Last Days - Countdown - Day 1

This is it.. the last day. I guess we are ready to come home.. we've seen about everything there is to see... but I will miss this place. I will even miss the call to prayer 5 times a day. After a while you begin to anticipate it. There are two mosques right outside our window, and the two chanters take turns chanting... I'm sure they are singing together to each other and it's really quite moving.

Tonight we heard our last call to prayer, unfortunately our next call will be at 2:45 so we can catch the 3:20 a.m. shuttle to the airport for our 6:00 a.m flight to Amsterdam.

Armando's sciatica flared up yesterday afternoon so we didn't do much, he couldn't walk far and no pharmacies were open, but this morning he went to the pharmacy and showed them his pills and asked for a pain killer - I don't know what they gave him but he was suddenly pain free. Maybe we should have gone back and bought some more of that!

It was raining and lots colder today, another reason to head home, though they say  maybe snow tomorrow night in Memphis. We did some shopping today... first walked around in an area behind the Blue Mosque and took a picture of all the hotels.

Then we walked to the Grand Bazaar again, but it's more interesting to walk in the little streets and alleys that surround the bazaar. There was one street, for about two or three blocks, store after store after store filled with metal buttons, grommets, chains, belt buckles, purse handles, all sorts of supplies like that. Store after store after store!!

Tonight, our last supper, we went around the corner to the Altin Kupa restaurant recommended by my niece. Robin was in Egypt last year for a semester abroad, and while there she had an opportunity to travel to Turkey. She recommended this restaurant, and recommended we order the Testi Kabap, which is a stew cooked in a clay pot and the pot is broken open at your table. Quite the show. And also it was very good.

In Turkey there are many kinds of kabaps. You all know that sish kabap is meat on a skewer. But there are also doner kabaps (meat cooked on a rotating skewer and shaved off, put in a bread like pita similar to the Greek gyros), eskender kabaps (same meat shaved off and served on a plate with fries and veggies) and they have several other kinds of kabaps as well. We certainly have not gone hungry in this country!

Sadly we bid farewell to Turkey. If you are looking for a travel destination unlike any other, consider coming here!

The Crazy Travelers

Last Days - Countdown - Day 2

It rained last night, and this morning there was no haze - we could see the Marmara Sea and the Asian side as clear as could be - too bad we didn't do our boat trip today.

We decided to go to the Museum of Archaeology on the grounds of Topkapi Palace. To get there we walked behind the Aya Sofya and discovered there are mausoleums back there that you can see for free, so we did.

There were four mausoleums, each holding a sultan and his family. The architecture is the same as for the mosques here - a center dome and half domes and arches around. And decorated with lots of tile. As you can see, a lot of the people were male children (the turbans). Before coming to Turkey I read a lot of history. Sultans could have up to 4 wives. Each wife had children, and each wife wanted her son to be the next in line. The mother of the Sultan (the Valadi Sultan) wielded a lot of power - even more if her son became sultan when he was still a child. So there was much murder and mayham to eliminate possible rivals to the throne. So it made me wonder if all these children died of natural causes or of something else.

Also while back there we could see the massive buttresses which were added to the Aya Sofya when it was seen to be sagging due to the massive weight.

 You can see the arches are out of line, and when you walk on the second floor, the floor is all uneven.

Then just inside the first gate of the Topkapi Palace is Aya Irene, a church dating from Justinian and the 6th century. This was the patriarchal church of Constantinople until Aya Sofya was built. Under the Ottomans, it was used as an arsenal and for storage. It's usually closed, but there was a special exhibit so we got to walk in and see it.

 I thought the floor was very cool - it looks like a jigsaw puzzle. Someone had to cut all those stones that shape and they didn't have modern tools to do it with!

The Archaeology Museum was quite interesting.  There are 3 parts - the Museum of the Ancient Orient which is mostly Mesopotamia and Anatolia from before the 6th century BC. Then the Archaeology Museum and then a Tile museum.

Our greeter:

 There were several unicorns, lions and dragons which were from the palace in Babylon.

The highlight of the museum is the Alexander sarcophagus from the 4th century BC which is incredibly well preserved. It depicts scenes of Alexander the Great in battle but was actually carved for King Abdalonymos of Sidon.

Here are some neat floor mosaics. We quilters cut up fabric and paste it back together, but these guys cut itsy bitsy pieces of stone and marble to do this stuff. Makes what we do with scissors and thread sound pretty easy!

After lunch and a little shopping we returned to the hotel. Armando's back started to bother him some, and it was kind of rainy today, so we decided to take it easy. And it's not hard to sit here in the room when you can look out the window at our dynamite view!

This and that:
Whenever we've traveled before, when people ask where we are from and we say Memphis, Tennessee, they usually say "Elvis Presley". Here when we say Tennessee they say "Jack Daniels".

I don't know if I mentioned it, but all through our trip we've seen where one civilization recycled stuff from the previous one. In all the Greek and Roman ruins, most of the marble panels which used to cover the walls are gone, used in later construction since it was there and already cut into handy panels. Columns were recycled into homes, other buildings, even the cistern (remember day 1). At one of the ruins on our tour, Jon pointed out where they had recycled a sarcophogus, made some holes in the sides and used it to hold grapes while they stomped on them, and the juice came out the holes.  It must drive the archaeologists crazy, trying to figure out what things went with what civilization, and then of course they also built one city on top of the next. Troy for example has 9 levels.

