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First full day in Istanbul
We woke up at 8 am to begin our first whole day in Turkey. After having breakfast in the hotel, we met on the benches in front of the Blue Mosque for a short lecture. Campbell gave us some background on the Ottoman Empire so we would understand the sites we were about to visit. I'm pretty good with Byzantine and Ancient Roman History (thanks to the History of Rome), but the Ottomans were never really on my radar. I had no idea their empire lasted until World War 1.
The Hagia Sofia is right across the street—impressive, but not overwhelming from the outside. Inside was another story. Campbell told us o keep our eyes on the floor until we were standing under the very center of the dome, and he was right. The first glimpse was fantastic. There were gorgeous paintings all over the central dome of the ceiling and the architecture was really unique.
We spent some time on the ground floor, then headed upstairs. The stairs were these weird stone ramps (floor, walls, and ceiling all made of uneven stone blocks) that made it look like a medieval knight in armor was just around the next corner. The place was a showpiece church, then a mosque, and now is a museum. There was a cool mix of religions and education. Campbell told us before we went in that there was a struggle with each wall: keep the awesome Islamic art on the plaster or tear it down to reveal the fabulous Byzantine mosaics? The mosaics were revealed on one side, and the depicted holy figures with lots of gold leaf and rich colors. There was also a lovely mosaic over the outside of the exit door, which people apparently kept missing. They finally put up a mirror to reflect the image of the mosaic so that everyone gets to see one last thing of beauty before emerging into the rest of the world.
I can see how the Hagia Sofia was a concrete representation of the Emperor Justinian's wealth and power, as well as why the Blue Mosque was placed across the street, in a bid to upstage it. There can be no doubt that the Hagia Sofia is a work of art and I'm thrilled to be able to check it off my list of paces to see.
We left through the courtyard, with its lovely gardens and aggressive salespeople. There were about 4 people trying to sell water at the gate, and 2 of the guys in out group were waylaid by wooden flutes. It took a few minutes of haggling, but they finally joined the rest of the group and we continued on to the Basilica Cistern.
I was a little skeptical—the cistern was totally unimpressive from the outside, like a concrete guard shack. Was this worth a trip, especially one with a ticket that cost money? Campbell told us before we went in that when the city was taken over after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the government didn't know about the cistern. It was incredibly important to have guaranteed access to fresh water during the days of war and sieges, but the cistern wasn't rediscovered until local officials realized that people nearby had holes in their basement floors and were catching fresh fish through them.
My first impression of the cistern was understated awesomeness. It doesn't hit you in the face with art or culture, but this place is lovely. The rows of columns holding up the ceiling are lit from below and the whole place is very dim. Fish are swimming around in the foot of water on the ground and people can walk around on raised bridges. The cistern is enormous, able to hold almost 2.8 million cubic feet of water. It is so hard to imagine people building something this cool so long ago, something that is still in good condition. We see ruins all over the place, but this was completely intact. The columns were brought from all over the empire during the reign of Constantine, so all the columns have lovely designs on top and each one is different. Even stuff these people thought would be underwater forever was well-built and tastefully decorated. As we strolled through the cool, dim cistern, I could see some of the columns "weeping", or with water seeping from the whole surface of the column. At the very back of the cistern are 2 columns with the head of Medusa at the bottom of them. I was surprised to see such intricate carving placed sideways and upside down, but legend has it that the builders were worried Medusa would poison the water if she were placed right side up.
We left the cistern after about 30 minutes and headed on to the next site. On the way, we stopped for some ice cream. No simple scooping here; the Turks put on a show. Their ice cream tastes normal, but it has the consistency of soft taffy before they scoop it out. The ice cream guys wear traditional clothing and use long sticks to spin the whole tub of ice cream around and then swing each scoop onto a cone. They hit a bell, give you the cone and then take it away, flip it over and over, and just generally fake you out. Most of the group (finally) got some and then Campbell haggled us a lower price. Yay!
The archeology Museum was at the bottom of a hill. The Ancient building was first, featuring the Treaty of Kadesh, the oldest known written treaty. It was neat to see such an old cuneiform tablet. The best part was that most of the exhibits in the building were just sitting out on the floor, so you could get really close and even touch them. The Gates of Babylon (the actual gates!) were on the wall and there were 2000 year old statues you could walk right up and touch. It was weird not to see this stuff behind glass. At one point we were all taking pictures and I realized that we were leaning on a column from the 6th century BC. Oops. There was also a mummy in its sarcophagus behind the glass. I asked, and the guard said it was a real mummy, which explained why my pictures were so blurry. All my mummy pictures seem to come out blurry. Creepy.
