Day 3 – The Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, Basilica Cisterne

I started each day at the hotel with a trip to the fitness center. The floor to ceiling windows in the smallish room overlook the square and I found myself able to block out the painfully outdated radio selections just by watching the crazy flow of traffic around the square. The cars weave in and out of each other and the nonsensical traffic patterns of the square itself make for an almost mesmerizing distraction. I also found that when I did put on my iPod, The Hold Steady and Rilo Kiley made my morning that much better and at certain points, the traffic seemed to be pulsing with the beat.

Cara was kind enough to let me have her hotel breakfast because she usually doesn’t have time to eat before work. Well, while breakfast couldn’t replace seeing the original frescoes in the Aya Sofya or steaming in a hamam, it certainly was a fabulous way to start the day. They had acres of food laid out: Breads, pastries, fresh fruit, dried fruit, omelette station, meats, cheeses, an olive bar, cereal, hot entrees with 4 different kinds of sausage, and all kinds of yogurt and toppings. I was thankful to be able to start my day that way. I almost never ate lunch. I would just sail on through until evening. Plus, jet lag screwed up my appetite a little as well. But I always made sure that I ate in the morning, if only just to enjoy the expansive views of the city from the huge windows.

After a hearty break to my fast, I headed out to catch the tram down into Sultanahmet where all the big sites to see in Istanbul are concentrated. I chanced upon a little bit of sun that morning and it’s amazing what a difference it makes with warmth. Aside from these rare sunny moments it was a chilly and grey week for the most part. I had originally planned to start with Topkapi Palace and then work my way to Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya, but the Blue Mosque was staring me in the face when I stepped off the tram and so I headed over. I walked up to the enormous building, through the marble courtyard, past the rows and rows of washing stations, the large central fountain, and up to the ornately decorated main entrance. I covered my head with my scarf and removed my shoes, and then I entered this palatial building. Islam doesn’t allow for images of humans to be displayed in their places of worship and so you get the beautiful tiles and elaborate design of the ceilings and walls, and the striking carvings and architecture of the building itself. The magnitude of the building and the vivid colors displayed make it hard to think it was built in 1609. This building is also representative of the next theme of culture clash that made itself readily apparent in just seeing the sites of Istanbul: Islam vs. Christianity. The place where that is most glaringly obvious though is the Aya Sofya, which I didn’t get to until Wednesday.

After the Blue Mosque I went to the Basilica Cisterne, which proved to be an entertaining little slice of history and kitsch, all rolled into one. This building is probably best described by its Turkish name: Yerebatan Sarayı or "Sunken Palace". It is composed of 336 massive pillars of marble and, because it was intended to be a Basilica and then changed to a cisterne in the 6th century under the aquaphile Justinian, has excellent accoustics and a floor entirely covered in water. While the structure alone would have been interesting, more amusing to me was the fact that they were pumping in very creepy music, and had it lit very eerily. What took the cake was Turkey’s answer to the “old timey” photo places they have at amusement parks and towns that lack real tourist attractions. They had a corner of the expansive room set up to look like the den of a harem, and they had belly dancing costumes, sultans robes, and other silly hats and scarves that you could put on and have your photo taken in. It struck me as extremely out of place and reminded me a bit of some of the museums in Africa who wanted to “spice up” their museums with some extra touches that felt completely contrived and out of place.

Up next, Topkapi Palace. I walked over to the huge marble wall with the ornate inscriptions in gold and jade inlaid over the ebony doors. I loved walking through into the pristine courtyards and seeing all the tulips in bloom. Sultan Ahmet was a big fan of tulips and I happened to be in Istanbul during the International Tulip Festival as well as Shopfest! 2011. Shopfest, as far as I can tell, is just a time when they advertise all the shopping in Istanbul and have sales and people are supposed to fly in from all over to pump money into Turkey’s economy. The Tulip Festival is much more pleasing to the senses and easier on the wallet. When a sultan decides he likes something, the people really respond because there are tulips everywhere. They are well cared for, colorful, and artfully interwoven into the major sites and boulevards of Istanbul. Even amidst the grittier parts of the city, you could still find some bold red and yellow splashes peeking out of trash-filled streets and unsavory odors. Another prevalent theme in Istanbul: the juxtaposition of the dirty with the beautiful.

