After they got checked in and settled into their room, we hit the next palace on our list to see, Topkapi Palace. This was a deceiving Palace from the outside, it didn't look nearly as big as it actually was once you were inside. Unlike the other palace, though, the parts you could tour were primarily outdoors in the courtyard area. The indoor areas were rooms you'd walk in, then walk right back outside.
The various rooms had all kinds of artifacts that the Sultan owned. Unfortunately, like the other palace, no pictures were allowed inside. One of the first rooms we went into was the weapons room. It had all the types of weapons both practically used and for ceremony. One amazing sword they had from the Byzantine era was a broad sword that, from handle to tip, was taller then me. That had to be just for display...the widest part of the blade was about the width my hands put side to side. There's no way it could be used in combat. The jewel encrusted daggers were neat too. They also had a ceremonial chain mail armor encrusted with jewels all over it that was neat. The neatest thing we saw, though, was in the jewel collection room. They had an 86 carat diamond surrounded entirely by 49 carat diamonds. It was first found in a garbage dump, and sold to a street vendor for 3 spoons. When it was eventually figured out what it was, it was given to the Sultan. This diamond was HUGE. We walked around the rest of the palace, took some pictures, then headed out.
We showed everyone around the Grand Bazaar, did some more shopping, then went to find a Hookah Lounge. No one was really hungry at this point, but we were tired of walking and they'd been up early for their flight, so we figured relaxing with some tea & Hookah sounded like the perfect thing to do. In our quest for dinner Wednesday night, Shanna & I had stumbled upon a Hookah lounge that looked nice, so we took them there. These are sometimes the best parts of a trip with friends...sitting around in a new city, in a new environment, relaxing. One neat thing they had were these huge metal pipes on the ceiling that ran all around the place. It was obvious they were for heating the rooms, but we didn't realize until we left just how neat that process was. Outside was a guy stoking coals . All the metal pipes ran from inside to right above the coals, so that heat we were feeling was coming from this fire outside.
After awhile we were ready for dinner. Near our hotel was a string of restaurants, so we headed back there. A lot of places had guys standing out front trying to convince you to eat at their place. We stopped at one to look at the menu outside, and when Regine appeared like she might not want to go there, the guy offered us 10 percent off our bill. We were probably going to eat there anyway, but we weren't going to complain about 10 percent off. The food there was DELICIOUS. They brought out this puffy bread that looked huge, but when you cut into it, it deflated. But it was still fantastic. Shanna got a fish that I think was a sea bass. I got Turkish pizza. When we got back to the hotel that night we asked Habib to call Esra & arrange to meet us the next day for a tour of other places in the city.
At 8:30 the next morning, we got our start. Unfortunately, despite it being a beautiful day on Friday, it was cold & wet on Saturday. Our first place to visit were the Basilica Cisterns. They were used as a giant water filtration system for the palaces, but today the water level has been cut off from the aquaduct that used to feed it and brought down to a tiny level. They have fish in the water now that keep it clean. As you walk down into the Cisterns you can't help but be overwhelmed by the huge columns and the sheer size of the place.
Esra gave us the history of the place, and took us to the back where several columns were supported by a giant stone head of Medusa. It's unknown where these came from.
From there we headed down to the docks. The water was choppy, but not so bad that they closed the ferry down. When we got on the Ferry, Esra started talking about what we'd see, but it didn't take long for the ferry captain to pull away from the dock & start the tour. Unfortunately the weather never really cooperated. It was extremely cold & windy on the top deck, so we spent most of the time on the main level inside. I went up top for a bit to take pictures, though. The continental divide goes right down the river, so we started on the European side of Istanbul. The European side is where most of the Istanbul citizens work, and the Asian side is where most live. After we got to the suspension bridge, the boat turned around and floated up the Asian side. There were mansions lining the coast, with costs of some going as high as $165 million.
When the ferry tour was over, we got on an underground train that went up to the higher part of the city. It's mostly a shopping district, and when we came back up to the surface, there was a large demonstration going on. There were also riot police standing side by side forming a barrier in case things got out of hand. We decided to duck into a restaurant nearby and get lunch in the hopes that things would calm down while we were in there.
