Istanbul - Sunday and Monday

     


I'm blocked by the sheer amount of information I feel like I have to tell about Turkey .... but I'll try to keep it as short as I can. It's like being in a cartoon ... Aladin meets Paris. It's a city of 15 to 16 million people, and I'm convinced at least a quarter of them are actually Japanese tour groups, and not much less than that were in front of us in each and every sight. But it's well worth the crowds. 

We got here Sunday and were a little too beat to do much other than eat and walk around Sultanhamet, which is the area of our hotel and all of the main tourist attractions. It's definitely another tourist culture with restaurant and store owners pestering you to come in and buy the most beautiful rug in all of Turkey. 

I'm surprised by the food ... Turkish pizza is deeeeelicious and the flatbread they bring at each meal is to die for. Lots of meat and rice ... yummy. 

Back to Sunday ... we sat at a nargila (by the way, I'm not even attempting to spell things correctly) joint outside and smoked the hooka (apple flavor). The atmosphere is really fun at these places, plus the waiter asked me to marry him. Apparently, I look very Turkish - or at least I don't look American. No one believes I am from The States. 

Monday was jam packed with touristy sightseeing. The Blue Mosque, the Basilica Cistern, and Topkapi palace. This stuff is old as dirt - some of it form the 500's. The Cistern is really cool - it's an old underground water storage facility (with beautiful columns and fish swimming around - nothing industrial looking about it). It was apparently discovered when some archeologists found that the people living on top of it were fishing through holes in the floors of their houses. It's a super dark dungeon and the ceiling drips. (It's the dark photo with columns lit from the bottom).

A highlight of the trip was realizing that the Turkish instrumental music being played down in the Cistern was actually "Don't Speak" .... as in the song by No Doubt. A Madonna number followed. 

Topkapi Palace takes about 3 hours to get through and is a little city in itself. You can see the actual clothes some of the emporers wore, their private apartments, and the herum. Every wall is covered in beautiful tile ... most rooms are lined with sofa-like seating. Canopy beds ... ornate ceilings. These emperors had it MADE.  The herum is the private residence of the royal family and his (hundreds of) concubines. It's against Muslim culture to enslave other Muslims, so the concubines were from other countries and actually would leave the herum at some point and become powerful women in society, married to rich men. 

 

Your have to cover your head and take off your shoes at the Blue Mosque - it's really interesting to see the prayers. The structure itself was stunning but I won't lie, it smells like feet. It's amazing to think how long these places have been here, and that they are still operational and for the most part haven't changed much. Unreal. 

Needless to say, we were exhausted after the day of sightseeing, but we powered through to the other side of the Golden Horn (water that separates Old and Modern Istanbul), which is the cosmopolitan part of the city. The people are crawling like ants. I have been in New York several years now and am not sure I've ever been in a more crowded place. Huge, wide cobble stones streets just PACKED with people. And the season supposedly hasn't even started yet. 

We had beetroot mojitos (yum) on a famous terrace roof bar called 360, only the terrace was closed for renovations. The view was still spectacular, and the mojito neon pink. We ate at a super-authentic joint where we did not order, they just brought us food. More meat, rice, peppers, hummus. We ate into coma state once again. 

We came home to play catch with Chipo, the hotel dog. A chihuahua that looks like a bat crossed with a deer. He LOVES us - more than other guests for sure. If you ever come cross Chipo and he is in possession of a toy, I'd advise against trying to get it from him. Otherwise he's a peach. This morning he tried to accompany us on our venture out and tonight he followed us up the stairs into our room and jumped up on the bed. 

More to come on today's adventure across the Bosphorus, but I am entirely too tired to go into how we got lost and ended up in Asia. You'll have to wait until tomorrow.