Istanbul

October 8th-10th, 2011: Istanbul, Turkey

The night we arrived in Istanbul, my initial impression of the city was not what I expected. For starters, I thought the city would be flat, and it was very hilly.I also thought it would be less developed and more historical, but it was a pretty modern city! The man who picked us up to drive us to our hotel must have been driving 100 mph on the way back, so I was pretty happy to arrive once we did. Our room in the hotel was on the very top floor, and three of its walls were windows.. and the shape of it made us feel like we were on a boat. We quickly fell asleep that night after our arrival(at 3am) after a long day of traveling. The next morning I woke up to singing. I was so confused, I thought it was in my dream at first, but then I realized that it was coming from outside. It eventually got louder and louder and different singing voices(in Turkish) were coming from all different directions. I found out once I woke up that it was the Muslim call to prayer at sunrise. There are loud speakers on every mosque that project the call to prayer throughout the city five times day. It was really interesting to hear, and this was the first of many things which intrigued me about this culture. That morning we woke up to a bustling city, full of street vendors and tourists. We grabbed breakfast at the hotel and went straight to the Hagia Sophia. I was really looking forward to seeing this building because I had studied it it my art history classes. The Hagia Sophia is known for its massive dome and was the largest cathedral in the world for over 1000 years. It was built three different times, destroyed twice before it was built for the third time in 537. It didnt become a mosque until 1453. It was really cool to see the inside of the mosque.. it was definatley worn down, but for how old it is I was very impressed with the size and the decor.

inside the Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia exterior

After the Hagia Sophia, we went to the Blue Mosque, which is next door to the Hagia Sophia. For me, the Blue Mosque was more impressive from the outside, but I liked the interior of the Hagia Sophia better. The blue mosque was the royal mosque, so it is completely covered(inside) with blue tiles which was very pretty. This mosque is also still in use as a mosque, so it was interesting to see people praying and going about their rituals every day. After visiting the interior, we went outside to sketch the exterior for our sketch class. While we were sketching, a few people started coming up to us to look at our sketches. Then more and more people started coming up to us, at times there were groups of probably twenty people(turks) around us looking at our sketches. Apparently we were more interesting than the mosque itself. Some people were even taking pictures of us and with us. It was very humerious. On our way out of the Blue Mosque, a large group of serious looking men in business suits were walking up the steps to the mosque as we were walking down. I was really confused at first, but then realize they were body guards around some lady. After passing them, we saw their big carravan of cars, which we noticed had Brazillian flags on them. We told our professor this later at dinner(he is Brazilian), and he didnt know who it was, but figured out the next morning that it was the Brazilian president.

Blue Mosque

Blue Mosque exterior

After a long afternoon at these two famous mosques, we headed to the Grand Bazaar. The name fits it well.. it was grand and it was bizare. Just up the road from the mosques, this bazaar had around 4000 shops selling many different goods from scarves, bags, spices, jewelry, ceramics, food.. pretty much anything, but espically Turkish goods. It was fun to bargain at different shops, and it was odd because the people who worked there seemed fluent in every language. They originally started speaking English to us, but when one of us muttered an Italian word, they instantly switched to Italian. Our Brazilian professor said they could even tell he was from Brazil. I have to say though, they were not very good at guessing I was American, a lot of them thought I was Australian or Canadian. I ended up doing a good job of bargaining.. I bought a few scarves, bowls, and some jewlrey, for myself and as gifts. My group jokes that I have a mini bazaar with me now. After a great first day in Istanbul, we went to dinner and headed home.

Grand Bazaar

The next day, we visited the Sultanahmut Palace adjacent to the Hagia Sophia. Unfortunaly it was raining, so it was hard to appreciate the palace like I would have wanted to, but it had great views of the Bospherous straight between Europe and Asia(yes I saw Asia, but we didnt make it there). They also had many jewel rooms, one of which housed the biggest diamond I had ever seen; an 87 carat diamond which as history goes was found in the garbage by a pesant, who sold it to a jeweler for three spoons, which was later taken by the sultan when he heard of it. After the palace we got lunch at a kebab stand(2 lera=amazing) and decided to get out of the rain and visit the cisterns underground. The cisterns were really cool to see, but I kept wondering to myself why they would build such an impressive structure underground where it is dark. I later found out that water is very sacred to this culture so they build a monumental place for it. On the way out, I stopped to take a picture and my umbrella slipped from my control and fell into the water.. oops! We got a good laugh out of this one. I was hoping the rain would have stopped when we exited the cisterns, but if anything it was heavier. Luckily I had my rain jacket on, so I decided I didn't need to buy another umbrella. After the cisterns, we toughed out the rain and headed to the Egyptian Spice market, which kind of seemed like a smaller, less intense version of the Grand Bazaar. From there we headed to the "New" Mosque which was finished in 1665(new right?). We were very tired, wet and cold at this point so we headed back to the hotel to rest for a few minutes before going to dinner. At dinner that night when our bill came, we noticed that the price was too much. When we told our waitor this, he was sure that he didnt make a mistake, so Henrique(our professor) took out his Iphone calculator and showed the man twice that he charged us ten more lera than he should have. The waitor then went to get his "Turksih" calculator to do the math himself. Sure enough, his calculator told him he made a mistake too. We thought it was funny that he thought the IPhone would lie.

cisterns
Bospherous Straight: left side of bridge is Europe, right is Asia

Then next morning, we only had a few hours to spare before we had to head to the airport, so we decided to walk accross a bridge to get a good view of the city. Unfortunaly it was still raining so this was not as pleasant as it might sound(we didnt prepare for the rain very well). After walking accross the bridge, we went to one more mosque, which was very serene and green compared to the other mosques. The inside however was nothing special(in the mosque world).. they say that once you see one mosque you have seen them all and by this point, I was starting to feel that way. On our walk back to the hotel, we spent our last few lera and grabbed lunch. I have to say, I really like Istanbul. Even though it rained for a day and a half of the two and a half days we were there, I had a great time and was very impressed. I loved the turkish delight(gummy type candy), and I love the lera to dollar conversion rate(1 dollar=1.8 lera). I only wish I had gone to the Turkish baths. These were highly recomened to me by many people but we never found the time to go. I guess this gives me a reason to come back to Istanbul! Later that afternoon, we boarded the plane for Athens!