It did, and after lunch we continued down the shopping district street. This was interesting, while walking down we saw some American fast food places that we haven't seen in a long time. Who knew that Little Caesars and Arby's had operations in Turkey?? Some of the highlights of that walk was the largest Catholic Church in Istanbul tucked away behind a fence and a restaurant that looked normal from the outside, but when you walked in & upstairs, you suddenly had a great view of the Bosphorous. Well, what would have been a great view had the weather been better. At this point the rain turned to snow. That was unexpected...no where in the weather report I looked at was snow forecast. At the end of the street we heard loud yelling and a protest group was walking the street heading our way. We got over on the side of the street, expecting them to keep going, but when they got to our spot, they stopped. At that point they split in half, with half going to one side of the street and the other half moving towards us. When someone lit off a flare, we got the heck out of there. When we turned to look back, the entire street was filled with smoke.
We got back to the underground train and took it back down to the other side of town. When we got out, we were near the oldest bridge in Istanbul. There were fishermen lined up all along the bridge...there must have been at least a hundred poles over the side, if not more. We crossed the bridge and decided to visit one more mosque. This mosque was much smaller then the previous ones, but was unique because of the tiles used to cover the outside & inside of it. They were all the original tiles used in the 16th century and were in great shape. We had to hurry because it was getting really close to prayer time, and visitors aren't allowed in during that period.
At this point we parted ways with Esra. Shanna & I wanted to visit one more mosque, and everyone else wanted to head back to the hotel to rest up after a long day. Here's where we ran into a problem. Esra took us to the tram stop, but it was closed because of a power outage. Not just a local outage...the entire old town area was without power. She was nice enough to walk us to the point where we could follow the tracks in the street back to our hotel. The only thing we were disappointed in was that we couldn't go to that other mosque. It was just too far to walk all the way there, especially in the snow. So we walked back to the hotel. But it was actually a peaceful walk. Because of the power outage, there was almost no cars on the road in Old Town, just people strolling outside. Most shops were actually still open, running on generator power. The chestnut vendors were still out, so it was a nice walk and smelled great along the way. The amazing thing is it even made the news in San Diego. A friend of ours who lives out there sent us a note saying she'd heard about the snow storm & power outage in Istanbul and asked if we were ok.
For dinner no one wanted to go far, so we took them to the Cozy Pub (that was the name) we found on our first night. There isn't much to write about, but not because we didn't enjoy ourselves. It was really nice sitting there, eating delicious food, and enjoying some of the local food & drink. We even ended the night with a bottle of famous Turkish liquor called Raki. It wasn't bad! We liked it enough to get a bottle to bring home with us.
Finally, around midnight, we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.
The next morning we all met up for breakfast before heading our separate ways. It was a beautiful day out, the complete opposite of the day before. Since it was such a nice day, we decided to cancel our Turkish Bath appointment and head to the Süleymaniye Mosque, the second largest in Istanbul. Like the Blue Mosque, it was huge & impressive on the outside, and just as beautiful on the inside. There were only a handful of people there, so it was peaceful walking through it.
One thing interesting you might have noticed is how empty mosques are. Unlike churches, which have seats (and kneelers, depending on the denomination), there is none of that in a mosque. People come in with their prayer rugs, lay it out on the carpet, and pray on it. Having grown up in churches, this was something completely new to me...I didn't even think of them not having any seating.
When we read the description of this mosque it mentioned that the namesake of the mosque, Sultan Süleymaniye, was buried there. Sure enough, in the back, was a series of tombs & graves, including his.
After this, we still had 2 hours to kill. I had gotten an iPhone app that showed a map of all attractions, and worked with the GPS to show ones near you. I pulled it up see what was in the area, and it turns out there were two mosques nearby. One was formerly an Eastern Orthodox Church, built sometime between the 9th and 12th centuries. In the 13th century it became a Catholic Church, and in the 15th century it became a mosque, which it still functions as today. This turned out to be a real gem. It was tucked away in an alley, and is one we never would have found without the App. Inside you could tell it was old...it still had the original columns and was amazing to walk through.
We headed to one more mosque, then made our way back to the hotel. We were already packed, and the shuttle driver was already there waiting for us. After checking out, the hotel had one more thing for us...a complimentary CD with Turkish music on it.
All in all, this was an amazing experience. Istanbul is one of (if not the) most exotic city I've ever been to. It has so much history behind it, and the people were incredibly friendly. I also didn't realize how close Troy and the World War I battlefield of Gallipoli were. We will definitely be back to Turkey. If you ever have the chance to visit the country, jump on it...you won't regret it.
To see pictures, click here or any picture in this post.
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