The Promised Turkey Post

I was seriously considering titling this entry "Istanbul Was Constantinople," but I decided that that was too obvious and cliche.

Day one (Friday, 24 October 2008)
-Take train from Athens to Thessaloniki, leaving at about 11:00 AM. No particular drama, except that I didn't realize that I had been assigned a coach as well as a numbered seat, so I had to change seats partway through the ride when the passenger who had been assigned to Coach 1 Seat 32, as opposed to Coach 5 Seat 32, came aboard and kicked me out of his rightful seat.
-Arrive in Thessaloniki, have three hour layover before I catch my next train. So I go out and get a gyro (apparently in Thessaloniki, they serve gyros with ketchup and mustard. Who knew?), and then buy myself some ice cream to kill the time before my train comes.
-Board my Thessaloniki-Istanbul train. It's a sleeper, and the Orient Express it is not. The other woman who is assigned to my compartment is Greek, speaks English, and is really nice. I spend most of the train ride while I'm up in the club car listening to this woman talk with the two men in the compartment next to us in Greek. I understood some of what they were saying, but not a lot, and I'm too tired to really try to follow a conversation in a language I don't really know. So at about 10:15 I go to bed.
-I get woken up a few hours later by Greek passport control collecting everyone's passports. Then I get woken up by Greek passport control giving back everyone's passports. Then I get woken up by Turkish passport control collecting everyone's passports, and this time I had to get out of the train in the freezing cold to buy a tourist visa. After returning to the train, I get woken up by Turkish passport control giving back everyone's passports. Finally, I get woken up by Turkish baggage control checking that all I had was a bag with personal items.

Day two (Saturday, 25 October 2008):
-The train finally arrives in Istanbul at about 10:00 AM. I get off of the train and take the tram to Sultanhamet, the neighborhood where my hostel was located. I then proceed to get very lost trying to locate my hostel itself. I missed it the first time I passed it, and then I took a wrong turn when I attempted to retrace my steps. It is raining while I'm wandering the streets of Sultanhamet, and I'm just thinking, I really hope that my duffel bag is as water resistant as it says it's supposed to be.
-Finally, though, I located and checked into my hostel. I'm staying in a 13 person mixed dorm.
-I go out to get something to eat, since I haven't really eaten anything since the gyro the night before, and end up having a tavük donner yarim ekmek (none of which I'm certain that I've spelled correctly, but that's as close as I can remember), which is Turkish for a sandwich of chicken which has been roasted like a gyro served on half a loaf of bread.
-After I finished eating, I wandered in the Grand Bazaar for a while. The Grand Bazaar is kind of overwhelming, with so many people and merchants and things to see and look at and all of the merchants hassling you to try to get you to buy from them. I buy a pashmina from one of the merchants, because I need a scarf to cover my head for all of my many mosque-visiting adventures planned this week. It's a beautiful deep blue color that goes with just about every article of clothing I own (since I don't have anything that's orange, and that's about the only color that really clashes with this shade of blue).
-After leaving the Grand Bazaar, I (what a surprise) managed to get lost finding my way back to my hostel. But I eventually make my way back there via the Hippodrome, which is all lit up with the various monuments there.


Day three (Sunday, 26 October 2008):
-Have breakfast with three of the other girls staying in my dorm (two Aussies, one Canadian).
-It's still raining, so we try to think of something to do inside. We end up visiting the Underground Cistern. The Underground Cistern was built by the emperor Justinian (I think) to provide water for the surrounding area. It's this vast underground enclosed space supported by a bunch of columns. Two of the columns are resting on the heads of Medusas, one upside-down and the other on its side. There is still some water in the cistern, so you walk on these elevated walkways, and you can look down into the water and see fish swimming around below.
-We then attempt to visit the Blue Mosque. We get as far as the outer courtyard, but we can't go inside the mosque itself because it's closed for prayer time.
-We have lunch, linger over apple teas for a while, and then go back to the hostel and don't do a lot with the rest of the day. I'm not complaining, because I'm still pretty tired from traveling. We also hang out a bit with the five Dutch guys who are in the mens' dorm across the hall.

