The final adventures in the land of Turkeys.

Wednesday was, alas, our last full day in Istanbul. This was a day full of museums and doing everything else that we had been wanting to do and hadn't gotten around to yet. But before we get to all that, what is wrong/disturbing about this picture?

Right, so. First we hit the big museum complex on the grounds of the Topkapi Palace grounds. This included the Museum of the Ancient Orient, the Archeological Museum, and a museum for the history of Islamic art via ceramics through the ages. These museums blew my mind. Some of the artifacts were over 2500 years old. Istanbul had already greatly expanded my perception of "old," but these things. They were so old! And well-preserved! Some favorites were the first-ever recorded peace treaty, first recorded love poem, and first known unit of measurement, which was a stone DUCK. Then the incredibly detailed ancient sarcophagi in the Archeological Museum had me scraping my jaw on the ground. You could still see stains from where they had been painted in some places! The precision! The master craftsmanship! The beauty!

THE DUELING CENTAURS!

...And the ceramics were pretty great, too.

After we had been temporarily museum'd out, we bought some grilled corn and sesame pretzel rings from vendors and munched on them by the fountain in front of the Hagia Sophia. Then we took a few minutes to check out the tomb of Sultan Ahmed. Pretty interesting burial technique, I would say.

Then we scooted to the Museum of Islamic Art on the other side of the Hippodrome, where my favorite exhibits were the vast collection of ancient woven rugs and replicas of different Turkish living styles over the years. I wanted to play in the make-shift houses on display, but couldn't. We'd seen just about everything we wanted to see by the time they started turning lights off on us, which we took as our cue to head back into the hot hot sun. Then we went in search of more ice cream. We found some and asked the vendor what the flavors were. He didn't speak English and after watching us point at the ice cream for a while, he scooped a little of each flavor onto a cone for each of us. I'd say that communication fail worked out splendidly.

Our next and final adventure of the day was by far the most culturally exotic of all our adventures. That's right, we went to a hamam, or Turkish bath. Another hostel-goer had told us about her experience there, so we thankfully knew what we were getting ourselves into. The hamam we went to was pretty swell. It wasn't as sparkly as some of the big touristy ones and no one spoke English, but it was still beautiful, a few hundred years old, and with friendly service.

(Note: you should probably skip this paragraph if nudity makes you squeem. If not, tally-ho!)

Basically what happened was this: the cute little old lady running the place walked us in our towels to the womens' domed marble sauna, where she promptly whipped our towels off, sat us down, and instructed us in the proper method of dousing ourselves with fresh warm water from one of the many basins in the room. There were already three old women there, chatting up a storm and doing their thing. For the first moment, there was a pause of sorts. No one said anything, but I think if we had, we would have said this:

"Hey, you're naked!"
"--Hey, you're naked, too!"
"You're naked, we're naked, we're all naked together. Alright!"

And that was that. After a few minutes, I realized the women were German and almost felt like I should talk to them, but... y'know. After 20 or so minutes, a women came to fetch us one at a time to bring us to another little domed room. There she had me lay down on a marble table and then attacked my skin with some sort of rough loofah. I glanced at my arm at one point and was both horrified and intrigued to see my flesh covered with gray specks of dead skin, flying this way and that. Gross, but completely awesome. The next thing she did was shake up some sort of soap in a cloth-like tube and then bury me under a mountain of soap bubbles. After more soap, rinsing, and a massage, she sent me back to the sauna to play with the water again. A few other younger women came in to the sauna while we were relaxing and whatnot and it was interesting to see their shock at seeing naked people and then realizing they were going to have to be naked, too. By then I had embraced the nudity factor and they just looked silly to be worried about such a wee little thing. The little old lady eventually came to fetch us again, wrapped us up in towels, and plopped us down on the couch in the foyer with some delicious apple tea. The old German ladies were there as well and one of them started speaking to us. She 'bout choked on her tea when we answered her in German and then we had a pleasant conversation. It was interesting to go from hanging out naked together to drinking tea and talking about foreign exchange. Very nice people. A very nice experience, too. Sarah decreed that next time, we should visit a hamam as soon as we arrive in Turkey to cleanse us of western grime, and then go again at the end to cleanse us of Turkish grime. I agreed wholeheartedly. And really, what better way could there have been to end our Turkish adventure than with naked bonding and tea time?

In celebration of our wonderful time in Istanbul, we ate our last dinner at a nice rooftop restaurant that we'd read about in our somewhat-helpful guidebook. The waiter there quickly befriended us and gave us all the tea we wanted for free.

From where we were sitting, we had a beautiful view of the evening sun on the Blue Mosque, the moon rising over the Golden Horn, and the sun setting behind domes and minarets. It was a gorgeous evening.

At one point, our waiter came over to me and said,
"Your eyes are so beautiful - like a dolphin!"
"--I'm sorry, like a what?"

"Like a dolphin! Dolphin fish! Very beautiful!"

That's right, ladies and gents. My eyes are beautiful like a dolphin fish.

Once full of grilled tomato and eggplant kabobs, apple and cinnamon tea, and baklava, we made our way back to the hostel. We made sure to stay on the roof for the evening prayer call and listened to it echo over the city one last time. It still drew me in completely.

Since it was such a lovely night and we didn't want to waste our last few hours of Istanbul sleeping, we stayed on the roof of the hostel long into the night and chatted with some of the staff about their lives and whatnot. Cool people. A cool place. Cool cool cool.

Remembering that I had to fly back to Germany and then on to Sweden within the next 36 hours, I finally went to bed and slept like a rock until morning.

Our plane didn't leave until the early afternoon, but we decided to get to the airport super early, just in case. Besides, we'd seen everything we had wanted to and it was already hot and sticky outside. We didn't want to carry our things around. Therefore, we accomplished our final task of buying lokum (Turkish delight) from a sweet shop to bring back to the Deutschland, then hit the Flughafen.

We made it onto the plane without delay and once again thoroughly enjoyed the hearty Turkish cuisine they fed us. It was also quite amusing to go through their sky magazine and find all the English errors. This one was our absolute favorite.

I got the window seat this time and was a little sad to be waving goodbye to the beautiful blue Marmara Sea. Beautiful blue like a dolphin fish.

Great mountains and waters flying somewhere over Romania or Bulgaria.

And finally, flying into Hamburg. In the rain. Of course.

Finally back in my room sweet room, I unpacked, repacked for Sweden the next day, iced my foot, and crashed.

And that, friends, was that. Margaret and Sarah's Grand Adventure in das Land der Truthähne:

The End.