Saturday, August 21, 2010
Roman Cisterns
These were neat! They had an on-going art exhibition in there, with lots of cool lights.
Turkey!
Slowly but surely, I'm working through all these blog entries...
Tuesday:
When we arrived in port, I went on a SAS tour of Istanbul. We visited all the main tourist attractions: the Şehzade Mosque, the Blue Mosque, the hippodrome (with an egyptian obelisk and the serpent column), the Hagia Sophia, and the Roman Cisterns. The bronze serpent column was cool to see because we had learned about it in Global Studies - it is made from the melted swords of the defeated persians after the battle of Thermopole. The Hagia Sophia was also really cool. It was originally built as a christian church, but was converted to a Mosque when Mehmed II conquered Constantinople, changing it into (now) Istanbul. Now, the Hagia Sophia is just a museum, and Turkey has even started restoration efforts to try to take away all the damages done when it was converted to a mosque (shaving off plaster over Christian mosaics, etc…) It also rained that day, which was a little upsetting. I was definitely not prepared mentally or clothing-wise for a downpour. After this, we went back to the boat, met up with some friends, and ate dinner on the boat. We also went out to a hooka bar, which was not my cup of tea (although I did actually have a cup of tea, too). I like to put clean air in my lungs, thank you very much :) Then we went out to a club called Riddum, and then went back to the boat.
Wednesday
On Wednesday, I went on a SAS tour of a lot of the palaces around Istanbul, including some on the Asian side (yay! another continent!) They were ridiculous. Never in my life have I seen so much extravagance. I would say that it would have been cool to live there, but that would likely mean I would have been in the harem, so I won't say that. Let's just say I envy the sultan's lifestyle; that is - before they got shoved out of power in the early 1900's. Between tours of bejeweled palaces and enormous royal gardens, we stopped for lunch and I (may or may not have) made another kitty friend. It was teeny weeny and white, with a splotchy orange and black face. By far the most ornate palace we saw was called the Dolmabahçe Palace. It housed something like 5 sultans, I can't remember the exact number, but it was really cool. One little tidbit - all the palaces in the Ottoman Empire are completely symmetric. If you folded them in half, it's a perfect mirror image. I thought that was neat. And not just architecture layout - the room furnishings too. After the tours, I went back to the boat to meet up with Karyn, Megan, and Brett, and we all went out to Taksim square for dinner. We ended up going down some back alley and found ourselves at this restaurant that looked pretty good. We walked up like 5 flights of stairs, finally getting to these little rooms that all had pillows and pillow benches on the ground and a table like 6 inches off the ground. So fun! We had our own little room, and the food was awesome. I got beyti kebab!! It felt like I was back in Sunnyvale :) It tasted pretty much the same, too. I now have a newfound respect for the authenticity of the Sunnyvale restaurant. Either way, it was delicious. Everyone kept stealing little roll-y bites of mine.
Thursday
On Thursday, the four of us went to the Grand Bazaar. The name doesn't do this place justice - its ENORMOUS. You walk through the doors, and the place is a city in itself. Side streets and alleyways and thousands upon thousands of stores - all under one big roof. It's amazing. We stopped at a tea shop to get turkish tea, and I also got a "toast with cheese," which is basically a little mini grilled cheese. After shopping around for a couple hours, we got pretty lost. We exited out of one of the exits to try to find our bearings, but we were completely lost. We eventually went with the "walk in a straight line and you'll eventually hit a big road" tactic. About an hour and a couple enormous hills later, we finally found a taxi and went back to the ship. There was the Istanbul Modern Art Museum literally nextdoor to the ship, so we went there to check it out. It was actually really awesome. My favorite artists were Ergin Inan (i really liked one of his especially, but it was untitled), Mustafa Ata (i'm going to try to find a poster of his "Four Figures"), and Hüseyin Çağlayan (he was their special exhibit and he, besides awesome paintings, is a fashion designer. they had really cool videos of his runway shows projected onto all the walls). After the museum, we went back to the ship for dinner and watched Enchanted.
Friday
On Friday morning, Karyn and I went to the Spice Market, which was just across the Golden Horn from the port. True to its name, it did have a lot of spices in it, but it's mainly turned into a mini Grand Bazaar, with lots of touristy stuff in it. I also tried turkish ice cream, which is appallingly disgusting. It's really, really sweet, and has the oddest texture I've ever come across. It's thick and gummy. All the people selling it in stands do tricks with it - they'll start wrapping it around a stick and then pull up and the rest will follow and then they'll do stuff like you see men doing with dough in pizza places in the movies. Thats how sticky and thick it is. After walking around a bit and looking at the shops, we got some doner kebabs and went back to the boat. We got our computers and walked across the street to a Starbucks for the free internet, and I played around for about an hour before we had to rush back to get on the bus to go see the Whirling Dervishes!! It was pretty cool to see. Then we went back to the boat again, got a really late dinner at the pool bar (I got a grilled chicken sandwich), and went back out to Taksim square. We met up with a guy named Volkan (pronounced like the planet), who Brett went to high school with. Apparently his immediate family moved to the US when he was like 15, but all of his other family is still in Istanbul, and he has a job there this summer. I think he goes to school at one of the UC's. Anyway, it was pretty cool - we had a turkish escort getting us into all the fun clubs and making sure we didn't get lost in the windy streets.
Saturday
On Saturday morning, all of us got together to go to a turkish bath. It. Was. Awesome. As we walked in, they brought us up to a top floor, which had these fancy locker rooms. We stripped down and wrapped ourselves in their little turkish towels, then got led into the big room with a huge, heated, circular marble slab in it. The room must have been like 500 degrees, because I have never sweat so much in my life. After laying there for a while, I got up and went over to one of the little alcoves where they have fancy little fountains with separate hot and cold faucets. They have these little metal basins that you can fill up with whatever temperature water you want and pour all over yourself. I had to do that a couple times with the cold water only because I was so sweaty. After laying there for a while, you move out to the edge of the circular slab if you want to get scrubbed down. You lay there while the lady scrubs you with this fancy scrubber thing and this soap that feels like liquid silk. I had so much nastiness come off of my body when she scrubbed me - I had no idea I had so much dead skin grossness. After that, I went and sat outside in the little sitting area and got a fresh squeezed orange juice - literally fresh squeezed. I watched the lady squeeze like 4 oranges into a cup and hand it to me. It was delicious! I also got a cup of their apple tea, which basically tastes like the most delicious apple cider you've ever tasted. Then I went back in and got a hot oil massage, which was fabulous as well. After that, I took a shower in a shower stall where the head was on the ceiling, about a foot in diameter, and just rained down on you. Best day ever!! After that, we headed back to the boat and got ready to head off to Egypt.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
View of a Greek sunset from the top deck of the ferry boat, on the return trip from Aegina
It was sooooooo windy up on the top deck. I braved it to get a photo of the sunset. I kept thinking of the Coles and their tales of the wind on the Alaskan cruise; mine wasn't nearly that crazy though!
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