Day four (Monday, 27 October 2008):
-Went to Taksim Square with the two Aussie girls to see them onto their bus to the airport. This involves taking the tram from Sultanhamet across the Galatea Bridge, and then taking a funicular railway up to Taksim. Taksim is the transportation hub of the city. All of the buses and so forth connect there.
-I waved goodbye to the Aussies, and then wandered around the Taksim area for a while. There were a lot of shops in the area, most of which I didn't go into because either they were Westernized and didn't look that interesting or I didn't want to be tempted to buy any of it.
-While I was wandering, I passed by St. Anthony's Catholic Church, so I went inside. It was really pretty inside. There were really high ceilings with vaulting, and pretty stained glass. There were also many places where one could light candles in front of pictures of various saints, so I did. I like lighting candles in churches, I won't lie. I have no pictures of the inside of the church, because they asked that you not take photographs even without flash, but I took some of the facade of the building.
-While I was wandering around the Taksim Square area, I decided to try to find the Pera Palas Hotel, famous for being the place to stay when traveling on the Orient Express, and for a list of very famous guests who stayed there at various points, including Agatha Christie. I wandered around the same area for probably about an hour in the rain trying to find it. When I finally located it, I realized that there was a reason beyond my less-than-detailed map and not-the-greatest map reading skills why I couldn't find it: it's closed for massive renovations and is under layers of scaffolding. I took a picture of the outside of the building and the sign by the entrance, which the scaffolding left unobscured. I then tried to take a picture of the lobby of the building through the open front door. I wasn't trespassing: I stayed on the public sidewalk and just took a picture from there. The flash attracted the notice of someone working inside, who came out and yelled at me that pictures weren't allowed. I apologized, and luckily he didn't make me delete the picture. (I looked up why the Pera Palas Hotel was closed [basically that the building was falling apart and no longer providing the luxury level services that it was charging such a high price for] later when I had access to the internet. If anyone wants to see a particularly unnecessary Flash page, you can find one at http://www.perapalas.com/ ).
-Then I got really lost trying to find the tram stop to get back. I ended up in a part of the city that I don't actually know where it was, but it was certainly not part of the tourist quarter. Finally found a sign pointing back to Taksim, which I followed over steep hills until I got back to Taksim Square.
-Had dinner (another chicken donner. I basically lived on them in Istanbul, because they're the cheapest things you will find to eat anywhere), took funicular and tram back to Sultanhamet, and walked back to my hostel.
-Rested for a bit, then went out and walked up and down the main street in Sultanhamet, and ended up buying a ridiculous amount of lökum, which is better known in English as Turkish Delight. I didn't realize how heavy it was, so the small box that I asked for ended up being nearly 3/4 of a kilogram and costing me about 12 lira. It was a lot of Turkish Delight. Good, but a lot.
-I then ended up eating some of the lökum while sitting in the plaza in between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, both of which are lit up at night. The Blue Mosque in particular looks like something out of a fairy tale, with all of its minarets lit up.

