May 25: Istanbul—it’s Constantinople, day 2 (leaving time for what matters)

We left the ship early in the morning on day 2 of our Istanbul/Constantinople/Byzantium adventure. The traffic wasn't nearly as bad as it had been the day before, so we were driven over the bridge to the Asia side of the city, and we stopped at an area where we could experience nice views of the bridge and the Europe side of the city.



Standing by the water, I noticed there were lots of jellyfish in it. Definitely not a place I would want to go swimming. Apparently this doesn't both some people, however, since a guy with a spear gun popped out of the water right by where we were standing. Kind of weird.





Our next stop was the Hippodrome, which used to be the center of life in Constantinople much the way the Forum was the center of life in Rome. If you're up on your Greek, then you're asking what the name has to do with horses. Well, this is also where all the chariot races and other forms of public spectacles used to be held. I was hoping to see a lot more of the Byzantine structures and ruins than was left. As was done with many other parts of the city, the Ottomans messed it up, destroyed it or built over it when they conquered Constantinople in 1453. Bummer. There were a few things left, though:

The Walled Obelisk:


The Serpent column (originally from the 5th century BC, Greek temple of Apollo at Delphi)


Obelisk of Thutmose III (built around 1490BC, originally from the Egyptian temple at Karnak):


Base of Thutmose III obelisk:


Some of this stuff, like the Thutmose III obelisk, was in amazingly good condition. Some of it, like the Serpent Column and Walled Obelisk, were in poor condition as a result of damage done to them by Crusaders passing through Constantinople or Ottomans.

Our next stop was the Blue Mosque, which was built over seven years and completed in 1616. It's also one of the biggest mosques in the world, and biggest landmarks in Istanbul. This was the first time I had been inside a mosque, so it was pretty interesting to watch people get ready for prayer, look around, etc. One of the differences you notice right away is that there are no paintings or sculptures which depict people or animals, because that is forbidden in Islam. As such, the only artwork you'll find is tiles with geometric shapes or calligraphy (usually something from the Koran).

You may have noticed in my pictures that a lot of the women (even the non-Turkish ones) seem to be wearing more clothing than they normally would at this time of the year. Well, for visiting mosques, you have to cover up. For men and women, you can't show your knees, so most people wear pants or long skirts. For women, you can't wear sleeveless clothing of any kind, and you can't show the slightest bit of chest skin (and I'm not talking about just cleavage, either). The women weren't required to wear scarves over their heads or anything like that, which surprised me. Shoes are also forbidden inside mosques, so we had to take them off and carry them with us when we went in.

Anyway, photos from the mosque:

On the left, you can see people washing their faces, hands and feet before prayer:


One of the six minarets, which are used to called Muslims to prayer:


Inside the mosque:




















Exterior of the Blue Mosque:






The Blue Mosque was very impressive, but I couldn't help but feel that the Ottomans just weren't all that creative or advanced. When you look at the exterior of the mosque, it doesn't look all that different from Hagia Sophia (Church of the Holy Wisdom), the Christian church that's right across from it. Hagia Sophia was built by the Byzantine emperor Justinian, and completed in 537 AD. That's right, more than 1000 years before the Blue Mosque, and yet if you look at the Blue Mosque, it seems like both structures could have been built at the same time. For these reasons, I was more impressed with Hagia Sophia.

Exterior of Hagia Sophia (the minarets, which seem out of place, were added after the Ottomans conquered Constantinople and converted Hagia Sophia into a mosque):








I previously mentioned that artwork depicting people/animals is forbidden in Islam. So, when the Otttomans converted Hagia Sophia into a mosque, they plastered over all the Christian artwork. Since Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque some 70 years ago, some of that plaster has been removed, and well preserved mosaics have been uncovered. Note the Byzantine/Orthodox style, which is much different than the kind of art you'd see in Catholic churches:





If you're not up on your Greek, that's the emperor Constantine:


Other parts of the interior (you can tell what's Christian and what's Muslim):














I previously mentioned that our tour guide yapped too much and was repetitious, and Hagia Sophia was where it bothered me the most. He spent so much time repeating himself at the entrance and in a couple places inside that he ran out of time, and we were forced to leave after 15 minutes to keep to our schedule. I was really annoyed, because we weren't given any time to walk around and look at various things inside. The worst part was that keeping to our schedule meant that we were shuttled to a state-owned carpet/tile/art shop so we could spend ONE HOUR looking at carpets, watching someone make them, and being pressured to buy them. It's been a long time since I was that irritated. Major bummer.

