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Published: November 15th 2010
Blue Mosque
The Blue Mosque, not a bad looking place.Istanbul blog.
To travel back in time for anyone reading these Turkey entries in order we must go back to the first day of the Turkey tour to cover our first day in Istanbul. It can be noted that on the memorable date of 10/10/10 we spent 10:10am on this date inside the Blue Mosque of Istanbul and 10:10pm at dinner.
We started the day with breakfast in our hotel - it seems the Turks idea of breakfast items are roasted capsicum, eggplants, carrots, ham, cheese, dips, olives, feta, yoghurts, sliced cooked cocktail frankfurt, salad, all sorts!
Our first stop was the hippodrome which is near Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia. Here there were some Obelisks; one from 1500BC they'd pinched from Egypt that looked like it had been made yesterday! The granite was so smooth with clear low relief hieroglyphics, it was amazing it was so old. They'd mounted this on a nice white marble base that had some interesting high relief carvings showing the erection of the Obelisk and also a chariot race in the Hippodrome.
Next stop the Blue Mosque (1*+) has six tall rocket-like Minarets and some very impressive roofs with great domes. The
Hagia Sofia interior
The vast and remarkable interior of the Hagia Sofia. Note the gold decorated dome, uncovered angel, and the huge round board with Arabic caligraphy reason it's called the 'Blue Mosque' is because of the predominantly blue tiled areas inside, especially under the main dome. Our guide explained how they'd built an alcove in the back wall to allow the Imam to preach from there and allow the absolute maximum real-estate for people to fit in and pray on the floor. Whilst we were there we watched a chap do his prayers which involved kneeling and pressing his head to the floor; the guide said this was great exercise and kept the practising Muslims limber well into their old age which is a nice practical benefit I think!
Our next stop was just across the park to the Agia Sofia (2* for inner & outer) and looks very similar in style to the blue mosque. Within the AS was a nice covered marble type Collonade with gold coloured tiles in the awning above with nice patterns and Christian decorations from that time. Inside the main room is a vast space topped with the dome which is the 4th largest in the world our guide said. The dome is beautifully patterned in gold and black and surrounded on the four main support arches by winged
Proud Turkey
The first of 15,072 flags we saw in Turkey, they're a flag flying, proud nation. angels which have had their faces covered over by the Muslims when they took over. Affixed around the walls were massive wooden circles like shields, black with golden Arabic caligraphy that looked impressive. Also good golden mosaics.
For our tour lunch we were in the 'Pudding Shop' a buffet type restaurant where the staff were pushy and generally confused us but at least we got to giggle about the name.
Our next city sight was the 'Underground Cistern' (3*) one of the many vast underground reservoirs the city kept to ensure an emergency water supply, e.g. during a siege if the enemy poisoned other water sources. It was a vast impressive space and had a few interesting column bases in there with Medusa head bases and fish swimming about in the water! We marvelled at the huge area and more so when they pointed out that despite many earthquakes it always stands tall and only requires repairs after big quakes.
Our afternoon finished with another highlight the 'Topkapi Palace' (2*+) whose grounds have views of the Bosphourus and over to the Asian continent where much more of Istanbul sprawls. It was cool to look over the water from Europe
Underground Cistern
The stunning huge and pretty space of the underground water cistern. to Asia. I was astonished to hear that this strait is deemed international waters and no tax/ tariff is made to trade ship to go through! Military vessels must ask permission to pass though.
Our guide talked to us about the palace including interesting excerpts about the 'Circumcision room' where royal princes around age 6 or 7 where circumsised (they do it later in life so the lads will remember it). We then zipped through the Holy Objects room which included Moses staff he used to part the red sea (!) and fragments of the Prophets beard (!) and the Prophets sword.
With closing time rapidly approaching we just managed to get through the Treasury where we saw many objects decorated with many emeralds and rubies and diamonds. We saw some huge emeralds the size of matchboxes (!) and one 86 carat diamond (!) that was pretty special. Also a magnificent jewelled dagger with 3 massive emeralds in the hilt. The treasures were very impressive and comparable to any of the best jewels you'd see around in any palace or vault.
We enjoyed the palace and it's rooms and would recommend it even to those jaded of visiting European
86 Carat Diamond
This image from Google shows the giant diamond in the Topkapi Palace treasury palaces as this had different architecture and sights.
Walking through the city squares we found a Corn vendor and Alicia got a fresh BBQd hot corn to eat with some salt which she quite enjoyed. We also watched a kid of 13 or so making lollies on a stick from 5 vats of bubbling coloured sugar. We had one of his lollypops with orange/ purple/ and green on it and it was a pretty good, a bit like a frosty fruit, but still a bit sticky textured, like a soft toffee.
Our walk through the city main streets was pleasant; it seems fairly spacious, a bit run down, but with a broad boulevard, and much nicer than Athens. Plenty of people about and safe.