Day five (Tuesday, 28 October 2008)
-Hagia Sophia! I can't even begin to describe how amazing the Hagia Sophia is. For one thing, it's absolutely gorgeous. There is so much space inside of it, and seeing the combination of the Byzantine and Islamic elements is so cool. For another, you can almost feel the weight of the history of the building. The stones in the threshold are worn down with the centuries of feet passing over them. And it was another site like Mycenae where I had first really heard about it in my junior year AP Art History class, and I would never have thought then that I would really ever get to see it in person in real life. But visiting Hagia Sophia was so cool that my mind pretty much shut down from being overwhelmed by the sheer awesomeness of it.
-After I wandered over every single inch of the Hagia Sophia that they'd let me (and I'm only slightly exaggerating with that), I had a cup of apple tea from the cafe in the garden outside to try to let my mind start functioning again. Then I left and went across the way to the Blue Mosque. I sat outside for a while having a simit (a type of bread ring sold by street vendors in Turkey) while I waited for prayer time to be over.
-After a while, I noticed other tourists going into the Blue Mosque, so I joined the queue. Took off my shoes, covered my head with the scarf I had bought for mosque-visiting purposes, went in through the visitor's entrance. The Blue Mosque is very pretty on the inside as well, all Iznik tiles and light. It was very peaceful inside as well.
-Left the Blue Mosque after a while, and went inside the tomb of Sultan Ahmed in the Hippodrome. No surprise, it was also pretty inside, though a lot smaller than the other buildings that I'd been in, and with most of the floor cordoned off for the green-velvet covered coffins of the sultans and their relatives laid to rest there (I can't quite call it buried or interred, because they're still above ground, and I can't quite call it entombed because the tomb is a pretty big building in the basic formation of a mosque, which doesn't quite accord with what I think of when I think of "tomb").
-Then I wandered down the Hippodrome, taking pictures of all of the monuments therein. There's the Column of Constantine Porphyrogenetus from the 10th century CE, which is this tall column made up of stone blocks. I don't know anything about it other than its name, which was on the label next to it. Then there's the Serpentine Column, which was brought back from Delphi in the 4th century CE. It's three serpents twining around each other, only the top of it has broken off and so it just looks like a twisted column, kind of like if you took a strand of licorice, made it of monumental proportions, and then petrified it. The last of the monuments is the Obelisk of Theodosius, which is this huge stone obelisk with Egyptian hieroglyphics inscribed on each side of it.
-After this bit of history geeking, I decide to walk over to the Sirceki Station in hopes of visiting the Orient Express Museum there. However, on the way there, I get waylaid by a carpet merchant. He invited me in for an apple tea and tries to sell me carpets. Of course, being a poor college student, there is no way that I could remotely afford even the smallest of the carpets in his shop, but they were really pretty to look at.
-Finally extract myself from the carpet shop, one business card later, and make my way to the railway station to discover that the Orient Express Museum is closed for the afternoon.
-So I take a quick look through the Spice Bazaar, but mostly in the streets outside of the Spice Bazaar proper and buy a very late lunch (it's about four o'clock in the afternoon by this point).
-Then I walk across the Galatea Bridge, and on the other side I walk through a fish market with fish so fresh some of them are still flopping around. It was rather disturbing to watch, actually.
-Dinner tonight I have at one of the many fish restaurants under the Galatea Bridge. I had a balik ve ekmet, which translates literally as a fish and bread. It's a fillet of fish put on half a loaf of bread, and it's a traditional food on the Bosporus waterfront. The view from the Galatea Bridge was terrific. I was looking out over the Golden Horn, and I could see the Bosporus Bridge and the Asian side. I could also see the New Mosque all lit up for the night. It was beautiful. After dinner, the waiter offered me a glass of tea on the house, and so I accepted, and stayed for longer looking out over that view. Then on the way back, one of the proprietors of another restaurant on the bridge pretty much pulls me off the street to offer me tea or coffee, again on the house. So I have a Turkish coffee, very sweet, and spend more time looking out over the view, this time looking more towards the other side of the Golden Horn. The proprietor of this restaurant also asks me if I wanted to go out with him some time and smoke a water pipe, and I respectfully declined. I did get a business card from him, though.
-Then I walk back to the hostel, walk up and down the main street that the tram runs down, going into some of the souvenir shops just to look around, and return to the hostel for the evening.

Day six (Wednesday, 29 October 2008):
-Walk down to Ermonioü, from where I catch a public ferry across the Bosporus to the Asian side of the city. The Asian side of Istanbul is exactly like the European side of Istanbul, except that it's in Asia, and it's not as touristy as the parts of Istanbul right around all of the historical sites. It's also a bit calmer, without quite as many people hassling you to go into their shops.
-I walk around for a while, since I'm here, and go into a couple of mosques. People look at me a bit strange when I walk into their mosques, which I can totally understand (after all, if a tourist walked into St. John and started taking photographs, I'd probably look at them funny too), but no one really says anything, and it's nice to look inside mosques without hordes of tourists also being there.
-After lunch, I catch the public ferry back to the European side of the city. Then I try to visit the Orient Express Museum at the railway station. I get there, and it's closed. I then realize that today is a national holiday in Turkey, and that's why for one the museum is closed, and for two why there are what seem to be an excessive number of Turkish flags and portraits of Ataturk around.
-So I go down and wander around the outside of the Spice Bazaar for a while (it's closed for the holiday as well).
-Then I decide on the spur of the moment to visit Topkapı Palace (the whole week I was there, I kept reading that name as being pronounced "Torkari". This is how I know I've been in Greece too long, when I am now reading the letter "p" as being a rho.) I wandered all over pretty much all of the palace that was open for an hour and a half, except for the harem, which there was a separate admission fee for. It was pretty, but it was also kind of overwhelming. After a while, it was like, how many Iznik tiles do you want? The palace also held collections of all the pretty and important things that were housed in the palace over the ages, so I got to see a lot of really shiny jewels and metalworked things, including a couple of massive diamonds. There was also a collection of Muslim relics, so I got to see things like the beard of the Prophet Mohammed, and the staff of Moses, and the arm of some other biblical figure that I'm forgetting at the moment.