After the carpet shop, we were taken to lunch at a hotel or something like that. We were given an appetizer course, which consisted of...well, I don't really know...some unusual salads and sauces and stuff. Most of it was pretty good, but we were never told any of the names, so I can't tell you much else. I think we were supposed to get a salad course, but that was probably skipped because we were behind schedule (and by now, you know the reason why). Our main course had some...um...meat and stuff in it. Man, it would have been nice to get more descriptions of what we were eating. I think we got baklava and a couple other sweet baked goods for dessert, and those were great. All the Turkish desserts we ate rocked, actually.

When we got out of lunch, we finally heard one of the things I was curious about: a Muslim prayer call. The calling went on for several minutes, and was pretty interesting to hear. It definitely added to the overall exotic vibe of Istanbul.

We were taken back to the ship after that, and thus ended our Istanbul adventure. Some thoughts on Istanbul:

- It's incredibly crowded, and the traffic is insane. Of course, what else would you expect when there are 15,000,000 people in the city?
- The mix of east and west is pretty fascinating. Some parts of the city look very modern and cosmopolitan; other parts look very old. As you can see by now, we spent most of our time in the old parts.
- Most of the Turkish people we met seemed nice enough, but since most of them were also working in shops with no prices posted anywhere, I didn't find them particularly trustworthy. Maybe I'm just a skeptic...
- Istanbul and Kusadasi (the other place in Turkey we visited) were cheaper than any of the other places we visited on our trip. Still not totally cheap, but cheaper than any place in Italy or Greece that we went.
- Turkey isn't as hardcore Muslim as other Muslim countries, so you don't see women wearing burkas and/or scarves everywhere, as you might expect. We did see this, but it wasn't the majority. Burkas were almost non-existent.
- It's amazing how much a tour guide can make or break a trip.

All in all, Istanbul was fascinating, and I'd definitely go back. It felt like we only scratched the surface, since we spent almost all our time at historical attractions.

May 24: Istanbul—it’s Constantinople, day 1 (Can you imagine?)

We arrived in Istanbul early the afternoon of May 24, and immediately got off the ship to start our tour of the city. One of the first things we noticed about Istanbul was this:



If you’re not familiar with Islam, those are minarets, at least one of which is typically found at a mosque, and are used to call Muslims to prayer six times a day. It’s an interesting sound, to be sure. We heard the call right before we left on the 25th, and it certainly helped to add to the overall exotic vibe of the city. Anyway, close to 15 million people live in Istanbul, and there are mosques both large and small all over the city, and thus minarets everywhere you turn.

The first place we visited was Topkapi Palace, which is where the sultans (like a king or emperor) of the Ottoman Empire lived before the end of the Ottoman Empire early in the 20th century. The building structure wasn’t as impressive as I was expecting, especially considering the fact that the palace was near one of the largest churches (later converted into a mosque) and one of the largest mosques in the world. What was inside was a lot more impressive.

The entrance to the palace:


The palace had various chambers and gates inside it, with some being for visitors, and others for only the sultan himself. It felt like we walked through several gates, but it was probably only a few. Here’s another example:


Notice in the picture that there are people everywhere. Not only were there tons of tour groups at the palace, but we also learned that our visit happened to coincide with the last day of a 7-day “Turks get in free” event at the palace. Half of Istanbul must have turned out for this, because it was crazy inside the palace. Unfortunately, the half that turned out also happened to be the half that didn’t wear deodorant, because it reeked of B.O. inside the palace chambers. Really bad.

The palace grounds (you’ll see our crappy tour guide in this video—more on him later):


I don’t typically take lots of pictures in museums because I don’t find seeing things out of their original context all that interesting, but check out the size of these cauldrons in the palace kitchen:



The girl in the picture (note the shawl—common for Muslims in Turkey, but being a secular country, the shawl is not required unless one is visiting a mosque, and thus it wasn’t as prevalent as I was expecting) is sitting in front of a small fountain. The sultan used to have this fountain turned on when he was meeting with foreign dignitaries so that people couldn’t hear what they were talking about.



Looks like Arabic, but it’s Turkish. Arabic script was used to write Turkish until the early 20th century, when the Roman alphabet was adopted:


Topkapi Palace is located on the European side of Istanbul, and offers some nice views of the Bosporus Straits:


The bridge in the distance connects the Europe and Asia sides of the city, and is one of the largest suspension bridges in the world.


