Istanbul day 4

Today we got up a little bit later than we expected, after our stressing over potential contamination from the swine last night. We still managed to get up and grab some breakfast, although we had to do so stinky, and showered afterwards.
Lapzang, Doolittle and myself had agreed to do a few of the local touristy things, and we started to set out on our day of adventure, until it came time to check how much money we all had. Doolittle was having technical difficulties with her bank, so had to spend about 45 minutes getting that sorted out, so she could have access to her money.

After doing so, we headed across the street to Acetes travel, who had been recommended to us by the boys at our hostel. We chatted with them about organizing bus tickets to Eceabat, where we were staying for out Gallipoli adventure. They provided us with a good price, so we decided to book. They also offered us information on further bus tickets, and accommodation at a later stop, but it was a little bit too expensive, so we passed on that.

Steve the fireman had told us about an amazing place quite nearby, the Basilica Cistern. Now, this has nothing to do with the cistern on your toilet, it is a large underground room built as a reservoir for water for the city, many moons ago. Being a firefighter, we wanted to see whether it was as impressive as he made it out to be.
We bought our tickets, and descended down the stairs into a dark gloomy room, that as our eyes adjusted we could see stretch for quite a long way. There were over 100 marble columns holding up the roof, with a raised walkway going through the room, over a very very large area of water. Yep, it could definitely hold enough water for a large population. Apparently in the past there had been a large aqueduct system from north of the city that funneled the water in. Now, I don’t believe it’s still used for its original purpose, only as an amazing tourist spot and home for some of the biggest carp that I’ve ever seen. We were concerned for a while there that the fish would eat us.
One point of note in the architecture of the room is two Gorgon (sisters of Medusa) head stones, that had been shipped from Greece during the construction, and were placed at the base of 2 columns in the north-west corner. The Gorgon head was a superstitious symbol supposed to ward off bad ju-ju in households. Well, since this room was still standing, I guessed that they worked.

After the Basilica Cistern, we wandered over to one of the large buildings in the nearby square that I referred to in my Day 1 of Istanbul, but I don’t believe I named. It was the Hagia Sofia, an ancient Christian church, then mosque, now museum, that is being restored to its former glory. We chose not to go in, because it was 20 Lira for the admission, and we had other things we planned to do that were going to cost us a lot of money that day. From the outside, though, it was a very nice looking building.
We walked onwards to the Grand Palace, which we entered through a large gate manned by 2 men wielding large automatic rifles. Don’t do anything naughty here, they seemed to say. Righty-o!
Through the outer walls of the Grand Palace were massive gardens, which looked out over the Bosphorus bay. Many people were resting in the gardens, there were plenty of people hawking odds-and-ends, and Doolittle succumbed, buying a small top off one of the vendors. She was unable to make it work as well as he did, but of course, he probably spent many years practicing as a child, just so he could become a top vendor. We approached the main gate, and saw that the admission price here was also 20 Lira. The palace was supposed to be a fantastic spot to visit, but it would take about 4 hours to make your way around. It was now approaching 2pm, we hadn’t had lunch yet, and I wanted to go to the Grand Bazaar once more to pick up another couple of fine cotton shirts. Doolittle and Lapzang said that they weren’t going to check out the palace (even though they did want to), because they wanted to have a Turkish bath. We chose to go and have lunch, and I decided to pull the pin on the palace as well. Not literally of course – that sort of thing over here wouldn’t go down too well.

We wandered back up to the Grand Bazaar, and wandered around and around through the rabbit warren trying to find my shirt-guy again. I finally found him, and purchased another 3 shirts for 40 Lira. In the hot weather, these shirts were definitely going to come in handy.

By now it was approaching 5pm (since we’d gone on a very long wander in the Bazaar), and headed back to the hostel. Doolittle and Lapzang wanted to use the internet to check e-mails and such, but we found that the power was out in our area of Sultanahmet. We decided to pay a visit to the Blue Mosque, one of the hubs of the Moslem religion, to see what all the fuss was about. There were signs up for visitors to wear trousers (men) and women to wear head coverings and long sleeves and pants. We also had to take our shoes off (which, with sandals being worn constantly for 3 weeks, I’m sure you can understand that they might be a bit on the nose).
Inside the Blue Mosque is was pretty amazing – a very large space, several domes with patterns, and an atmosphere that I don’t think I can truly put into words. Profound is probably the best word.
As we walked out of the Blue Mosque, they had an electronic sign board that showed the times of prayers for the day, and in other locations as well around the world. They also had the prayer written on the board cycling through different languages that would be sung at the next 4 hour interval. They were very nice prayers, and made me interested to find out what the Koran actually contained; whether there were doom and gloom bits like the Bible, or whether it was more of a better way to live your life.

