Istanbul - Volume 2 (day 2)

I must admit that one of the first observations I made upon arrival in Istanbul was that there seemed to be an abundance of attractive men. Julissa and I like to say that there was a 90% chance that any man you bump into on the street will be good looking but this is probably a tiny bit exaggerated. Realistically speaking the large number of handsome men is probably related to the fact that men work in almost all the stores, restaurants and hotels. There are mostly men on the street. There is such a large amount of men, of course more of them will be attractive. However, I really do think that there were a lot of attractive men.

So besides all of the men...

Friday - The first thing we did was go to the Blue Mosque. It was phenomenal. From the outside (which isn't actually blue) it was simply a beautiful building. To me the inside was what was so stunning. We walked past faucets set in the side of the building for washing your hands and feet, because you are supposed to do that before you pray. Since we came to visit and not to worship we entered through the side where there was a line of tourists. Right before you enter the mosque everyone removes their shoes and people who are wearing inappropriate clothing (deemed by the people working at the mosque) are given sheets to cover themselves with. I was annoyed at just how many people wore inappropriate clothing to visit a mosque... Perhaps you might not have known that your arms need to be covered, or maybe you forgot that men should not wear shorts - but you couldn't possibly think that they would want you in there in a sleeveless dress that's cut low in the front and back and it stops far short of your knees!! Some people just baffle me. I was especially annoyed with people from our own program who dressed incorrectly because we had a meeting before we left about appropriate dress for visiting mosques and it says right on our itinerary that we will be attending the Blue Mosque... So I wore a sleeveless shirt because it was hot but I just brought my hoodie to throw on out of respect. I don't know, maybe its just me.

Before and after our time in the Blue Mosque we wandered for a bit in what is called the Hippodrome. The Hippodrome used to be the center of Byzantine Constantinople where citizens viewed everything from chariot races to bloody spectacles. Built in 200 AD the stadium that used to surround it could hold over 100,000 people. It was also the execution site of over 30,000 rioters in 532 AD. These people were shut into the hippodrome and massacred because they were part of a riot that had ensued from a dispute between two chariot racing teams. That really sunk in for me because our tour guide was like yea you're standing on top of that much blood... wow. Now the hippodrome is just a large park and scattered through it are some random columns and 1/3 of an Egyptian Obelisk (the top piece) and something called the Spiral Serpentine Column which used to have other parts but they were gold so at some point they were stolen and then someone stole the snake heads, so now its like an ugly looking squiggle - with an interesting story.

Apparently the Turks are big on "recycling" because in lots of places that we went they talked about using stones from previous buildings and columns from other eras that were taken and reused in another structure. The most obvious example of this "recycling" process was the Basilica Cistern. Emperor Justinian I of Turkey had this cistern built in the 6th century, it is the largest of a number of underground cisterns in Istanbul. Through out its history it has provided water to the Great Palace of Constantinople and to the Topkapi Palace. Most interesting to me is that there are fish living in the water of the cistern. Apparently the fish were put there in ancient times so that if the water was poisoned by enemies the fish would die first and they would know to stop drinking the water. (the water all flowed down from the mountain springs so enemies could poison it from upstream if they so desired) The cistern is basically an under ground chamber with 336 "recycled" columns

"143 metres (470 ft) by 65 metres (210 ft), capable of holding 80,000 cubic metres (2,800,000 cu ft) of water, and covering an area of 9,800 square metres (105,000 sq ft). The large space is broken up by a forest of 336 marble columns each 9 metres (30 ft) high. The columns are arranged in 12 rows each consisting of 28 columns, spaced 4.9 metres (16 ft) apart."

We also went to the Hagia Sophia which was particularly fascinating to me because of its Christian/Islam mix of architecture and decor. This building was also ordered by the Emperor Justinian I around 532 and 537 A.D. as a CHURCH. In 1453 when Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks Sultan Mehmed II ordered the church to be turned into a mosque to show their conquering strength. In 1935 the republic of Turkey turned it into a museum. The thing I find most interesting in this particular church-turned-mosque is that most of the original christian symbols and mosaics were simply plastered over, NOT destroyed. Some time after it became a museum they started removing some of the plaster and revealing the original christian work. I can't help but think that if this had been a mosque and was being converted into a church nothing would have been saved, everything would have been destroyed...

The last half of this fabulous day was spent on a trip to Asia. In case you didn't realize the Republic of Turkey actually lies on both the continents of Europe and of Asia. So when they call Turkey "the bridge between the east and the west" it isn't just a nickname. Between the halves of Turkey runs the Bosphorus straight. So on Friday afternoon we took the bus and then got on a ferry and crossed the Bosphorus Straight to the Asian Continent. The ferry trip itself was beautiful, the view of both coast lines was fantastic. As we left the European shore the afternoon call to prayer began to ring out from the minarets (towers of the mosques). This made it even more beautiful because as we left one coast and crossed to the other we traveled diagonally so we travelled further down and saw more of both coasts. As we moved along up the coast we could hear the muezzin's call from the mosques behind us on the European shore and ahead of us on the Asian shore and as we moved along we heard from each of the separate mosques that dotted both shores.

We had a wonderful lunch at Kanaat Restaurant. I ate something that reminded me of pernel, a meal I ate at Alexis's house a few times. The major difference was that it was made with lamb instead of pork and the beans were swapped for chickpeas - it was delicious. After lunch part of the group headed back and the rest of us took the tram with our FIE chaperones and went to walk along the coast. I got to pick my way down some rocks to sit and plop my feet into the Bosphorus Straight. I must say, the chilly water felt amazing on my tired feet.

After we returned from Asia we went back to the hotel for awhile to rest and then a group of Marist girls went out to dinner around the corner from our hotel. This is where we started to study the pick up lines of the waiters. I don't know if I mentioned this but all of the restaurants and stores have at least one person (man) outside to draw in customers. He will ask you questions, hit on you, stick a menu under your nose, even offer you free drinks and tell you how beautiful you are. Many of them have sets of pick up lines that they learn even if they don't really speak English. Our favorite line was one that we heard often at this restaurant around the corner from our hotel. The man would call out to the girl "oh miss you dropped something!" and the girl would look up with a questioning face, thinking what are you talking about?! Or perhaps she would be silly enough to say "what? where?!" and he would walk over to her, put an arm around her, lead her back a few steps and say, "oh you dropped my heart"

after dinner julissa and I separated from the other Marist girls and just the two of us wandered around a few blocks from our hotel looking at shops and laughing at the men who tried to hit on me. We even found a pastry place that was willing to give us two free pieces of Turkish Delight because I bought a bottle of water. I never was a big fan of pistachios but it was tasty... Anyway we spent most of the night wandering in and out of shops, getting aquainted with prices and the area. Istanbul is definitely a city after my own heart - most of the shops in our area closed at midnight! I loved it.

so thats it for day #2... it's only taken me like five or so hours to write all this! tune in again in a few days I think I can get saturday and sunday covered in one more blog then I can go back to writing about whats happening here in london! (tho it's not much besides construction and homework)

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