Day seven (Thursday, 30 October 2008):
-Start walking towards the Süleymaniye Mosque, but get waylaid on the way there by a carpet merchant and end up having a glass of apple tea while I look at more beautiful carpets and kilims that I can't afford to buy, even with the "special student price" he was claiming to be giving me.
-Resume walking towards the Süleymaniye Mosque, get slightly lost on my way there, but make my way there eventually. Like everything else in the city, it is undergoing restoration, so most of the interior of the mosque is blocked off and you can neither go into it nor even look in at it. Still, the exterior of the building is there to be admired, as are the tombs outside of Suleiman himself and his wife Roxanna, both of which are very pretty on the inside.
-After that, I wound my way down to the waterfront via a very steep, cobbled street. I then commenced a search for the Rursa Pasa Mosque, but I soon heard the call for prayer, which meant that even if I found it I wouldn't be able to go inside for about forty minutes, so I went into the Spice Bazaar again for a more proper browse. This was a slightly bizarre experience. It seemed like every single one of the men working at the Spice Bazaar was hassling me, trying to get me to taste some of their lökum, trying to get my phone number, trying to give me their phone number, suggesting that we go out for tea later, asking whether I had a boyfriend, etc. On the one hand it was amusing, but on the other hand it really wasn't. I ended up with quite a collection of business cards with men's phone numbers on them, actually.
-Finally, I figured that enough time had passed for mosques to be open to non-Muslim visitors, so I left the Spice Bazaar and found the Rursa Pasa Mosque. The entrance is in the labyrinth of narrow streets around the Spice Bazaar, and I missed it the first couple of times I went by it. It is absolutely beautiful on the inside though, with the best Iznik tiles you will ever see. It's really peaceful on the inside too.
-It's now about 2:30 PM, and I'm at a a bit of a loss for what to do, since there really isn't enough time to walk to a museum that closes at 4, like most of them do, and still have enough time to visit to make the admission fee worthwhile. So I walk back along the tram line towards the hostel, and passing by Sirceki railway station I decided to go in again and see whether the Orient Express Museum was open. Third time's the charm, and it was. It was a really neat small museum, even though most of the interpretive signage was in Turkish so I couldn't really read anything. But I still really like looking at old railway stuff, and this was from the Orient Express, which automatically made everything ten times cooler than if it were from some random other train.
-Walking back towards my hostel, I passed a sign advertising a free art exhibition, so I went in to look. It was of a series of paintings by a local painter. They were really good. You could really tell how deeply he loved Istanbul. There were a couple of paintings there, one of a simit and another Cezanne(? I really wish I remembered AP Art History better sometimes) style one of the Hagia Sophia, that I wouldn't have minded owning, if I could afford them, be able to get them back to the US, and have someplace to display them.
-After that, I bought a can of cherry juice and sat just looking at the Blue Mosque for a while. Then, having some time to kill, I walked over to the Grand Bazaar, by way of the Cemberlitas Column (which, such a surprise, is undergoing restoration and is under scaffolding), and wander around there for a while.
-On my way back, I get waylaid by a restaurant owner, and since his prices look reasonable, I decide to have dinner there. So I'm sitting on the street, watching people go by, eating köfte, which are traditional Turkish meatballs. The owner gives me dessert (a type of doughnut in honey), and apple tea afterwards on the house, so I sit there for a while longer, just watching people walking by. Then, on my way back to the hostel, I get waylaid by the proprietor of another restaurant, who gives me a free cup of apple tea even though I'm not ordering anything from his restaurant. So I sit on the sidewalk outside of his restaurant, watching people go by.
-After this, I decide to go exploring in the direction toward the waterfront, instead of away from it like I had been exploring. As I'm walking down the tram line, I get invited into a carpet shop for an apple tea, and I accept. The carpet shop person and I talk for a while, which is interesting. He's a nice person, and he's just completed his military service and is currently studying towards taking his civil service exam while working at the carpet shop. So talking with him is interesting and diverting. Unfortunately, he's also really flirting with me, which is less diverting and in fact rather uncomfortable.
-Finally, he has to close down the shop, and I'm able to leave. I walk to a pastry shop and decide to have desert. I order ğaslu tavük, which is a traditional Turkish desert. The name means chicken pudding, which is exactly what it is, a sweet milk-based pudding with chicken breast in it. I don't know who in the world came up with the idea to make chicken into a sweet pudding, but it actually is pretty decent. The texture's a bit funny, but it tastes fine. Probably not something I'll order again any time soon, but not bad to have once just to try it.