Becca probably has lots of pictures of the things we saw inside the palace, and she’ll probably post them when she gets around to writing about Istanbul. Needless to say, we saw lots of jewels, swords and religious relics (included some of Mohammed’s (founder of Islam) personal belongings) inside the palace museums. Personally, I didn’t care for how ostentatious a lot of it was. The palace and the belongings of the sultans left me feeling like the sultans had a major inferiority complex, and thus had to be very showy with their possessions in order to either outdo each other or to impress visiting dignitaries. I mean, come on—do you really need hundreds of jewels in your goblets, armor and other things?

Our visit to the palace seemed like it would never end. A lot of this had to do with the crowds, but more of it had to do with the aforementioned crappy tour guide, Jon. Jon was a local, and for whatever reason (I don’t know if it was linguistic difficulties, a cultural thing or what), he would repeat everything he told us a minimum of three times. And, he had something to say about everything. “Look here, can you imagine? This is where kids like to play basketball. And this is where the Byzantine Emperors went #2. Can you imagine that they went #2? You are standing in where the Emperors went #2, and #2 they went.” Lucky us, Jon was also our tour guide for day 2, so we got to experience this everywhere we went. It also meant that we ended up having to hurry everywhere we went because he ran his yap, and ran his yap he did, can you imagine? The shadow he cast over our Istanbul visit is still hanging in the sky over the city.

Anyway, enough about the tour guide. Our last stop of the day was to the (in)famous Grand Bazaar, which is a large indoor market (there are some 4000 shops inside) established over 600 years ago after the Ottomans conquered the city. We were told prior to visiting that it would be best if we looked inside, took some pictures and got out quickly. This turned out to be wise counsel for two major reasons:

- There were a zillion people there, most of whom were tourists. Man, do I hate tourists (note sarcasm).
- Getting a good deal inside is not the easiest thing, since the shop tenants have to pay high rents, just as they would if they were inside a shopping mall.

My mother had requested that I buy her something in Istanbul, something traditionally Turkish, and this seemed like the ideal place to do it, so that was our mission for the Grand Bazaar visit. Once I found something that I thought would be appropriate (and I won’t say what it is since she’ll read this and I haven’t given it to her yet), I asked the shopkeeper in question how much it would be. When he said 40 lira, I countered with an offer of 10 (which was still way more than this item was worth), but he wouldn’t budge. Goodbye, shopkeeper. I found the item at another shop, and the shopkeeper asked for 5 lira. I countered with an offer of 3, and we settled on 4 lira. I would soon discover that this kind of bargaining would be required for EVERYTHING we bought in Turkey, no matter where we were. More on this later.

A typical street in the old (European) part of the city:


The entrance to the bazaar:


Inside the bazaar:


We left the bazaar pretty quickly. We had been “enticed” into a carpet shop (carpets/rugs are probably the most famous Turkish handicraft) to look at rugs, and it felt like being cornered by the mafia, so between this and the trinket purchasing experience, we had seen enough of the bazaar. We visited another carpet shop outside the bazaar (this one had been recommended by our ship’s shopping consultants), and ended up buying a very small rug there after some haggling. I really like the colors and the design, but we should have examined it more closely before buying it. I think it was their floor model (no pun intended), and when we examined it closely when we got back to the US, we noticed that there was some discoloration in parts. Oh well—lesson learned. The rugs were way more expensive than we were expecting (I was thinking we could get something nice and big for maybe $500—I was at least $2000-3000 off in my estimate), so what we bought can only be hung on the wall—it’s so small that it’s not functional. In any case, it’s pretty, and someday when I have a bigger house and more money and care a little bit more, maybe I’ll go back and get one or two normal-sized carpets. They are really pretty.

We got a demonstration of the weaving process in one shop. The carpet being woven was pretty amazing:


After our carpet purchase, we were hungry and wanted to sample some local food before we got back on the bus. We found a small restaurant that had giant skewers of chicken in the front, so we went there and got…well, I don’t know what it was called, but it was good. Pieces of chicken were cut off the skewer and put inside a tortilla-like bread with lettuce, tomatoes and a sauce, and then wrapped up. It was quite good.



