journal update

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Here is an entry I wrote in my journal on March 14th...I will just copy it into here.

Hey! Well, a lot has been going on since I last wrote in Istanbul. For our second day in that city, we wandered across town to the 'Egyptian Bazaar,' which was a tantalising display of all different kinds of dried fruit, piles of Turkish Delight, and towers of nuts, candies, spices, coffee, and other food goods. The coffee smelled absolutely delicious, but we didn't buy any of that; we invested our money in Turkish Delight--which, looking back on it, was an awesome idea. That stuff is delicious, despite the fact that I don't really understand what it is and the texture seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to marshmallow. Anyway, after that we ate lunch at a really nice restaurant with panoramic views of the city--I ordered a yoghurt-and-lamb kebab and Raki, the extremely strong Turkish liquor. The food was a little rich but still very very good.

Then we strolled back to our area of the citz--we were staying in the 'old town,' called Sultanahmet--and went to go see the Aya Sofya. The Aya Sofya is a gargantuan, domed building with golden spires spiking from its hooded façade. It was built by Emperor Justinian in 532 AD to be the world's grandest church. Eventually it was captured by Muslims, who converted the church into a mosque and covered all of the beautiful interior Christian mosaics with plaster and paint. Nowadays the Aya Sofya is a museum and workers are struggling to uncover the mosaics. You can see some of them when you visit--very beautiful and intricate, they glitter with a dull golden sheen. If the country of Turkey is a meeting-point between east and west, then the Aya Sofya is definitely a grand symbol of that collision--although I think perhaps it makes a better symbol than a museum, because the interior is quite empty and, except for the mosaics, there isn't much to see. After the Aya Sofya we hopped on a tram and crossed the bridge to a newer, flashier district called Beyoglu. We walked down the very ritzy, very ornamented Independence Ave, which turned out to be nice, although it was nothing new. Every big city has one of these streets where Dolce-and-Gabanna-clad mannequins pose inside of glass display windows and restaurants offer decent-tasting meals for a minimum of USD 40. And there always seems to be a horrifying preponderance of American food/coffee chains; on this street we counted three different Starbucks Coffees, three different Gloria Jean's Coffees, two Pizza Huts and two Burger Kings. Yikes. Sadly we didn't manage to avoid falling into the trap...we each ended up paying 3.5 Euro for a blah-tasting hot chocolate at Gloria Jeans. The really crazy thing is that our combined dinner cost us less than that and tasted much better. We found a little shack on the street, right next to the metro station, and we both got a sausage sandwich and a salty buttermilk drink (pretty popular here and basically the same thing as an Indian salt lassi) from the old guy there and it cost us less than 5 Euro.

The NEXT day, our last day in Istanbul, we went to see the Topkapi Palace where the sultans used to live. Can I just say that these guys were loaded? (By the way, I have noticed a strange pattern: no matter which city me and Colin visit, we somehow find ourselves in a museum staring at the blinged-out possessions of dead people: princesses, dukes, sultans, presidents, czars, etc.) These sultans had thrones which were literally encrusted with pearls, diamonds, emeralds, and rubies from top to bottom. Their water flasks were made of crystal and embellished with gold. They had pure-gold pendants the size of dinosaur eggs, decked out with jewels and feathers. (To which part of their bodies were they even able to chain these glittering albatrosses? I have no idea.) They had writing boxes made of crystal and gems, where they stored their onyx-and-gold writing pens. Colin was especially indignant about the carved-ivory pen case ('Who needs to have an ivory pen case?? Why don't they just...SET the pen...ON the TABLE, until they come back and write again?? Look at me! I bought this pen at the Vatican...my pen is from the Vatican...but I don't get an ivory PEN CASE!!!! Etc, etc). For me, the most interesting part of the palaces was the 'sacred safekeeping room,' with display cases filled with things which were supposedly holy relics. They had a sword, which they claimed to have belonged to King David, and they had a wooden stick, which they said was the rod of Moses. They also had a pure-gold arm cast, supposedly the arm cast of John the Baptist. And in the golden arm cast there was a smallish hole, through which you could see a nasty, sinewy decaying arm, also belonging to John the Baptist. (I guess he wouldn't want someone else's arm decaying in HIS golden arm cast). Oh, and they had John's golden helmet, complete with a fragment of his skull. Gross. In the next room there were at least 15 samples of the prophet Mohammed's beard, each housed in dainty crystal jars. Oh, and one of Mohammed's teeth was also at the party. I guess I would have been pretty impressed with all this stuff if I knew for sure that these were the relics they claimed to be...but I wasn't sure if I had seen the actual decaying arm of John the Baptist, or if it was some other arm, or if it wasn't really an arm at all. Anyway, it took us about 2-3 hours to see everything in the palace; we were completely starving and exhausted after that, so we went to a nearby restaurant famous for having the best meatballs in the country. We each ordered a plate of meatballs, a salad, and a salted buttermilk. The meatballs were delicious--greasy and flavorful and served with pickled peppers and a sweet red chilli chutney. The salad (shredded carrots, chickpeas, tomatoes) was the perfect fresh complement to the greasy meatballs, and the buttermilk was great whenever the chillis got too spicy. Great meal for really cheap. After eating we were sort of at a loss for what to do, since we were supposed to catch a bus that night at 6:45 and we'd prettz much seen all the historical sights already, so we just bought some postcards and went to Starbucks (it's never far away). It started raining while we were inside so we hid out in there until our bus came. It was an 11-hour, overnight journey to Cappadocia on a bus with no bathroom!!! It was definitely not the most restful of nights, but I think it was worth it because I am really loving Cappadocia.

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