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Saturday started off as it normally does - with me oversleeping. Charles comes to meet me at my room so that he can get into the Marriott executive lounge with me for breakfast. Well, Saturday morning, his knocking woke me up. I answered the door and he just started laughing. It doesn't matter where I am, I am still the same Katie.
Before I forget, while you may have been laughing about my experience with Raki, I plan to bring back plenty and make EVERYONE try it.
So we took the ferry over to Europe (I love saying that), got on the tram and walked towards the Blue Mosque. Last weekend I had spotted a good picture taking point in front of a double fountain with the Mosque in the background. I was excited and I took Lyuba and Charles' pictures in this awesome spot. Only the inner fountain was on. As luck would have it, as soon as I go stand there, the outer fountain comes on and blocks the view of the Blue Mosque. Go figure. So we head to the Blue Mosque. As always, I plan to give you bits and pieces of facts and history about ALL the places we went to, just as I gave to Lyuba and Charles.
The Blue Mosque is actually the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, but is known as the Blue Mosque due to the 20,000+ blue Iznik handmade ceramic tiles. (If you are ever on Jeopardy, this might be helpful to know.) It was built between 1609 and 1616. This mosque is one of the two mosques in Turkey that has six minarets (their call to prayer is given from the top of the minaret). When the number of minarets was revealed, the Sultan was criticized, since at the time, the same number of minarets was at the mosque in Mecca. He overcame this problem by paying for a seventh minaret at the Mecca mosque.
So there we were. Absolutely amazed by the size! (Well, Charles and Lyuba were, I saw the exterior the weekend before!) But I was still in awe. It is beautiful. So we get some pictures with me in them and proceed to get in the line for tourists. Well, first we got in the line for people going to pray. It's obvious we are tourists because we were re-directed. They gave Lyuba and me sheets to cover our legs, as we had shorts on. Unlike the mosques in Dubai, we did not have to cover our head to go inside. The interior is just as massive as I expected. I had read about the Iznik tiles in my DK Eyewitness travel book. There were more tourists than people praying, and tourists could only go to a certain part of the mosque, which was fine because it was still amazing either way. I generally see a lot of the DK Eyewitness travel books when I travel - always in multiple languages. Outside as we were putting our shoes back on, I was sitting next to a couple that had the "DK Eyewitness Top 10 Istanbul" whereas I had gone all out (an extra $7) for the full sha-bang book. So we were talking about how much we love the books, and it turns out that they are Americans living in Amsterdam, working for Starbucks. Such a small world.
Next up was the Hippodrome. Honestly, there isn't that much left of it in my opinion. A Hippodrome was a course provided by the Greeks for horse racing and chariot racing. The one in Istanbul was apparently one of the largest and most famous, built between AD 203 and 330. Per Wikipedia, these were once 4 gilded horses, which were looted during the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and installed on the façade of St Mark's Basilica in Venice. I guess I should go back through my pictures of Venice and see what I missed! The course of the old racetrack has been paved over, although the actual track is some two meters below the present surface. The surviving monuments of the Spina (the middle barrier of the racecourse), the two obelisks and the Serpentine Column, now sit in holes in a landscaped garden. (These are really the only things that we could see.)
I was somewhat surprised that no one has ever excavated the area of the Hippodrome. I had to laugh when I read that in 1993 an area in front of the Blue Mosque was bulldozed in order to install a public toilet, uncovering several rows of seats and columns from the Hippodrome. I believe I actually paid 1 lira to use that exact toilet (aka, WC or Water Closet). I also believe the 1 lira was for the toilet paper they rationed, because the actual toilet was a hole in the ground, just like in China. Before I reached this famous WC, we saw the "German Fountain", which was constructed by the German government in 1900 to mark the German Emperor Wilhelm II's visit to Istanbul in 1898. I want a fountain to mark my visit as well! Actually, this fountain was BEAUTIFUL and is currently the desktop on my computer.
Moving right along, we head to the Basilica Cistern. (The picture on this blog) This is probably on the Top 10 List of things I have ever seen... which says a lot!! If you are anything like me, you have no idea what a cistern is. I actually looked it up on my Blackberry so I would feel smart. A cistern is a receptacle for holding/catching and storing rainwater. They are often used in areas where water is scarce, and was used for cooking, irrigation, and washing. It was built in the 6th century. Again, per Wikipedia, "The cistern is an underground chamber, capable of holding 80,000 cubic meters of water. The large space is broken up by a forest of 336 marble columns each 9 meters high.I prefer to describe it as massive, mysterious, and serene. Per my travel book, it wasn't discovered until several hundred years later, when people were found to be collecting water, and sometimes fish, by lowering buckets through holes in their basements. There were many fish in there - some were rather large, as I am assuming there is no more "bucket fishing" allowed.Here we also saw the "Heads of Medusa", which are two large block carvings (I'd guess maybe 3 feet high) from an unexplained origin. One is upside down and one is sideways, so I took a picture with both. Only one more stop before lunch!!!
