Day 82: Aaaaah…Istanbul!

I arrived in Istanbul at around 2am on Friday morning.  Easyjet had however failed to notify me that I was not arriving at the city’s main Ataturk International airport but another airport waaaaaay on the other (Asian) side of the Bosphorous.  It turned out to be a huuuge hassle to get from there to where I was staying in Sultanahmet, a part of Old Istanbul near the Golden Horn on the European side of the straits.  It was 5am by the time I found the hostel and collapsed into bed.

No rest for the wicked though!  I was up a few hours later to go to the Iranian consulate to pick up my visa.  I spent the morning jumping through a few hoops for them, but it now looks like I should be able to collect the visa tomorrow (Monday).  I was knackered after that and went back to the hostel to sleep for a few more hours.  After a couple of days of travel from Washington DC to Istanbul via Zurich and Basel (and without my backpack in the same clothes – it’s a long story but need I say more than "United Airlines"?) I didn’t know which way was up.  I wasn’t really hankering to see anything in the city anyhow, as I’d done most of it the last time I was in town back in 1999.

I have to profess that I LOVE Istanbul!  It’s such an amazing city and really does deserve the "East Meets West" tag it’s got.  There’s nothing better than enjoying a beer at sunset from a rooftop bar overlooking the Bosphorous and watching the ships go by while the call to prayer wafts over the city from some of the tens of mosques nearby.  It’s a modern European city with a fantastically rich and diverse history which is truly astounding, and it carries it so well.

Over the past couple of days I haven’t been able to resist a few of the touristy highlights around the city.  It was great to tour Aya Sofia again, a giant monument originally built as a church in 537 by Emperor Justinian but then converted into a mosque in the Conquest of 1453.  Afterwards I walked below the Topkapi Palace and through Gulhane Park to have a tea as I watched the ships ply through the Bosphorous and up the Golden Horn.

    
Aya Sofia’s dark interior.                        One of the recently uncovered mosaics.

After my cuppa I walked through the Spice Market – not many spices there these days – and through the market district to one of the most beautiful mosques in the city.  My pick of the mosques to visit isn’t the famous Blue Mosque but the Suleymaniye Camii, designed by Mimar Sinan for the powerful Ottoman sultan Suleyman the Magnificent in the 1500’s.  I took a lazy stroll and got inevitably lost through the Grand Bazaar on the way back, but I wasn’t in a shopping mood because I knew I had many bazaars ahead of me and I didn’t want to load myself up with stuff at the beginning of the trip!

    
Suleymaniye Mosque.                              Headstones in the cemetery out back.

A few scenes from the Grand Bazaar.

You can’t visit Turkey without enjoying one of the quintessential experiences – a Turkish bath!  I fell in love with them the last time I was in Turkey and took one every couple of days.  While I used to go for the local off-the-beaten-track ones, this time around I decided to splash out (hahaha, pardon the pun) for one of the pricier ones.  The Cagaloglu Hamami is over 300 years old and worth every penny.  I signed up for the Turkish massage and soap bath knowing what I had in store: a pummeling and back-cracking full-body massage that would make any chiropractor cringe followed by a soapy and invigorating exfoliation bath.  Afterwards you can do nothing but lay on the hot marble slab and stare at the domed ceiling in a state of relaxed bliss.  And that’s not because you’ve been naked and felt up by a hairy, large and brutish man…

On the way back I popped into the Basilica Cistern, an old Roman water cistern that was forgotten for centuries under the city.  It’s a true engineering feat and fascinating to see – and also a cool respite from the day’s heat.

Aaaaaanyway, I’m leaving Istanbul tomorrow after I collect my passport and will make a bee-line straight for Cappadocia in Central Turkey.  I had such a great time there back in ’99 that I can’t resist going back for a second dose.  After that it’s east and further east until I run out of Turkey to see and bump into Iran.  Then the adventure really begins.

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