Apologies for this but the next 9 days are covered in the other three Turkey blog entries so the Istanbul information below took place on day 10 when we returned:
Our bloody hotel had staff pounding on the door to clean the room every hour from 08:15 (!) this annoyed us greatly since we didn't have to check out until 12pm. Today was the day we were getting out of tour accommodation, we
Emerald Hilted dagger
This image from Google shows the big emerald jewelled dagger in the Topkapi Palace treasury got to our hostel after midday and had a refreshing and dirt cheap OJ freshly squeezed from a chap with a little wooden flat bed cart with a metal vice-type hand press who parked on the corner right near our hostel: we loved this guy and ended up patronising him endlessly over the coming days for thousands of juices.
Around Istanbul we found the 'Spice Bazaar' to be a reasonably nice place, plenty of staff around on each stall but most didn't trouble you or mind if you snapped a few photos. We wandered into one shop with some very pretty spice piles and they offered us some honey Turkish Delight which turned out to be delicious. To justify my taking a thousand photos in their store we bought some Honey, Cocoa, and Pistachio Turkish delight from them then snapped lots of photos of their pretty spices. We had a joke and a laugh with a few vendors who playfully tried to twist our arm for taking pictures of their produce and ended up seeing a few of our tour group wandering the spice markets too.
In the afternoon we took a long walk home through the city and
over the Golden Horn bridge which was lined with heaps of fisherman who were successfully pulling out smallish fish on medium-large sized rods; it was astonishing just how many fishermen there were and it seemed they may have been doing it for business not pleasure due to the volume and organisation of them.
The next morning the bloody local 'call to prayer' woke us at 5am but putting ear plugs in quickly got us back to sleep. A couple of glasses of the delicious, cheap, fresh squeezed orange juice from our local guy helped kick start our breakfast later.
We began our Bosphurus cruise on a small group trip we found that seemed a little dubious when we signed up for it but turned out fine. It was for 2.5 hours cruising plus a one hour stop off at Ortakoy a charming seaside village part of the city.
Our cruise lacked commentary which was a shame but the weather, which started grey and overcast kept improving throughout the whole day. We had some interesting views of a few palaces and mosques along the water, as well as mansions of the very wealthy, and interesting restaurant built 50 m offshore
out in the sea, and the large bridges that span the continents from Europe to Asia over the Bosphorous. I enjoyed being able to look around the famous waterways (Bosphorous, Golden Horn, Sea of Marmara) and think about the trade that flows through there. We did see one or two large ships coming south, presumably from the black sea heavily laden, I still can't believe the Turks can't tax them!
Off the boat for an hour at Ortakoy we were charmed by the pleasant, colourful little streets that had decent buildings with a bit of rough charm and lots of nice, fresh looking eateries; most of which were selling baked potatoes or waffles. After strolling the streets for half an hour and despite no specific highlights agreed the area was delightful. I grabbed a pita kebab and Alicia had a fancy stuffed baked potato for lunch, both were good and we enjoyed them at the waterfront. We then got a large waffle with thick milk chocolate spread and heaps of sliced strawberries on to share and it was delicious.
Our boat thankfully returned on time to take us away from Ortakoy and after a quick sojourn further north on the
Continent spanning bridge
From left to right this bridge goes from Europe to Asia! A pretty important trade corridor too. Bosphorous and across to the Asian side of Istanbul where we saw more mansions our boat took us back to the start near the Galata bridge in fine sunshine.
For our afternoon we decided to make for the Kuriye Museum (Church of St Chora) which is supposed to have the finest mosaics/ frescoes around and so we braved a local bus ride in surprisingly heavy traffic. We were quite unsure where to get off but the ticket man on the bus understood where we wanted to go and gave us a few hints not to get off to soon. The street we'd driven along had a thousand bridal dress shops along it which had Alicia intrigued and enthused.
The interior of the church was magnificent with excellent painted plaster, golden mosaics, and really impressed us. We've really only seen wall painting of Christ and his many mates and stories in Orthdox churches in Greece and Russia, this was similar but of a much higher quality with beautifully depicted scenes in fine detail and nice colours or rich gold.
We were happy with another good day in Istanbul and cooked for ourselves again at our hostel that night.
Our next
Kuriye Museum 1
This little church has some of the best mosaics and decorative ceilings anywhere. ever. day we ate delicious toasted Turkish bread with fried eggs and 2 cups of our local fresh OJ for breakfast which was fine. We headed down to the waterfront Dolmabahce palace (3*), and walked about the grounds which we quite enjoyed despite the dubious overcast skies. It was notable that unlike an European palace or manor this palace was noticeably proximate to the city and you could see the high walls keeping the peasants out from most of the grounds. It does seem to me Asian palaces are more in touch with their cities....
All touring inside the palace was guided tour mandatory; first we did the Harem where the Sultan and all his family and women lived; it had more a family feel to it than a 'whore house' feel so I suppose it's nice to know Harems weren't just were Sultans went to spread their seed. The harem rooms were nice but not spectacular.
Our next tour was of the palace which had stunning interiors I'd rate it up there with Buckingham Palace in the top two palace interiors in the world. It pissed me off that the no photos rule was in force, but with a
Kuriye Museum 2
This little church has some of the best mosaics and decorative ceilings anywhere. ever. guide and guards about there was very little chance to sneak a photo.
