Tuesday, June 22, 2010

The Day of Serendipitous Strollings

Sarah and I spent our Turkish Monday on a somewhat uncoordinated but fully awesome and successful tour around several parts of the city. We started out the day by walking through the Grand Bazaar, which didn't turn out to be nearly as exciting as we had anticipated. We had read all about how it is apparently the largest and oldest covered bazaar in the world (or something like that), which painted a pretty different picture in our minds than what actually existed. It was more of a twistier, narrower, and more colorful version of a shopping mall, but with even fewer useful things to buy. Mostly it was just the same cheap stuff over and over. We'd been warned about the aggressive sales persons, but found that all the shopkeepers outside the bazaar were much more vocal when we walked past. Supposedly there are guards in this particular bazaar whose job it is to make sure people aren't overly harassed. It still wasn't a place that I felt comfortable wielding my big shiny camera, so I only took a couple quick shots as we walked through.

We walked haphazardly through the labyrinthine shopping mall and were pretty lost by the time we came to the other side. This didn't really phase us and we wandered in a direction that we thought might get us somewhere cool, which it did. After only a few minutes, we found ourselves at the Beyazit Meydani (square), which is exactly where we were shooting for. The sun was already getting hot, so we took a walking break in front of the swanky entrance to the University of Istanbul, which we were not allowed to enter because we didn't have IDs.

There's a calligraphy museum located on the square which we were hoping to visit, but it was closed. Therefore we headed towards the big mosque (Beyazit Camii) on the square instead. Sarah hadn't really planned on mosquing it that day, so wasn't properly attired in only a knee-length skirt (gasp)((plus other articles of clothing)). I wanted to go in either way, so we gave it a try and discovered that a lot of the mosques in touristy places offered loaner scarves and long skirts for people to wear in such a situation. The people at the door were very kind about it and seemed pleased that we knew what was required of us.


We were there shortly before the noon call to prayer, which meant there were a lot of men coming to the mosque in various work attire to clean their faces, hands, and feet in the basins outside the entrance. No tourists are allowed inside during prayer times, so we snuck in quickly while we still had a little time.

It was another beauty. Perhaps not as architecturally impressive as the Blue Mosque, but impressive enough to take your breath away all the same. We sat in the courtyard as the prayer blasted out into the air around us. I liked it more and more each time. Back outside, there were several women and more than several pigeons begging in front of the mosque.

Next we wandered our way to the shores of the Golden Horn, pausing for some freshly squeezed orange juice along the way.

I probably would have been more interested in peeking in shops during our trip if there weren't men standing in front of each one, calling out to tourists and ready to pounce on potential customers. We fair-skinned blondes were verbally harassed in various ways during our trip. There were some unpleasant prostitute comments, but we heard some funny ones as well. I wrote down our favorite phrases in my notebook as they came a long. The phrases we heard the most frequently were "Very nice!" and "Yes, please!" but occasionally we heard some gems such as:
"Why don't you sit here for decoration?"
"Sisters! Am I right? From Denmark!"
Pointing to a stray: "You like the cat? You want the cat?"
"Do you ladies like ice cream?" "-- Nope!"
and "Good morning! How are you, Jennifer Lopez?"

Our next discovery was the Yeni Camii, which I thought to be the most beautiful mosque of all that we visited.

Sarah hiding in the corner with her headscarf and loaner skirt.


It was so, so, so, so beautiful. I still can't get over it. We sat in the courtyard for a while after our visit, reveling in its beautificiousness.

Footsies rested, we then made our way to the nearby spice bazaar. On the way we passed this modern art thinghy, which was an interesting contrast to the Yeni Camii in the background.


The spice bazaar was much smaller than we had anticipated, but I very much enjoyed its colorful displays of silly shoes, spices, lokum (ie. Turkish Delight), and, yes, self-proclaimed aphrodisiacs.

I was sorely tempted, but we decided to purchase said goods on a later date in a place that was more safe for those who didn't really know how to buy such things.

We were pretty tired by that time, but there were still many hours in the day, so we kept on chugging bottles of water from street vendors (the tap water in Istanbul is NOT potable) and searching out new adventures. More specifically, we hiked up some steep hills in the search of the Suleymaniye Complex, which houses another impressive mosque, a cemetery, and the tombs of Suleyman the Magnificent and his scheming wife, Roxelana. Once we finally got there, we discovered that the mosque was closed for restoration and that the tombs were closed on Mondays. Luckily the cemetery was beautiful enough to make it all worthwhile.

