Istanbul, Turkey
Our first order of business this morning was meeting Scott for breakfast. This trip to Istanbul came about because Scott had invited me to join him for an Istanbul and Korea adventure this fall. I couldn’t pull off two big trips but thought I’d be able to talk Ben into stopping over at the end of Italy, which obviously I did.
Ben and I both did significant research in regards to our Italian adventure but we didn’t do much relating to Istanbul. When Scott and I met in Rio in February he did a great job of lining up an itinerary so I assumed he would do a great job here. At breakfast he laid out his plans for our 48 stay and it all sounded great.
The first stop on our Scott lead Istanbul tour was the Topkapi Palace. We traveled to the main sites by taking a cab to our closest metro stop. We then rode the tram to the area containing the palace, Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.
The entry gate to the palace.
One of the many guards on the palace grounds.
One of the palace's inner courtyards.
One of the many beautiful water views from inside the palace.
Topkapi was interesting. The physical buildings were different for me as this is the first time I’ve been in a country where arabic script is prominent. Built in 1459 by the order of Sultan Mehmed II, the conqueror of Byzantine Constantinople, it was the primary residence of the Ottoman Sultans for approximately 400 years.
The most popular attractions within the palace are the Topkapı Dagger, the cloak of Muhammad, the swords of the first four Caliphs, The Staff of Moses and the turban of Joseph. The boys and I have significant doubts about the legitimacy of the religious relics. In particular Joseph’s turban and Moses' staff look like they are brand new, not 2000 years old.
For our final stop in the palace we explored the harems. Living in the modern day middle east as a woman, at least a muslim one, is less than desirable. The mind can only imagine how much worse this would have been five hundred years ago.
Post palace we walked 10 minutes or so to a Rick Steves’ recommended lunch spot. I’m not certain what exactly was in my chicken sauté but it was quite good. Not surprisingly I wanted to do a little hoop hunting while in Istanbul. I had seen a few hoops on the way in from the airport, so I assumed I’d be able to get at least a decent shot. I studied a map and scoped out two spots that were of particular interest to me. After lunch we proceeded to explore them. It took us a while to locate what I thought was the first. Istanbul is actually a kind of hilly city, so occasionally you see something of interest but have trouble getting to it. That was the case with this first hoop. From the street all that could be seen was a soccer net. The map, however, seemed to show that there should be a basketball court behind that. We never found out with certainty if there was or wasn’t. We attempted to sneak in through a museum we thought might have access. We were stopped by guards twice. We also tried to talk our way into a guarded school thinking that had access from the back. The guard claimed there wasn’t a hoop but I think he was just sick of our standing in his view. In general I found the average Turkish person to be a little pushy and uninterested in helping the tourists. I eventually gave up on gaining access to this particular hoop. We decided to go next to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, also known as the Blue Mosque.
So have you heard the one about the gay guy and the girl at the mosque? For the first time in my life I was a legit second class citizen. Scott and Ben both enjoyed watching me attempt to cover my shameful self (their words) to gain entry into the mosque. I had intentionally worn pants and sleeves today but I still had to use a loaner scarf to cover my head and neck. The building itself was pretty enough. Unlike most churches in Christiandome, mosques don’t have people depicted anywhere inside them. Instead there are many sayings in Arabic that unfortunately never had English translations. We imagine they were all verses from the Koran but that’s only an educated guess.
I informed the boys after our completion of the mosque that I was going to regret not exploring the second potential hoop site I had located. I offered to hunt for it myself and meet up with them later but Scott said that was a bad idea, in the sense that cruising Turkey alone as a woman probably wasn’t my finest idea. The boys agreed to come with me. The end result of this adventure was my freaking out Ben via the encouragement of Scott. This seems to be becoming a more common occurrence for me but I climbed a fence into a locked school yard, in white pants no less. The result was a pretty fantastic shot of a hoop with the Blue Mosque as the background. I’m glad I had Scott there to encourage my naughtiness. The fence, while high, was very scaleable. Scott also provided me with my potentially cover story. To my delight and Scott’s destain there are cats ALL OVER Istanbul. To no one’s surprise there was a cat on the other side of the school’s fence. Scott said if I got caught I should just tell my captor that I was chasing my cat. I liked it. I went for it. And I’m glad I did. I would have really regretted missing the opportunity to get my first hoop from the Middle East.
Our final historical stop of this day was the Basilica Cistern.. I had no idea what we were going to see. Scott walked us over to a building, told us to buy a ticket because it was really cool and then said he’d meet us in the park when we were done as he had seen it the day before. We took his instruction and proceeded inside. What we were going to see was an old aquifer. It was awesome and is best described through pictures.
It was now pushing 7pm and we were all ready for a recharge. We made our way back to the hotel by virtue of walking, metroing and cabbing. We refreshed for an hour or so and then made our way to Taksim Square where we strolled, shopped and had dinner in the area that is generally considered the heart of modern Istanbul.
The Dolmabahçe Clock Tower.
The presidential palace gates.
Cats are literally everywhere in Istanbul.
The main shopping street off of Taksim Square.
By midnight we were all pretty tired and proceeded to make our way back to the hotel via a “taksi”. Our first full day in Istanbul was a success. Not surprisingly I’m now fairly exhausted and calling it a night.
Until tomorrow,
Katy
No comments:
Post a Comment