I have a confession to make. I’ve fallen terribly behind in writing. As I type this, I’m sitting in Split, Croatia, about to head off to Hvar. But that’s another story, one that I’ll probably get around to writing in mid-October, at the rate I’m going. Anyways, back to Istanbul for now. When I left off, we had just spent the day wandering the city, and I had narrowly escaped a fate wherein I grow old, endlessly walking the streets of Istanbul, looking for our hotel.
Day thirty-one opens with us heading out of our hotel around 9am, the plan being to head to the east part of downtown to see the Hagia Sofia (Ha-gee-uh So-fee-uh to me, apparently Ai-uh-sof-ya to everyone else), since the lines had been too long the day before. We got there around 10am, and there were already quite a few people there, but not so many as the afternoon before. We were able to buy tickets and walk right in, or at least to stroll at near-snails-pace right in behind busload after busload of tourists.
I am happy to report that, as far as gigantic, historically important, awe-inspiring pieces of 1500-year-old architecture go, the Ayasofia does not disappoint. It’s very, very big. They’re currently in the process of restoring the highest ceiling mosaics, so we saw it with an approximately 25-floor scaffolding taking up about a fifth of the tallest part. It’d probably be even more impressive without the scaffolding, but as a geek it was interesting to see the scale of even the maintenance equipment required to tend to the building.
This is a travelogue, not a guidebook, so I’m not going to go into great detail abou the building. Suffice to say, it’s well worth making a point of seeing if you find yourself in Istanbul, and likely worth heading to Istanbul just to see if you’re very into historical architecture.
After the Ayasofia, we headed right next door, to the Blue Mosque. This was a bit of an odd experience because it’s still an active mosque, and while tourists are only allowed in during certain hours, worshippers are welcome at any time. We followed a short line of tourists as they navigated the “please take off your shoes” and “here’s a loaner head covering for women” staging areas. Anna and I weren’t as mystified as most, and Anna had a scarf ready to go.
Once inside, the mosque itself is very impressive, but the huge number of tremendously long wires for the light fixtures turned what could have been a stunningly tall and open space into a kind of densely-black-striped, perceptually-low-ceilinged space. The sheer number of wires and cables couldn’t have been accidental; it had to be an intentional choice somewhere, and the architecture suffered from it. Well, from the wires, and from the huge number of tourists demonstrating various degrees of respect for Muslim sensibilities.
Most Muslims who visit the Blue Mosque wisely stay away from tourist hours, but there were some people praying, and I felt kind of sorry for them, what with Texans in shorts lining up a few feet away to take pictures of them, and a lot of women who opted to go bare-headed and bare-armed (Muslim men don’t go bare-armed in mosques).
So call the Blue Mosque worth seeing, if a little bit for the wrong reasons. It is right next to the Ayasofia, so it’d be senseless to skip it, but I would recommend doing the mosque first so it’s less of a comparative letdown.
After seeing probably the two most famous historical sites in the city, Anna and I wandered a bit, walking up Kennedy Cadessi, or Kennedy Street, complete with a statute of John Kennedy. Why? Well, if we had done more research in advance, I could probably have told you. As it is, I don’t know. But I plan to look it up at some point. From there, we walked back through the Grand Bazaar and discovered that the necklace Anna had fallen in love with the day before – a really nice modern piece with a series of asymmetric circles – was white gold and diamonds, making it not only cost prohibitive but downright scary to own.
And then we were kind of done with the south peninsula of Istanbul. We said goodbye to the shopping district that Hotel Bar In was in (along with Hotel Balin and Hotel Baron) and grabbed a cab over to the next night’s hotel, which was in the Pera district. We’d booked it during a 15 minute Internet cafe stop the day before, based largely on one or two restaurant reviews indicating that there was good food and nightlife in Pera. But we had no idea what to expect.
Brief tangent here: at some point, I’m going to write an essay about the way different cultures look at maps, street signs, addresses, and finding unknown places. We’ve seen everything from having taxi drivers wave off our totally accurate maps in favor of asking random people on the street every 100 meters to seemingly helpless drivers who act like an address that they don’t know must simply not exist and obviously can’t be found. There’s a project here, plotting different extremes of social interaction styles in an n-dimensional space and…
Right, back on track here. Our cab driver found our new hotel (by asking two other cab drivers). Anna wasn’t feeling well and decided to rest for the afternoon, and I headed out to explore (making more careful note of the hotel’s name an location than I had last time around).
And here’s one of those times where the difference between turning left or right makes a pretty big impact on one’s perception of a city. I turned left, walked two blocks, and found the motherlode of Istanbul shopping. I don’t have the street name handy, but it was a giant pedestrian street, about a mile long, with nonstop shops, restaurants, and malls, and with every side street just packed with more restaurants and bars. It was like, um, that one huge street in Budapest, set end on end with that one huge street in Paris, except busier. If that helps any. I even found the local metal bar, Dorock, subtly cued by black and silver awnings with lightning bolts and flames, and of course the obligatory contingent of long haired, black t-shirted, band-logo-emblazoned metal types. It was kind of cute.
So after a whole lot of walking, I started to head back to the hotel, hoping Anna was feeling better and ready to get some food. Along the way, I ran across a bunch of barber (“berber”, in all seriousness) shops and decided that my hair had grown out enough to annoy me, and that it had to go. I popped into one shop and tried to communicate that I wanted my face and head shaved, straight razor and shaving cream style. As it turns out, I got a very nice (face) shave, and a pretty decent haircut. Still, it was short enough to no longer be actively annoying, so I was happy.
Fortunately Anna was feeling better, so we headed out to find food. After much wandering around and deep sighs at most of the options (“not another kebap place”), we happened upon a French restaurant, denoted by “brasserie” in the name. What’s more, they had Chateaubriand on the menu. I love Chateaubriand. So Anna and I had the second truly gourmet dinner of the trip, with some wonderful rare beef and an absolutely stellar Turkish Cabernet Sauvignon, whose name I remember only as “Blubluyeg”, or something to that effect, the 2005 reserve.
After dinner, we wandered some more, stopping for wine and dessert at another restaurant, and then, well, and then it was 11pm. And I just couldn’t resist checking out the local metal scene. Anna opted (wisely, as it turns out) to head back to the hotel, and I returned to Dorock (or “Do Rock”; I’m still not clear). Yes, it was going to be cheesy. And yes, it was cheesy, all the more so because the band, Murder Kings, turned out to be a cover band. A good cover band, but I didn’t come to Istanbul to hear Metallica covers. I drank about half of a beer and listened to two or three songs, then headed back to call it a night for real. After all, tomorrow we were planning to walk to Asia.