Up, fresh and rested, packed up the backpack and headed down for breakfast before 9am pickup by the guide. The hotel provides a great Turkish breakfast, complete with cucumbers, olives and tomatoes!
We meet Sercuk and walk over to pick up another couple. Miscommunication, so the other couple will meet us at our first stop – Topkapi Palace, which was the center of government and the sultan’s residence from 1459 – 1853, when the Ottoman empire regained supreme. We wait for over 40 minutes and after a frank talk with the tour operator, we head inside the imposing gate:
Of course, the minute we do that, the other couple shows up! Tim and Elise are from Melbourne and are on holiday before starting their new jobs in Amsterdam. First area we explore is the Harem, where the sultan spends most of his time. I didn’t realize, but the harem receives girls between the ages of 5 and 10 and then they have years of schooling before they are even presented to the sultan. Deb’s brain having fun:
They are guarded by the black eunuchs and there could be as many as 1,000 occupants of the harem at any given time. The most powerful women in the palace were the sultan’s mother (who may be selecting harem girls) and the sultans favorites from the harem (those who bore children, who would receive better quarters and often their freedom after the sultan’s death). Having a male child also raises one’s importance, and there was much intrigue and plotting to kill other women’s children (sounds like the plot of a good thriller!). We viewed the beautiful rooms and I could not adequately capture the beautiful tile and inlay work that covered the walls and ceilings.
Every room contained a place for fired in the winter, and can you guess what these unusual shaped recessed in the walls are for?
Why, turban storage, of course!
You can see beautifully sofa-d rooms for receiving visitors
and enjoying the view of the Bosphorus:
beautiful inlaid doors everywhere:
as well as golden-latticed windows:
through which the sultan would listen to issues presented by his subject…but if anyone dared to look through the gold to gaze upon the sultan, well, the red queen said it best, and we saw the executioner’s fountain and headstone to prove it!
Next, we headed to the armory to review the coat of arms, weaponry and Saint Stephen’s sword, which was about as tall as I. No pictures allowed, but I did snap this one before I knew:
It’s too bad I didn’t get the gorgeous ceremonial armor that had filigree gold and diamond pins all over it. Was the sultan related to John Galliano? Next up was the Treasury, filled with enough jewels to fill the popes with envy. The 86-carat spoonmaker’s diamond, the sixth largest in the world, and a baroque-looking jewel-encrusted dagger, that must have been Alladin’s at some point. Enough of that! A walk up the street to lunch, as our guide points out the pudding shop, famous in some books for the hippies that used to eat there (never heard of it myself, but Michael, any beat writers chat up Istanbul?). At the lunch-o-mat, we belly up to the counter as the chef explains all.
Whatever we want, the tour company is paying to make up for the morning’s inconvenience. I’m needing rest hour when we’re done, but this is no Latin country! Off once again…. We walk through a large public space with fountains and a couple of Egyptian obelisks:
as Selcuk regales us with stories of how this space was once a Roman-style hippodrome, with chariot races. Once the people tired of that, they would have hand-to-hand combat and toss losers over the walls while spectators cheered. I guess now that’s called “Lost” or something.
Right across the way we remove shoes, get blue pieces of cloth to tie around our waists like skirts, cover our heads (I brought my own) and enter the blue mosque (known formally as Sultan Ahmet Camii), so named because of the beautiful blue Iznik tiles inside.
Sultan Ahmet I was only 19 when he commissioned it, worked alongside his laborers because of his great enthusiasm for the project and his desire to have it surpass the Suleymaniye mosque. It was completed in 1616 and again, it’s so hard to capture the beautiful craftsmanship of the tiles, the domes and the marble in one picture…I guess I’m going to have to get a fisheye lens!
We enjoy the quiet and beautiful tilework inside:
and head out again. Visitors are not allowed inside during any of the five daily times of prayer (and it becomes a soothing ritual for us to hear the daily calls). There are minarets all along the horizon. Turkey is 99.8% Muslim, so instead of seeing churches everywhere, there are minarets paired with easily spotted domed buildings.
Last tour stop is the Basilica cistern, built to ensure the water supply in times of peace and siege. Started by Emperor Constantine and expanded by Justinian in 532, it once held about 18 million gallons of water for the city.
A couple of granite medusa heads, thought to be taken from Greek temples, are there and evidently this underground space has been used frequently for movies and concerts. The little group has tea on a side street and part company. I head back to the hotel for rest hour, before heading out for the 7:30 whirling dervish show (no pictures allowed because it is actually a religious Sufi ceremony, and reading the explanation of the different parts of the dance is enlightening) and then around the corner to eat at a local spot recommended by our guide.
No dessert there, because we head over to the corner pastry shop that is supposed to be the best in town. Well of course, I have to enlist the help of the manager:
to narrow my selection to only 5 or 6, and we head upstairs and order two Turkish coffees.
Didn’t even drink coffee 6 months ago, and now I’m drinking coffee that is actually closer to mud than what I know! I drink most of it, rather acidic, but cannot choke it down when it’s mostly the sludge at the bottom. I order a latte and chug that down…I need it to counter all the sugar I just ingested! It’s a nutlover’s paradise, with almond, walnut and hazelnut choices, but most of all, it’s a pistachio smorgasbord! Whole, chopped, minced and powdered: rolled in, coated with, stuffed with and painted with…you name it, they did it with pistachios.
Energized by the coffee buzz, we hop in a cab and head over to the European side of the tracks and walk around the streets near Taksim square, looking for a nightclub called Babylon. Even with the name of the club and it’s address, no one, including us, has a clue as to where it is. But it’s fund walking down the street that even at 11 pm on a Monday night is packed with people. Make it down to Galata tower and chat with a couple policeman who tell us that Nardi’s, the jazz club on my list, is right around the corner. Yippee! We found something. We go in and listen to a great combo and singer for about an hour.
When all is done, we step out the door, hop in a cab that pulls right up and are back at the hotel in about 5 minutes with the awareness that the first taxi driver totally ripped us off. Live and learn….what a day! We go to sleep, way satisfied with our first day.