The palace was not short of main halls all of which were beautifully lavish with great walls, columns, and painted and decorated ceilings; usually supporting huge and heavy chandeliers. The two highlights amongst all the beautiful sights was a flight of stairs entry area that was architecturally brilliant and decorated in fabulous splendor; I would have cut off my left one for a photo there but there was no chance to snap even a subtle one and Alicia ordered me not to get arrested in Turkey so I had to hold fire.
The second highlight was a vast domed hall holding a huge 4 tonne chandelier in the centre. The dome was painted in rich blue designs and it was like being in any major domed cathedral interior but with brilliant decorations. The whole palace was brilliant though.
Fatalistically Nick didn't scream and shout in rage where we once again found all the postcards of the beautiful and stunning palace interiors were taken by drunken, untrained monkeys who don't understand photography; these days if you check on Google Images and Flickr you can find photos some other
Kuriye Museum 3
This little church has some of the best mosaics and decorative ceilings anywhere. ever. rule breaker has taken inside and steal theirs!
Having spotted a sports bar in town previously Alicia proposed we go out to watch Australia and India play in a cricket one day international; it's a change of pace and a chance to relax with a drink so we trammed into town and got into the bar ok. We were cruelly stunned by the ludicrous prices of drinks in the bar, we paid 15TL for a coke and pint, not mad prices in major European countries but outrageous prices for Turkey.... We watched Australia get crushed due to poor bowling then set out for dinner.
Alicia fancied some Turkish pancakes and Nick was not fussed so we asked around for them, one cheeky tout tried to tell us pancakes could only be had for breakfast; we scoffed at him and moved on, it's annoying when people lie to you!
Turkish touts by the way are largely harmless, much better than many I've experienced in the likes of Thailand or Malaysia. They usually stop badgering you after you say 'no thanks'.
We easily found a pancakes dinner place where women out front rolled out the traditional dough for all to see
The cats of Turkey
there are 7.21 billion cats in Turkey here are eight within a 2 metre radius. and enjoyed some warm pitta and Hummus which Alicia had been craving our WHOLE Turkey trip. We finished the meal with a potato filled, and a mince & onion filled pancake, all was good.
Our last day in Istanbul began after fresh OJ with the 'Galata Tower' (1*). This is a tower first constructed in 586 BC on the hill above the golden horn, it is about 61m high and has views around all of Istanbul. Up top we took in very fine views of Istanbul including the Bosphorous, Golden Horn, and down and over the spit of land to the South, to the Sea of Marmara. The skyline was dotted with Mosques and Istanbul is a reasonably interesting and pleasant city to see from above.
Our next destination was the 'Grand Palace Mosaic Museum' (2*+) which was a real bugger to find, behind the Blue Mosque. We eventually found the exit and had to stick our heads in to demand of the staff where the entry was; it still took a few minutes with their directions to find the entry! Thankfully the Mosaic museum had absolutely fabulous mosaics. The Mosaics are leftover from ancient roman palaces built
Grand Palace Mosaic Museum 1
The Romans knew a thing or two about making amazing mosaic and the Turks have some astonishing works at the time the city was 'Constantinople' . We loved the excellent mosaics which included a few mythical beasts like Satyrs and Griffins, hunt scenes including dogs and hares, lions and antellopes, and leapords. These mosaics are comparable or better than any you'll see anywhere else e.g. Naples museum showing Pompeii stuff.
In the afternoon we headed over to the Grand Bazaar and looked at a lovely necklace for Alicia, it was 22 Carat yellow gold, very heavy with an interesting design but the price wasn't as cheap as we thought it should have been at 1,200 Euros. Also the lies the salesman told us badly dampened my enthusiasm: Firstly he said Alicia's engagement ring definitely wasn't high quality gold which it is. He then made some very dubious statements about the colour of gold indicating how to judge his gold jewelry. Having insulted me by implying the ring I bought Alicia for our engagement wasn't good enough and making some questionable statements about gold I got cold feet and we walked away to talk it out, the salesman's lies weren't appreciated so no necklace for Alicia!
The rest of the Grand Bazaar was similar to any other big indoor
Grand Palace Mosaic Museum 2
More beautifully preserved quality Roman mosaic market and basically was all crap. We enjoyed the spice bazaar much more.
That afternoon after one last 1 TL fresh OJ from our favourite vendor in Istanbul and despite the lies and propaganda from our tour company saying it was impossible to get to the Asian airport of Istanbul via good, cheap public transport and we should use their transfer service we found a very cheap (13 TL each) bus running from the main square and smiled at our big money savings as we bused to the airport in comfort. We flew out to Rome with no further ado and wished fond farewell to Turkey.
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Mum G
non-member comment
Istanbul blog
So glad you loved Istanbul Sad that we missed the mosaics in St Chora there My research hadn't unearthed that one! However we were able to take photos inside the Dolmabahce palace They must have stopped it. I remember at the time my camera flash kept going off and the guide wasn't too happy about it !!(I have since mastered the NO flash setting!!) Yes the Spice markets were better than the Grand bazaar.Guess you missed the sultans boats in the Maritime museum next to the Dolmabahce? a shame. Great Blog.