Topkapi Palace would have been a lot more pleasant had there been about one third of the number of tourists. I waited in line for a solid 45 minute to get an entrance ticket to the Palace itself, then I waited another hour for the audio tour rental. They don’t have good signage in the musems and so audio tours are really necessary if you want to know what you’re looking at. They are always an extra charge but worth it. Once I was through those lines, I thought it would be normal walking through buildings and seeing things. Such was not the case. The palace is made of... I would call them compartments. Certain rooms are connected to one another but there are divisions and you cannot walk from one room to another all the way through the house. Learning more about how palace life was conducted it was easier to see why they would build it like that. You need to be able to keep the concubines away from the wives, the men separate from the women, and there is a distinct hierarchy to where one lives in the palace as well. The palace’s best feature is far and away the unbelievable painted tiles and the intricate designs you find to demonstrate both the wealth and power of the sultan. It’s also interesting to see how beautiful the harem is and in the audio guide they talk about the importance of the position of the mother of the sultan. All the women used to compete to have the children essentially so that they would be the mother of the eventual sultan and wield incredible power over the sultan and the government of the country even.

There is also a gigantic diamond housed there called the Spoonmaker diamond because legend has it that someone long ago traded the diamond for three spoons. In another area they house the most holy Islamic relics, the prophet Mohammed’s cloak and sword. I had fun going through the different rooms and it would have been great had it not been for the huge volumes of people and the long waits at every turn. It was worth the trip because the architecture and design elements are beautiful. After Topkapi Palace, I walked around the Sultanahmet neighborhood for a little while. I walked to a mosaic museum in the far corner of the district that was tucked away behind a small bazaar. The mosaics date back to something like 600 AD. There are some pretty hilarious information plaques next to the sections of mosaic they have recovered. You can tell they are done by the archaeologists themselves because the translations are a bit off, and they go into extreme detail about the excavation process, how hard it was, and how much visitors will appreciate the excellent care taken to preserve the tiny tiles. I promise I appreciate the mosaic and the work that went into excavating it for my enjoyment! You don’t have to be a archaeological martyr about it, sheesh.

After the mosaic museum, I was getting tired but still had some time left. I walked up to the neighborhood of the Grand Bazaar and thought whether or not I should dive in to the crush and pressure to buy or not. I decided not to that day, and to save my energy for a more concentrated effort on Wednesday. I hopped on the tram and went back to the hotel. I got back and decided that I wanted to take a trip to the on-site hamam. A hamam is a turkish bath house. Traditionally it involves a large slab of heated marble on which patrons would lay, steam themselves, and then bathe using water spigots in several places around the large marble table in the middle. The one at our hotel was unisex and had small compartments off from the large slab in the middle that had smaller benches around the wall spigot in each. I hung out in the steamy room for a while, then popped into the very deep and very hot jacuzzi tub. Suffice it to say, it was a pretttttty strenuous afternoon.

I met up with Cara and one of her co-workers and we hung out in a room for a while. It was interesting to hear her talk about her work in real time. Usually when she gets back from a trip I only hear a very condensed version of how the trip went and I don’t get the blow by blow stories that a visit to her work site treated me to. I’m not totally sure how much I can say about Cara’s job on a blog, suffice it to say that it’s very interesting and provides for a lot of ups and downs and human interest stories.

We got a little sidetracked chatting and we didn’t end up going out to dinner until about 10pm. It’s not a problem in Istanbul though because the city is still humming well into the wee hours of the morning, even on a weeknight. We were on a mission to find molten chocolate cake (or “kek” in Turkish... which was far and away my favorite foriegn vocab word for the week). We did not succeed during my entire stay despite numerous efforts at at least seven different dessert purveyors. I did get to try some very nice other kinds of chocolate kek in my search and was only disappointed once or twice. One interesting menu item spotted: rice pudding with chicken breast! We had another late night but it’s fine because sleep is irrelevant on vacation.