Day eight (Friday, 31 October 2008):
-Go to the Archaeological Museum. The Archaeological Museum complex comprises three museums, the National Archaeological Museum, the Museum of the Ancient Orient, and the Tiled Pavilion. I basically spent four hours wandering all over every part of all three museums that were open to the public at the time. I won't waste everyone's time describing all of the things that I looked at; I have pictures if anyone is interested.
-After this adventure, I have a slight headache, so I scrap my original plan of walking over to the Pera Museum and instead walk back to my hostel to rest for a bit, and then venture out to find food. I let myself get waylaid by a pide place and have a lahmacun for a late lunch. I end up talking with two New Zealanders over tea afterwards, who are very impressed that I am traveling by myself.
-After that, I kind of wandered around for a while in various souvenir shops. Then on my way to find something to eat for dinner, I got waylaid for an apple tea by a man who claimed that we'd been talking earlier in the week. I don't know whether this was true or not, but he wasn't setting off any alarm bells, so I ended up talking with him and his nephew for a while over apple tea. It was actually kind of ridiculous. In between asking me whether I had a boyfriend and hinting that I should move to Istanbul and teach English because Istanbullas led such a happy life, he was telling me about his relationship problems and how he broke up with his long-term Spanish girlfriend because she wanted to live in Barcelona and he didn't want to move there with her. It was definitely an experience.
-After extracting myself from this situation, I actually manage to locate some food, which was a bit more difficult than it would have been if I hadn't been waylaid because it was pretty late and a lot of places were starting to close. Then back to the hostel.

Day nine (Saturday, 1 November 2008):
-My last day in Istanbul. I packed up all of my stuff, and then left my duffel at the front desk of the hostel because my train doesn't leave until the evening, and I don't want to have to lug it around with me all day.
-I spend much of the morning in various souvenir shops, buying gifts for various people. However, since these are going to be gifts, you don't get any details on this portion of my adventures until at least after Christmas, if anyone is actually interested, which I can't imagine why they would be.
-Then I walk to Gülhane Park, which is really pretty. It used to be the Sultan's private garden, and it's all green with trees and paths running through it. I walk around there for a while, then I sit by the fountain there and write up my postcards.
-After this, and lunch, I still have time to kill before going down to the railway station, so I sit in the Hippodrome for a while, then wander around an English-language bookstore for a while more. I was really tempted by a couple of the books in there, which I guess is what I get for wandering around a bookstore that I can actually read the titles, but I didn't have the money to buy them nor the weight allowance to get them back to the United States, so no Little Prince in Turkish or Tales of Nasreddin Hodja for me.
-Finally, it was a reasonable time to go to the railway station, so I went back to my hostel to collect my bag and took the tram to Sirceki Station.
-Got aboard my train (another sleeper, this one much nicer than the one I took from Thessaloniki to Istanbul, and this time I have the compartment to myself because there aren't very many people going from Istanbul to Greece on a Saturday night) and head out towards Greece. Go through the passport and baggage control when we reach the border, but no problems and this time I know what to expect.

Day ten (Sunday, 2 November 2008):
-Change trains in Thessaloniki to get to Athens, arrive at Larissa Station in Athens, take Metro to Evangelismos, walk back to apartment. The journey has come to an end, as much as any journey can be said to end.