Istanbul Turkey Nov 6-8 2009

Istanbul Turkey Nov 6-8 2009

Our flight was set to depart at 9:30 pm Friday night to arrive in Istanbul around 1 am. Unfortunately our plain was pretty late so we didn't arrive until closer to 2 am. Luckily the airport was still running for the most part. We bought our visa's and crossed customs. We walked outside and talked to the cab driver and showed him the directions to our hostel. The airport was about half an hour outside the city. We got into the main part of town and the taxi driver couldn't find our hostel so he was asking around and we finally made it. There was someone at the desk ready to check us in when we arrived and they were very hospitable. The next morning we got up and got ready for the day and went to breakfast. The hostel guy told us to go up the stairs to breakfast so we walked all the way up to the fourth floor and they were serving breakfast on the roof of the hostel (it was covered). It was absolutely beautiful having breakfast up there. We had a perfect view of the water and enjoyed some Turkish tea cereal dried fruit and boiled eggs. After breakfast we asked the hostel guy for some advise so he gave us a map and showed us some cool places to go. We ended up wandering around and ran into a courtyard with two large obelisks. One was placed there by Constantine in the 10th C. the other was an Egyptian one with hieroglyphs covering all the sides. From there we could see a huge mosque that was open to view. We walked into the courtyard in front of the mosque where the followers cleans themselves and was their feet and faces before entering. We walked around to the visitors section and had to take off our shoes and go in. It was a beautiful structure inside. There were no images or pictures of course but the walls were covered in sand script calligraphy. The calligraphy was very geometric and ornate. After spending some time looking around we went outside the other end and found ourselves in front of Hagiasophia! We went up closer to it to see if we could go in but they were charging people to get inside so we decided just to enjoy it from the outside. We walked around it and went up a small hill to the Sultan's Palace. The Palace was huge the grounds were larger than Vatican city it was pretty impressive. From there we went to the Archeological museum. This museum was very cool. The first portion of the museum was ancient artifacts from Babylonia and Egypt. One of my favorite artifacts in this section was the first known peace treaty between the Hittites and the Egyptians. It was a tablet covered in cuneiform script stating the terms of the treaty. They also had an Egyptian sarcophagus and some Canoptic jars from an Egyptian tomb. After this section we went into the main part of the museum which had a display of the coverings from Cydon's necropolis which had really well preserved tombs with cool relief sculptures on the sides . The most famous one there was the Alexander tomb which had images of Alexander the Great fighting in battle. The museum also had coverings from Troy and a lot of cool artifacts from all around Turkey and Babylonia. After the museum we walked around and found some lunch at a restaurant down the street. I got a huge plate of different kinds of kabob meats with pita bread and salad for the equivalent of about 6 euro. After lunch we walked through town a bit more and went into the famous Spice Bazaar. It was crazy and chaotic. The walkway was packed with people bartering buying and selling everything you could think of. They had tons of different spices and trinkets and different kinds of Turkish delight. Also every ware you looked someone had a carpet to sell. We made it through the chaos with everything we came in with so we were happy haha. The spice bazaar was right on the water and there were boat tours leaving every half hour to go up the Bosporus up to the black sea and back. Dr. Hatlie highly recommended this to us so we took one of the boats and went up the water and sailed around the beautiful coastline. On the way back the sun was setting and was creating a silhouette of the city. It was so beautiful I would almost describe it as magical. After we got back Grace was insistent that we take a commuter ferry over to Asia. It was only a 15 minute ride and was only about 50 cents so we did it. We made it to the Asia side of Istanbul and got a bunch of rocks and stuff just to say that it was from Asia. We walked around the peninsula and went over to the ferries back. So Grace got her wish and we spent about half an hour in Asia haha. When we got back we were pretty hungry again so we searched out a place to eat dinner. We ended up at a place where a woman was rolling out fresh pitas on the stone bored so we ate some Turkish pancakes and tea for dinner it. We lounged out over the floor on pillows and had a delicious meal. When we left dinner we decided to walk into one of the carpet shops. Grace really wanted a blanket for herself so we were looking around. The guy was very nice and showed us a lot of really nice blankets and she got one that was a beautiful design with flowers and golden thread throughout it. After walking around some more we headed back to the hostel. We dropped off our stuff that we collected throughout the day and went out again trying to find some Turkish delight or something. We ended up talking with some young guy who lived there and he wouldn't stop talking to us. We finally got away and found ourselves at another shop. This shop had beautiful pictures of the calligraphy making images with the words. We asked the owner what some of them meant and we got into talking with him for about two hours about Islam theology and virtue. It was really cool to hear their beliefs and morals. He knew we were not going to buy anything but we kept talking and he invited us over for tea the next day because it was getting late. He was a really nice man and we thanked him for the offer. After that we went back to the hostel and called it a night.

The next morning we enjoyed another nice breakfast on the roof of the hostel. We didn’t have much time in the city because our flight was leaving around 2:30. We walked through the city some more searching for the famous Grand Bazaar. We walked through the carpet bazaar and saw the shop owners setting up for the day. We finally found the Grand Bazaar but it was closed! They closed it off because they were having an annual race across Istanbul which started at the Grand Bazaar. We never got to go inside so we ended up walking through the city and sat at a bench by a fountain in between the Blue Mosque and Hagiasophia. While we were sitting there some Muslim women asked if they could sit so we gave them our seats. They were really grateful. One of the woman who was from Egypt started to talk with us. She had just gotten back from Mecca and talked about the pilgrimage they go on, then she talked with us about Islam theology. It was all really fascinating to hear their views on virtue and she also talked about her thoughts on Christianity. Their religion is based a lot on faith through reason and she couldn't understand the trinity fully and was confused about some things with Jesus' human nature. After a while she and her friends walked off. We were getting close to the time to go so we headed back to the hostel and gathered our things to go to the airport. The Hostel called a cab and we went to the airport and went back home to Rome.