Yesterday I posted a photo of a boat and horse cart for deliveries. Someone asked if I'd seen a FedEx delivery vehicle. No I have actually not seen one FedEx truck, plane, boat, horsecart or anything else here. I did see a store for another company with brown uniforms.

Also, I said that there were no vehicles on the islands, only horses and bikes. Someone with sharp eyes noticed a vehicle in one of the photos. There are a few golf cart type electric carts and we saw a few electric powered bicycles, but no gasoline engines except government vehicles.

When we told people we were going to Turkey, several of our friends seemed worried that we might be going someplace unsafe. And they reminded us that most of the people here are Muslims, which is true. But Turkey is secular, and Turks consider religion and how one chooses to practice it to be a private matter, and they are tolerant of other beliefs. And we have to remember that Muslim does not equal terrorist. And here's a scary thought - more than once when we've said we are from the United States, the waiter, shopkeeper, whoever, says he hopes to visit the US some day since he has seen all about it on TV. Jon said when he was a teenager, he thought all Americans were not religious at all, were greedy and just wanted big cars and fancy houses.  Imagine the impression you would have if all you saw was American TV!!!!  Yikes!

Here's a picture of our hotel - our window is the middle one on the right. See the rooftop restaurant where we eat breakfast every day? We are right at the end of the Hippodrome, right in the heart of the tourist area, right on the main drag. I thought it would be noisy, but after about 9:00 most people are gone home, the tram still runs and dingdings but we're used to that and tune it out. And the hotel is quieter than our other Istanbul hotel - there the walls were made of cardboard.  The only disadvantage is that there is no elevator. But after being fed so well on our tour, running up and down two flights of stairs is not a bad thing!

Finally for your viewing pleasure, here are some more photos from yesterday's trip to Princes' Islands. Armando didn't think I posted some of the better photos, so here are some more. Also if you care to go back, I added some more captions to yesterday's post.

This is the inside of the people ferry that we took. We spent most of the time on the upper deck outside where the views and photo ops were better.

 It's hard to see, but this house was completely covered in tiny white and blue mosaic tiles. If you click on the picture it will get bigger and maybe you can see the tiles better.

 That is the ferry terminal at the end of the street.

Last Days - Countdown - Day 3

Today we took a passenger ferry to the Princes' Islands - a group of islands in the Marmara Sea just southeast of Istanbul. Before we left, watching the ferries come in was scary. They come in really fast and you just know they are going to crash into the dock, and at the last minute they reverse the engines and just kiss the dock.

In the water in the Bosphorus there are millions and billions of jelly fish! I wouldn't want to swim there.  But even with all the ship traffic, the water is so clean you can see to the bottom.

We also saw some dolphins playing around in the bay. It was a little over an hour ride there. Great views of Istanbul.

Look at all the fishing boats! The Bosphorus is filled with traffic - fishing boats, pleasure boats, ferries criss crossing from the European side to the Asian side and back, Bosphorus cruises, and cargo ships going between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Everywhere you look there are boats.

This is a light house.

Topkapi Palace

The Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya

And of course there were seagulls following us looking for handouts.

Behind the seagulls you can see the main port on the Asian side of Istanbul. Back in the haze in the distance is the European side.

These islands were once where princes and others out of favor were sent into exile. Today 4 of them are inhabited, mostly they are summer homes and resorts. No vehicles are allowed, like Mackinac Island in Michigan - only bikes and horses and carriages.

Okay, so you can see  a vehicle in the background. Actually they do have electric vehicles - golf carts, electric bicycles and scooters, but only gas driven emergency vehicles.

This is the taxi stand. When a ferry pulls in, the people come here to catch a horse taxi to get home.  There were probably 50 or so carriages waiting back there. 

When it absolutely positively has to be there, this is their delivery system from the mainland - boats and horse carts.

We went to the biggest island and walked around a couple hours, had lunch and then came back. Lots of gingerbread houses, and lots of houses in disrepair. Armando said we could stay awhile and paint houses.

Okay, another vehicle - it was a city repair truck.

Again, we saw cats everywhere. There are supposed to be 12 million people in Istanbul and I swear there must be 12 million cats as well.  When I was a kid my mom used to read me a story about "hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats" - seems like that's what we have here.

This guy kept trying to jump in the window and on to our lunch table.

He finally succeeded and he and his friend proceeded to beg for a handout.

Why are there so many cats in Turkey?  I found this on the internet: "Cats have a special place in Islam. Mohammed was a big cat lover, as were several other important Muslim religious figures. So teachings about cats are plentiful in Islam, and they're nearly always about the goodness of cats. One story is how Mohammed so loved his cat that, when the cat fell asleep on his sleeve, Mohammed cut off the sleeve rather than to bother his little friend. A cat supposedly saved Mohammed at some point by killing a snake. There are stories of people who died and went to hell specifically because of their poor treatment of cats. And it's especially good luck if you spot a cat sleeping on the grave of a loved one."