The set-up of the tombstones were really neat - there was a stone slab rectangle over the grave with a vertical carved slab on each side. One was a beautifully intricate design and the other had calligraphy, which I supposed was about the person. My favorite part, however, was the hole in the middle of each horizontal stone between the two vertical slabs. By that I mean my favorite part was the gorgeous rosebush blooming out of the hole over each grave. We managed to time our visit at peak rose blooming season, and the sight of the light stones, calligraphy, and flowers was a splendid one...


...a splendid sight that was only ameliorated by a plethora of kittens! This one in particular amused me for a long time by playing with these little flowers...

...and chasing its tail around and around a fencepost.

This picture reminds me of the famous National Geographic cover photo of the woman with the amazing eyes staring at the camera.

And this wee little ball of purring fluff attracted the adoration of a couple Muslim girls who were also exploring the cemetery. I really enjoyed the wonderful moment we all shared together over this kitten. It just added another point to prove that all humans are still human regardless of culture or religion. We all squeal over cute kittens in the sunshine.

Like I said before, the tomb of Suleyman the Magnificent was closed on Mondays, but that didn't discourage us from doing a little window peeking. It was shiny in there.

Energized by cute baby critters, we set our next destination as the top floor of the Galata Tower in another part of town. We bought a kilo of cherries from a street vendor along the way for only 5 Turkish lira, which is about 3 dollars. They were the most delicious cherries I have ever guzzled, let me tell you that.


We didn't have to wait too long in line for the observation deck at the Galata Tower, though it took a long time to get around the top because there was hardly any room to walk and too many people there at once. I knew that Istanbul was one of the world's bigger cities with something like 12 MILLION people, but the bigness of it didn't actually hit me until it was all spread out before my eyes. Istanbul. Is such. A big city.





Sarah and I apparently had some sort of internal drive that directed us to be in all the best places to experience the calls to prayer, because all of a sudden voices from every single mosque in the city were calling out into the evening air. It was so cool. It was so cool. It was so cool to be however many meters above the city amidst the cacophonous echoes of evening prayer. Incredible. Incredible. We were so lucky. Sarah took a video on her camera, and I'll try to steal it from her and post it here if it came out well enough. I can't describe it any more than that.

That experience was definitely the high point of the day for me (pun slightly intended), though our adventures weren't over yet. I hadn't had great luck finding vegetarian options at the restaurants we'd visited so far, so we decided to go to a vegetarian cafe that was listed in the guidebook that was supposedly somewhere around the tower area. This search led us to the Istiklal Caddesi, which was a loooooooong and westernized pedestrian zoned street with every department store you could ever desire. The cafe we were looking for was a lot further away than we'd anticipated and we'd already passed three (3) Starbucks by the time we finally got there. Well, the specific cafe in the out-dated guidebook wasn't too be found, but there was a new vegetarian cafe on the same street that we happily hit up instead. It turned out to be phenomenal. I had a kind of delightfully exotic Turkish tortellini with a minty yogurt sauce and Sarah had pasta with fresh saffron sauce. All that plus two Ayran (salty drinking yogurt) cost us something like 14 Turkish Lira, which is something like 9 buckeroos. They didn't have an English menu printed yet and the waitress didn't speak much English herself, so she brought us over the cafe laptop that had the soon-to-be-printed English menu on it. It was cute. I would recommend the place to anyone.

It was when we were hardly able to stand up again after sitting for dinner that we decided we needed to go home and go to bed pronto, so off into the sunset we went. The incredible sky colors had faded by the time I made it onto the roof of the hostel, but the view was still somethin' special.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Visiting the Princes of the Marmara


Sounds pretty swanky, right? There weren't actually any princes involved; it just sounded majestic. Anyway. In our tentative planning, we'd decided to take Sunday to explore the Princes' Islands, which are a chain of ferry-accessible islands off the western coast of Istanbul (on the Asian side!!). Our guide book had described them as a good escape from the in-yo'-face hustle 'n' bustle of the city, and as most other places of interest were closed on the Day of Suns AND as there had been much Sun forecasted on this Day, 'twas just the thing! We'd also decided that HEY IT'S VACATION so we slept in a bit. Of course, that meant that by the time we'd awoken (and enjoyed the pretty roses outside of our window - see above), breakfasted, found a grocery store for lunchings, and made our way to the ferry, we only really had time for one island adventure. Out of the four various island stops, we decided to hit the greenest and least touristified of the bunch - the Isle of Heybeliada. Thanks to Sarah's sneaky snaking ferry stealth, we secured seats near the top deck that were open to the sea air and settled in for the about-two-hour journey to the second-to-last island halt.

