What a delight
1 April 2008
Istanbul, Turkey
I really had to make the most of the time I had in Istanbul but for a city of this size, complexity and history I’m not sure that I did a very good job.
The reason was that I had port manning one of the two days that we were there and I had to try and squeeze things into half the time I might otherwise have had. Since I’m not allowed off the ship in the next two ports I was especially keen to make the most of the time available. After all, the only reason I’m here is to see the world and having to see parts from the railing makes the parts where I am able to touch solid ground that much more important. I had a tour in the morning and an afternoon and evening to experience Istanbul and I was awake and in the bus with the passengers for the tour with expectations of a good day.
The first thing I have to say is that it was cold. No, I might change that. It was beyond cold. Where I live, in the middle of winter, in the middle of the night it doesn’t get as cold as it was standing in front of the bus while holding up my little numbered sign. I’d been warned about the temperature and I’d worn what I thought would keep me warm but I really wasn’t prepared. Some of the blame might have to be taken by the fact that we were in Egypt only a couple of days before and in the middle of a desert, making the extremes that much more apparent, but still…
Anyway, I stood there and stamped my feet and swapped the hand holding the sign so that the other one could gain a limited respite in a pocket and waited for all the passengers to board the bus. Once they were on I found my own seat in the warmth and we headed out of the port.
Istanbul is my first European city and it is a place that oozes history. As we drove the guide would point out buildings and sights of interest and I was close to suffering from whiplash as he pointed out churches, mosques and canon factories. Everything seemed to have been there for a length of time that made the oldest buildings in Australia and New Zealand seem like they’d been thrown up last weekend. This was one of the great crossroads of history and everyone who was anyone seemed to have been here. The guide went through a steady stream of sultans, emperors, conquerors and conquered. It was still early and it was a Sunday so the streets didn’t seem too busy and we made good time to our first stop at the Blue mosque.
It turns out that if you were to ask a local the way to the blue mosque you would probably get a blank look. Locally the mosques are named for those that built them and not for perceived colours of the tiles decorating them. It might be known as the Blue mosque outside Turkey but not within. Arriving outside the mosque we stood and looked at three monuments that marked the layout of what was a Roman racecourse. It is now a street but in times past chariots would have been racing in that spot in a scene right out of Ben Hur. One of the monuments was actually an obelisk that had been brought from Luxor and set up by the Romans so it made a strange kind of symmetry to see it there after having so recently seen exactly where it came from.
We walked up to the Mosque with its famous six minarets, removed our shoes and placed them in plastic bags to be carried with us. I had assumed that there was some religious reason for having to take our shoes off but the guide said that it was just to keep the carpets inside clean. Kind of a pedestrian reason (pun intended).
The mosque inside was huge, designed with the least number of columns possible and it means that it’s easy to stand and look up at the inside of the massive dome. The mosque is essentially one large room, carpeted so that sounds are softened and don’t have the echoing resonance they might otherwise have in a room that size. The walls are covered in tiles, all with different designs and the guide told a story of the sultan being unable to decide between fifty different samples presented to him and decided to use them all. The overwhelming blue colour of the tiles is what gives the mosque its nickname.
Hanging from the ceiling on long cables are large chandeliers that used to be oil lamps but are now electrical. They hang only about eight feet off the ground so that it was possible to light them all in the days of oil and it’s strange to have these hundreds of little glass bowls so close when the dome looms so far above. The day was a bit overcast and the lights weren’t on so the tiles weren’t displayed to their best but it would be a spectacular place with full light.
From the mosque we went back to the bus for a very short drive to Topkapi palace, the seat of the Ottoman Empire. It’s a large complex that is now a museum and public park and we had the opportunity to see the harem and the treasure room as well as a few other areas of a palace that really lives up to the term. The harem was not what I might have expected from the word. I had those clichéd images of women reclining on pillows while large eunuchs fanned them with peacock feathers. That may have been the case somewhere, sometime but in this case the harem was simply the private part of the palace where the sultan lived. There were women to be sure and certainly eunuchs but the rooms that we saw were just elaborately decorated and extremely large chambers that were once sitting rooms, offices and sleeping quarters. Most of the rooms had large fire places that needed to be tended 24 hours a day in winter to have any hope of keeping the huge spaces warm.
We walked through the sultan’s bathroom with its marble and gold accoutrements and went out onto a balcony to see what remained of a large swimming pool. If what we saw was only a fraction of the hundreds of rooms that make up the palace then it would have been an incredibly impressive and overwhelming sight for any visitor in the days when the Sultan called it home.
The treasure rooms had displays of some of the gold and jewellery that the sultans accumulated. From elaborate daggers, giant jewels and golden thrones to a display of clothing it was all impressive, not just for the fact that they were the only heated rooms on the tour.
Our guide was extremely good, patient, knowledgeable and unflappable. He guided us through many rooms and always had information on everything we saw and was roundly applauded once we got back to the ship.
After I had dropped off my escort report I went back to my cabin, put on more clothes and headed out. I had a map but little idea of where I wanted to go so I first headed up into the streets above the port. I knew that the “must see” Grand Bazaar was closed on Sunday and that I had been restricted to the ship the day before so I had missed my opportunity to visit it. I had noticed that there were a number of shops and restaurants open around the Blue Mosque and Palace and knew that I could always head there for food and souvenirs but I wanted to see a little of the city first.
The streets were quiet but I wandered up and down, took a few photos and found nothing open and very few views. It was interesting to see the architecture but there was no life at this time on a Sunday. Making a decision I wended my way back to the main road and headed for the bridge that would take me to the Palace area.
Along the way I stopped for a kebab and a coffee in a small café. Then I stopped for a coffee and some baklava in another small café.
Reaching the bridge I found it covered with fishermen. The bridge itself is a fair way above the water but it didn’t stop hundreds of people from leaning against the railing with a fishing rod in their hand. Occasionally someone would pull in their line and often one or more of the multiple hooks would have a small fish flapping on it. The fish would be removed from the hook and put into a variety of containers, most almost overflowing with flapping silvery bodies. The line would then be carefully placed on the ground behind the fisherman and with a whipping action they would fling it forward and out into the river. All of this made it important to keep a wary eye out for whizzing fishing lines and hooks while I made my way over.
On the other side I walked up the hill towards the palace, in search of souvenirs. I spent the next few hours in and out of stores. I was given apple tea by rug sellers despite saying that there was no way that I could afford anything they had to offer. I would answer the standard “where are you from?” question with “New Zealand” , guaranteed 99 times out of 100 to cause confusion in any part of the world, only to have a couple of guys actually start to talk to me in Maori! I bought souvenirs, careful not to spend too much and standing by my “it’s not the item but the memory it provokes” mantra. I had a tea with a man who was doing calligraphy of people’s names and I wondered what it must have been like to visit the Grand Bazaar with its almost 4000 stores in a condensed space.
I walked the streets until my hands went numb with the cold and then I made my way back to the ship to try and warm up before work. Along the way I ate various types of bread, corn on the cob, baklava, kebabs, fish in a bread roll with raw onion, tea, coffee and a few things I’m not sure about.
The food was good, the city large and impressive and I would have like to have spent a bit more time getting to know it. I am now getting into a part of the world with intense history and I will be unable to write about all that I see and do in the time I have available. Istanbul is like that and all my impressions are going to have to wait until I get back and I can take the time to put it all down. I’m really wondering how I am going to manage with two days off the ship in Venice without completely overloading my senses.