We headed to the Roman building next. Campbell told us on the way that the Turks are much more casual than Americans about the ancient things they have because there are just so many of them. I was mentally comparing it to arrowheads in my area, where you can see old Native American arrowheads in museums, but nearly everyone I know has found one just lying on the ground. At a certain point, very few of the new items you find will reveal anything new. There was something like an artifact graveyard in the courtyard between the building, with old columns and friezes leaning every which way like the headstones of archeological digs. As Campbell said, at a certain point, what can you do with yet another column?
The Roman building had lots of cool statues and heads. Just heads, because there were so many emperors and so many outlying Roman provinces that they used the same body and just replaced the head whenever a new emperor came into power. I got pictures of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius before my camera died, but didn't see most of the other recent "History of Rome" (podcast) subjects.
The next wing had a mummy and lots of sarcophagi, including one somewhat dubiously identified as belonging to Alexander the Great. It was fantastically detailed and hardly damaged at all, given its age and how much it had been moved around over the years (centuries). Next to it was a small frieze in full color, just like it would have been during Ancient Roman times. It was pretty jarring to see that because none of the colors survive on the friezes we see today. These were bold, vibrant colors, which made the carvings look completely different from the marble-y, washed out carvings I was used to. We walked by lots more sarcophagi, burial items, wall art, and even some mosaic floors. I know about King Tut and the Egyptian sarcophagus/mummy burial practices, but I had no idea the Roman did anything so elaborate.
We sat on the front steps for a while to take a break, and then headed back inside to the second floor. There were more ancient artifacts and a balcony we could look over. Campbell told us that lots of the things we were seeing in the museum were recovered from shipwrecks in the Bosphorus. Some of the artifacts survived intact, but many more had been shattered by the wreck and the intervening years. The intact stuff went on display, but the shards were collected and labeled for some poor grad student to pore over. Hundreds of shards of broken pottery and other artifacts were placed in trays and just covered the ceiling of the exhibit below us, so we could look over the balcony and see the tiny little bits that represented just 1% of what was in storage. It was a great visual representation of the scope of what remained to be discovered and the painstaking work that goes into archaeology.
That was it for the museum, so we headed back up the hill for lunch. We passed up several restaurants (too pricey, too small, etc.) on our way to the döner we finally chose. We sat in the back and had burrito-like sandwiches with meat in them. The proprietor came back personally, and he turned up the A/C for us while we ate. We had free time in the afternoon, so we all broke up. One group went to Topkapi Palace, another went to the baths, and I went with the group that wanted to walk around.
The 6 of us walked through the neighborhoods around the hotel and over to the coast. I had been seeing it whizz by the bus windows all week, so it was nice to finally see it up close. We could see across the Bosphorus and all the ships waiting to cross the strait. The harbor was incredibly busy all the time—I still can't imagine how much traffic must pass through there. You can really start to understand why Istanbul was so important historically. Before there were planes, trains, or automobiles, they were the only game in town when it came to international trade. Nobody was anybody unless they could get through the Bosphorus and on to the other side of the world. It was incredibly hot, but there were families having picnics on the grass and people swimming. Well, there were men swimming. We saw a few women sitting on the rocks at the shoreline with their boyfriends, but none of them were in the water. There was also a guy who would let you pay to shoot his (BB) gun at some balloons. Interesting. We walked along the shoreline for a while and then sat down in a shady spot in a park to figure out where we should go next. I was surprised by how far we had walked. Looking at the map, we had covered a fair distance along the shoreline and we could either continue around the peninsula or cut back through Gülhane Park. The park won because we had walked so far already. Plus, the park was really nice. Lots of trees provided shade and there were tons of people to watch.
We met the rest of the group for dinner at an outdoor restaurant and hookah bar near the hotel. We sat outside on couches, listening to live music and watching a whirling dervish on the stage. I had seen pictures of them, but I hadn't seen a whirling dervish in person yet. The dervishes spin themselves into a trance in order to feel closer to God (Allah). It is pretty mesmerizing to watch, but I can't imagine actually doing it. The food was wonderful too.
I left after dinner to go pack at the hotel. I was excited for the next part of the trip, but sad to leave Istanbul. I wish we could have spent another day or two in the city. In any case, I slipped up to the roof of the hotel before bed to take some pictures of the city at night. The Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque were lit up beautifully. The hotel was almost right between the two, so I could stand in the rooftop café and get some nice shots. It was so peaceful up there—hard to imagine I was right in the middle of such a big city. I miss it already.
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