It was a beautiful day to bounce along one of Istanbul's many shores and we saw many a grand landmark as we made our way east. The Galata Tower, one of the city's many braggabley historical histories, looked very... round and pointy... as it towered over its section of city.

The Topkapi Palace, Hagia Sophia, and Blue Mosque also made their presence known as they dominated the Sultanahmet hill.

The sun played peek-a-boo along the way and we enjoyed watching the sailboats playing on the blue blue blue blue green blue waters of the Marmara Sea.

It started getting chilly after a while, so we were very content when the ferry deposited us on the docks of Heybeliada. We got to exploring immediately. The islands are special in that no automobiles are allowed on them (except for service vehicles and the like). Therefore, one gets around by foot, bike, horse 'n' buggy taksi, or by donkey. I, for one, really wanted a donkey ride, but alas, there were no donkeys to be found. This island in particular was supposedly the greenest of the bunch with a large park covering part of the island. Many of the other islands had disappeared under fancy schmancy houses, yachts, and other rich-people-thangs. In contrast to the over-developed tourist "escapes," some of the other islands actually have unpleasant histories. For example, someone Back in the Day thought it would be a good idea to round up all the stray dogs in Istanbul and stick them out on one tiny uninhabited island to die out. Not a nice idea, actually. We didn't go to that island. Instead, we made our way along the pier and into the park where we picnicked and enjoyed the sunny beams.

I love this one.

There were many locals about who were also taking advantage of the nice weather. They were biking, picnicking, playing volleyball, and feeding the large number of horrifically gigantic seagulls who were just as adept at begging as your typical Fido or Spot under the table. We watched lots of different groups of people walk out to this abandoned tower from where we were schmoozing, so we eventually decided to check it out, too.



I love this one, too.

There wasn't much to the tower, but there was a little path beyond it that led down to the water.

It was getting pretty windy by the water, so we didn't stay long. After successfully using the hole-in-the-ground public bathroom facilities, we headed back to town to wander around there a bit before catching the ferry home. I was surprised by all the wooden houses after having gotten so used to city bricks. It was a nice change. Walking the streets of this town, I was reminded of being in East Germany in the way that many of the homes and buildings had been abandoned or had fallen into disrepair, which caused a sharp contrast when directly next to other buildings that were still in good shape. For example:



We didn't want to miss our ferry as there was only one every couple hours, so we headed back towards the pier, finding some ice cream along the way. We secured window seats again this time, but out of the wind, meaning that we could watch all the caged crowds at further ferry stops pour out of the newly opened gates like sand in an hour glass, each person racing their neighbor to the boat.

The late afternoon sky was glorious and I had such fun watching the big flock of gulls soar alongside our boat. They were much less menacing when there was glass between us and I could relax and enjoy them joyfully playing on the air currents.





We were very sleepy by the time we'd reached the city, but as it was still too early to return to the hostel, we picked up some Turkish fast food (döner für Sarah und fisch für mich) and walked our way back to Sultanahmet where we camped out on the benches in front of the Blue Mosque and waited for the sunset prayer call. A stray cat immediately detected my marine dinner and refused to leave my side, which caused great amusement for some Turkish guys sitting a couple benches away from us. Another cute sight was this little girls who was hopping benches with her mum's help.

The prayer call finally came and we quietly enjoyed the strangely tuned words drenching the city with their magic. It wasn't eerie as much as it was fascinating, what with all the other sounds of the city competing for attention. No, it wasn't eerie until the sunrise call shortly before 5am that crept into my dream before awakening me one morning. One lone voice, shaking and almost wailing in the silent dawn, masterfully controlled and with intonations that my ears were not accustomed to. It sounds quite dramatic, does it not?