw this cool looking restaurant outside and before we could really think about it we were already convinced to have a seat by the host. i ordered grilled eggplant with kebab meat, as well as a shepherd's salad. i think i can really get used to this turkish food. after our meal we got complimentary glasses of turkish apple and flower tea, served in these cool little glasses. we would later find ourselves buying out own sets of these glasses, but more on that in the next update. after finishing up we headed to a little shop where i bought some turkish chocolate and then we continued on our way exploring.
we wanted to hit up the Topkapi palace, but weren't exactly sure where it was. naturally it ended up being basically next to our hotel, like everything
Justinian wall
built in god-knows-what century by the Roman emperor. much of the lower half of istanbul is surrounded by an ancient wall like this one else, but we took a ridiculously long way. we made it to the coastline and after seeing all the people just chilling on the rocks and even fishing, we decided to do the same. it was at that point, basking on the shore of the Marmara sea, that we decided Istanbul was the most incredible place ever. We could've sat there forever under the sun with Istanbul sprawled out before us, plus behind us, to the left of us, and everwhere else, lol.
we eventually did force ourselves to leave and did make it to the palace entrance. Topkapi was used during the first half of the Ottoman rule, I believe, before a second palace was built, which we have yet to see. Walking inside we saw that it wasn't just like one building, but rather a complex of gardens and pavilions and all kinds of things. There was a harem tour starting in 15 minutes or so, so that was the first thing on the agenda. The harem was where the sultan, his family, and all the concubines and eunics resided, and was made up of some ridiculous number of rooms and chambers. It is crazy that everything
Haya Sofia
pretend the minarets aren't there and you have more-or-less then massive domed cathedral strucuture built in christian times when it was constantinople and not istanbul was in such magnificent condition, whereas so many of the other places we've been have been rebuilt. The sultans rooms were of course ridiculously lavish and gorgeously decorated, with beautiful arabic script everwhere. ottoman turkish at that point was written in arabic, p.s., and was a lot different than the turkish spoken today or even the colloquial turkish at that point.
after the harem we continued to explore the rest of the palace, seeing some of the treasury and all kinds of rooms like the circumcision room. only a sultan would have a separate building for that. the complex was pretty touristy, but nowhere to the extend that for instance prague was. i would say that about half of the women here either wear a headscarf or full-body burma, which is something i've never experienced before. i can't say i agree with conservative islam's image of the modern woman, but i'm not going to bother getting into that here...
back at the guesthouse/hotel/hostel we had our new room, which was smaller and had a shared bathroom, but the shower was still part of the wall. super. our laundry was dried and folded on our bed which was ridiculously
Scary Mary
this picture turned out kind of cool, with the byzantine mary lit up over the more mosque-looking part of the interior of the haya sofia nice of them. we chilled there for a while and saw just how lobstery we had become after our day under the turkish sun. then we hit up the internet at a place nearby, and much to my surprise they had windows xp, which was wonderful. still, it took forever to load my pictures so i only did a few from the various romanian cities. oh well...it had started to rain while we were inside, but it was done by the time we were out.
it was already getting dark out when we left, but we still hadn't eaten, so we decided to just eat on the rooftop restaurant of the hotel across the street. our waiter was extremely friendly, as we've found almost every turkish person here to be so far. we split some hummus and then i got a salad with octopus, plus this really good beer- Efes Pilsen. It was once again amazing to just sit there with the sea breeze and the skyline. We talked over coffee for a while before heading back and going to sleep after a long day on little sleep.
its kind of late, so i'll update about today's adventures
tomorrow night. all i have to say is that i have no money left because of these turkish salesmen, lol. they're too good...
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Theresa
non-member comment
beautiful*
i can't believe all the beautiful pictures you've taken of all these amaaaazing cities. wish i were there! glad to see you're still having the time of your life! see you in less than two months!