Istanbul (not Constantinople)

This past weekend I took my last trip of the semester, and my first one out of the country (and continent!) to Istanbul. Everything about the trip was great: the hostel was charming and conveniently located right on the main square of the Old City, the food was excellent, and the company was great. My friend Garrick is studying abroad in Istanbul, and it was nice to be the guided as opposed to the guide in the city. And the city itself was fascinating. While it is an obvious cliche, it really is where "the East meets the West". Parts of it were so reminiscent of China, but it was also firmly rooted in European-ness (a great place for a variation of my brother's game: "Europe not Europe"). The city was also much more vibrant and bustling than Athens (especially now that all of the tourists have left Greece for the season, Athens is eerily quiet).

We arrived Friday around noon, checked into the hostel, and then got right to seeing the sites

(the view from our room...Hagia Sophia!)

(We were also conveniently located next to McDonalds! I didn't eat there but did enjoy seeing the menu, including the "McTurco"...Turkey's equivalent to the "McGyro". They also had a special breakfast option which was the traditional Turkish (and Greek) breakfast of feta cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, and bread (in this case, a McMuffin). In general, Istanbul seemed much more welcoming of globalization than the somewhat-resistant Greece, which has a chain only here and there...Istanbul had McDonald's, Burger King, Starbucks--you name it--everywhere. 

The first Burger King I've seen that has a minaret!

And a Twix advertisement right in front of Hagia Sophia--arguably the most recognized site of Turkey. An interesting comparison to the way Greece treats the image of the Acropolis: just taking a picture while holding a Twix bar in front of the Parthenon would cause whistle-blowing and a guard hovering over you until said picture was deleted from your camera.

Anyway, as I was saying...we got right to site-seeing:

Hagia Sophia (originally a basilica, converted to a mosque with the addition of minarets and those round wooden bulletin-boards with Arabic script)

What's remarkable is the extent to which the Christian decoration was left intact, including some phenomenal Byzantine gold mosaics

Then we headed across the square to the Sultanhamet Mosque (aka the Blue Mosque), which is beautiful on the outside but breath-taking on the inside

And then to the Basilica Cistern, an underground cistern with elaborate decoration

Then to the Grand Bazaar and Spice Bazaar, which were entirely too overwhelming for me to even think about buying anything--a labyrinth of vaulted corridors packed with rows and rows and rows of shops.

(It was right about here that we were stopped by a friendly Turkish vendor who grabbed my friend Jenny and told her to take good care of me "and my baby". I had been warned about too-friendly Turkish men, but had inadvertently protected myself from any unwarranted attention by wearing Garrick's oversized raincoat over my camera bag, and apparently looking pregnant!)

Then we took a ferry across the Bosphorus to the Asia side

and ate a fantastic dinner: fresh green garlic and yogurt soup with lamb, lamb intestine stuffed with rice in a tomato broth, lentil soup, falafel, and various salads and dips including the first hummus I've had in three months!

And tried Turkish ice cream for dessert, which was interesting (the texture was unlike any ice cream I've ever had before...hard to explain...note the shovel-shaped spoon) and delicious!

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Saturday, we went to the National Archaeology Museum, Topkapi Palace (the palace of the sultans) which was massive, ornate, and filled with displays of the most obscene riches I've ever seen--including an 86-karat diamond and a gold box filled with emeralds. Then we had a typical Turkish lunch of düner kabob (an interesting "spin" on Greek gyros...I'd liken it to a cross between a fajita and a gyro, because the meat is cooked in typical gyro fashion but is wrapped in a tortilla-like bread)



Then we trudged through the rain and lightning to Suleyman Mosque, built by the great architect Sinan.

In the evening, Jenny and I went for a Turkish Bath--an utterly priceless experience, and almost impossible to fully relate in words. We descended into the underground building, payed our lira, were led through a series of low underground tunnels, given a thin cloth to wrap around ourselves, then led through a room with high vaulted ceilings and with a marble slab in the middle where four women were being massaged, and ushered into a sauna, where we were told to sit for 10 minutes. It was so hot and humid in the little sauna that it was impossible to take in deep breaths, and within a minute I was sweating more than I knew was possible. After 10 minutes, just as I was starting to think I couldn't take it any more, two women came to fetch us, and led us out to the larger room and gestured for us to lay down on the rock slab in the middle of the room, which was heated from beneath by coals. We were scrubbed down, soaped up, washed off, rubbed out--everything I could have asked for in a massage. It was one of the most relaxing experiences of my life, lying on the smooth warm marble, listening to the sounds of water dripping and light singing and chatter of the masseuses echoing off of the walls, and feeling all of my muscles relax. Then we were put into a cold pool, then back into the sauna again, then a quick showering off and we were done. It was the perfect follow-up to a long day of walking in the cold rain (although having to put back on my drenched jeans, socks, and shoes afterwards was quite depressing).

I got back to the hostel that evening feeling wholly renewed.

The man running the hostel held a birthday celebration for his 9-year-old that evening, so I got to  enjoy my favorite kind of food--the free kind! But it was actually really delicious: stuffed cabbage leaves, "pides" (a soft flatbread with ground meat on top), Ruffles potato chips, and a chocolate-layer cake with layers of cake, mousse, and chocolate-nibs and nuts mixed in (best cake I've had all semester!)

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Sunday we went up Galata Tower to get a good panorama view of the city

Then walked down through Taksim, a large pedestrian street jampacked full of stores (including three Starbucks within a ten-minute walking period--rivaling the Starbucks-density of Orange County!)

So many global chains...who would have thought that Popeyes and Little Caesar's would make it to Turkey?

On our way back, we decided to stop by the "New Mosque" and incidentally ended up inside during prayer-time, which was really interesting to observe. I was struck by certain similarities of the experience to the one Greek Orthodox service I attended: both services were completely shaped by chanting; both separated the women and men, with the women in almost identical sectioned-off areas in the back; both involved certain formulaic motions carried out by worshippers roughly in unison but still at individual paces; and, most obviously, both interiors were exquisitely decorated.

Though completely areligious, even I could feel the overwhelming spirituality of these mosques.

If I was only going to go to one place outside of Greece this semester, I'm glad it was Istanbul...I was sorry to say goodbye.