Hagia Sophia is next. This place (in my opinion) dominated the skyline of Istanbul, even more than the Blue Mosque. The current building was originally constructed as a church between A.D. 532 and 537 and was the 3rd church to occupy the site. The previous 2 had been destroyed by riots and/or fire - we saw artifacts, stone pillars, etc that were excavated. It was the largest cathedral ever built in the world for nearly a thousand years, until the completion of the Seville Cathedral in 1520. This poor church was hit by earthquakes (553, 557, 558, 869, 989, 1344, 1894, etc), ransacked during the Crusades, you name it, this building has been through it!! In 1453, Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and ordered the building to be converted into a mosque. The Christian artifacts were removed, and its mosaics were destroyed or covered with plaster, due to Islam's ban on representational imagery. (This would explain why they were in such bad shape when we saw them.) It remained as a mosque until 1935, when it was converted into a museum.
Inside was amazing. The marble, the mosaics, the colors... It was under a large renovation work. I asked Charles if the Olympics were coming because the same thing was going on when I went to the Forbidden City in Beijing. One of my first thoughts were about how similar it was to St. Mark's in Venice (a lot of differences, too). The more I read about it though, the more I have understood that a lot of items in St. Mark's in Venice are from the Hagia Sophia. (I am noticing a pattern from earlier!) The mosaics depict the Virgin Mary, Jesus, Saints, Archangels Gabriel and Michael, emperors and empresses. I feel like I have already gone into a lot of detail, but it's hard to describe thousands of years of history into one paragraph!!
Ok, yea lunchtime!! We are walking through the restaurant areas trying to decide what to eat, and I am getting increasingly irritable due to the heat. Last weekend I didn't have anyone to complain to, sadly for Charles and Lyuba, they got to hear my complaining this weekend. So we decide on a Turkish/Indian restaurant called Dubb. We walked 4 flights of stairs to sit on the roof overlooking Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. There is no fan, A/C, or breeze. So we sit down and look over the menu, and at this point I must have been having a heat stroke because Lyuba was asking me what I was getting from the menu and I said "It's probably better not to talk to me until I eat my ice cream." At least I openly share when I am cranky. So we order, I tell them I must have my ice cream first. Our drinks come without ice, so they bring us a glass of ice cubes. After Charles and Lyuba took theirs, I took mine and put them on the back of my neck. One of which proceeded to slip and slowly slide down my back. My ice cream gets there and I dive in. It helps.
So for lunch, I order a chicken casserole dish and Lyuba & Charles get a traditional dish called "Iskender" which is lamb with red sauce and a yogurt type sauce that is VERY popular here. It wasn't until my meal came in a sizzling dish that I realized, while it may look good, I may have just had a heat stroke and it probably wasn't the best option. But boy did it taste good!!! Of course I tried the Iskender, which was FANTASTIC. Lyuba, Charles, and I have traveled together so much that we have been able to bypass social convention of co-workers and share our food, which works out well for all involved.
We get on a tram and decide that it is early enough in the day that we can try to go to the Prince's Islands for the afternoon. We get off the tram at the wrong stop (my fault) and have to walk a good 1/2 mile to 3/4 of a mile to get to where we are going. Well, we are walking and not seeing anything, so I stop to ask someone. The guard was insistent that the ferry didn't stop there for the Prince's Islands. We were all insistent that the ferry HAD to stop there because it was on the map. I guess that means subject to change without notice? So there goes that plan. With all my whining and moaning earlier in the day about the heat, I had recovered. I was still hot and sticky, but it was manageable. However, now the heat had gotten the better of Lyuba, so we had to make a plan that would not involve losing her to the heat (which I was MORE than happy to do).
So we head to the Spice Bazaar, which was built in 1660, and therefore is one of the oldest bazaars in the city. There were shop keepers insisting you smell their tea and spices, saying that they had the best quality. I just wanted to keep smelling. I normally can't distinguish smells (ex. This is apple with a hint of orange) but here the smells were so strong (in a good way) that it was easy. I picked up some spices and apple tea.From there I led the team back to a souvenir shop that I saw last weekend that I wanted to stop in again. To get there though, required us to go through some interesting streets. While it is quaint to purchase your meat from a butcher and vegetables from a farmer's market, I can't imagine having to go to different stores/vendors for every single item - a store for cleaning supplies, a store for kitchen ware, a store for batteries, a store for random gadgets… you get the idea.So we find my shop, I pick up some presents and some items for my travel room as well.
We took the ferry home and I managed to fall asleep on the taksi ride from the ferry station to the hotel. What a long day!!
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