We wandered up to the local store man and bought a couple of cans of beer to take up to the terrace, still cool from when the power had gone out. We had visited this fellow a number of times over the last couple of days, and he had a very interesting habit of giving out little lollies or bits of chewing gun to everybody that bought something off him. At one point when just Lapzang and I had gone down to get some drinks off him, he asked us if we were drinking with the girls (I assume me meant the English girls, or the German girls, from our hostel). We replied yes, and he gave us an extra handful of lollies. “Works good with the girls” he said with a cheeky grin. For all that, though, he was a very nice and helpful man. As I suppose are all the men who walk around in trenchcoats with only ‘lollies’ underneath.

While up on the balcony, we chatted with Catherine, one of the English girls, who told us that Suzanne was feeling quite a bit better than the previous night, but would probably still need to recover a little bit more before traveling onwards.
Lapzang, Doolittle and I decided not to head to the Turkish baths here, because we found out that at our final stop they had baths that were much cheaper than the touristy ones in Istanbul.
Lapzang and I had given our laundry to the local laundry lady earlier in the day, so we chose this time to go and retrieve it – ah, it would be good to have completely clean clothes again! Not that I was wearing dirties – but a real wash is better than a rinse in the shower.
Catherine was downstairs on the computer, looking at things for her trip onwards, and I stopped to chat with her as Lapzang headed upstairs. I asked her if she would like to join us for dinner, though (after prefacing this next bit with an “I feel like a prick for saying this, but…”) I told her that we were concerned about catching what Suzanne had, both for our own health sake, and for what it would do to our travel plans in Turkey and onwards if we did get the swine. I’m not quite sure how she took it, but I did reiterate that I felt horrible for saying it.
She did end up coming out to dinner with us, though, and we had a very tasty dinner – I ordered some sort of lamb shish-kebab that was wrapped in pita bread and sliced into tidy bits, almost like mini sausage rolls. We shared a nice bottle of wine, and told stories about some of the things that we’d all gotten up to while being drunk. Sealed lips let no secrets spill, so none of those stories shall be shared here.
On our way back we saw a patisserie right next to the restaurant, and since Catherine hadn’t had any before, we introduced her to the evil ways of sweet sweet Turkish deserts.

After dinner, we headed back to the hostel and the terrace, armed with a few more beers and a bottle of Sprite for the last of our vodka. Catherine went to give Suzanne a loaf of bread that she had picked up for her dinner, but we had been unable to find any butter for it. Lapzang had made friends with one of the guys who worked there, so knew the location of the key for the kitchen on the terrace, where our breakfast was served from. I persuaded him to open the door, and I did a quick SGR (smash-grab-run) and retrieved a few butters from the fridge. I made it out of the kitchen and locked the door, walked out onto the terrace to tell Lapzang that it was all good, and as I was just about to head down the stairs to take the butters to Suzanne, one of the guys that worked in the hostel was coming up. PHEW! Close call! If he’d been 30 seconds earlier, I would have been BUSTED!!!
I took the butter down to Suzanne, checking to make sure that she was feeling better, and both her and Catherine agreed that they’d be up for drinks in a little while.

Up on the terrace we met a few new people, Irena the German, and Marc the English/New Zealander (who joined us later in the evening). About 8pm, Adin, the night watchman for the front counter, came up onto the terrace and said hello. He was a very friendly fellow, and had been the one that helped Catherine and I organize some extra time for them to stay in the hostel. When he saw the vodka on the table, his eyes lit up, and he asked if he could have some to “make strong for long night shift.” I laughed and poured started pouring the vodka into a glass, then added the Sprite, to which he said “no no, too much.” There wasn’t much Sprite in the glass at all. I picked it up and offered it to him, and then realized that he meant there was too vodka – he didn’t want to be THAT strong for his night shift. Armed with the new vodka I poured, he put it down in about 2 seconds flat. We were all agog, until he smiled and said “Right, work now.”
We were also joined by Steve and his family a bit later in the evening, and then Suzanne and Catherine, and we all had a good chat and catch up.
Once again, the Aussies were the last ones up, well, Marc was there too, and we probably headed off to bed about 2pm – far too late for an early start the next day. Hehe.