Remember what I was saying about bargaining being required for everything in Turkey? Well, the reason for this is that prices are rarely listed on anything in Turkey, no matter where you are. I didn’t think about this before ordering our Turkish sandwich thingy, and found that when we were ready to leave and asked how much it would be, the guys in the restaurant discussed it amongst themselves before telling me what I owed them. The final price was 5 lira, which is not a huge deal, but probably far more than I would have paid had I negotiated the price beforehand.

We were taken back to the ship after this, and found a large buffet of Turkish food laid out on the pool deck. The food was great. I mostly ate grilled meats, and Becca didn’t eat much at all since she wasn’t feeling well. It was cool to sit outside with views of the city all around us as we ate.

Looking at the European side of Istanbul:


Turkish buffet on the ship:

The part of the city nearest the ship:


Hagia Sophia (four minarets) and the Blue Mosque (six minarets) in the distance:


After dinner, a belly dancing show was provided. We didn’t watch very long since Becca wasn’t feeling so hot, but that’s OK.



More on Istanbul later…

May 23: Santorini (one-man churches and other tax evasion schemes)

Some 3600 years ago, an island in the Mediterranean exploded in what was (and remains) one of the largest volcanic events the world has ever seen. Scientists believe that this eruption may have caused the collapse of the Minoan civilization, which was focused on the island of Crete. In any case, what is left of the island that exploded is today’s island of Santorini, with a few other small islands. If you look at a satellite image of Santorini (there’s one here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorini), you can see that these islands form a circle. They are actually the edge of the volcano’s caldera, as most of the volcano is actually under water. The volcano is still active, and volcanologists believe it will one day violently erupt again.

Because of the volcano and what it did to the island, Santorini is a very special place, and one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. Most of its towns are built on cliffs, and are very picturesque. When we arrived in the morning, most of the island was covered in clouds. It was very pretty. Clouds and dew often cover Santorini and are a source of water for its wine industry, which is one of the few things that happens there other than tourism.





The tour we had booked took us to the village of Oia, on the far side of the island. Oia is where many of the famous pictures of Santorini come from, and it’s not hard to see why. With homes, hotels and other buildings built into the cliffs and painted white, the scenery is quite amazing. Oia is a very popular place for people to vacation, and if I had a room with a view and/or access to a swimming pool that overlooked the ocean the way Oia does, I’d be pretty excited about it too. As you can imagine, it’s not a cheap place to vacation.

Views from Oia:














One of the famous blue-domed churches of Santorini:




I wish we could have spent more time in Oia, if only to spend more time enjoying the views. There isn’t really much else to do there, or in any other part of Santorini, for that matter. Life is very slow on Santorini, and even the dogs we saw seemed to be lazy and either asleep or taking it easy.

Following our visit to Oia, we drove back to the main town of Fira so that we could visit a winery and do a wine tasting (joy). On the way there, our tour guide pointed out a number of homes that had small churches on their property. In some cases, these churches were so small that only one person could fit inside of them. This apparently a scheme that helps the Greeks to avoid taxes and to get free electricity, or at least, to get their electricity connected for free. Both sad and funny at the same time.

The wine tasting gave us an opportunity to not wait in line to use the bathroom while the rest of our tour group was distracted. We did eat some croutons and really awesome cheese that were supposed to go with the wine, though. I wish I knew what that cheese was, because it was great. Probably local, too. The winery also provided some pretty good views of Santorini.



You can see Oia in the distance:


Grapevines and the other side of Santorini:


Once we were back in Fira, we were given tickets to the cable cars so that we could get back down the mountain to our ship, and then left to explore the town on our own. We walked around for a while, checked out a few shops, and then had lunch. Lunch consisted of fava paste (similar to hummus and quite good, but not quite as good as hummus) and bread, melted feta cheese with peppers, meatballs with tomato sauce and fried potatoes, and calamari. I wasn’t in the mood for the calamari and didn’t try it, but Becca said it was great. The food I did eat, however, was awesome.







After lunch, we found that the cable car lines were really long, so we decided to walk down the mountain. That didn’t last very long, however, as I had some weird, sharp pains in my knees. Also, people can pay to ride donkeys up and down the mountain, so the trail down the mountain really stunk--not the most pleasant thing for a hike. We turned around and waited in line for the cable cars, which ended up not being that bad.

Santorini really is a special place. As I said before, there isn’t much to do there, but for some vacations or a honeymoon, that doesn’t matter. Maybe someday when we have a lot more money and have seen a lot more of the world, we’ll go back to Santorini and do nothing but enjoy the views for a week or two.