A view of the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia.

The 2nd time is a lot more fun.
Day 23

Hello Istanbul (it's a dead city at 0200), Our taxi driver was a civil engineering teacher and tried really hard to get us into a hotel. Anyway, we're here now and at it's time for bed. The Pamphylia Hotel is actually pretty good. We are in walking distance of must of the sites. The first things we saw were the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia. They don't look particularly spectacular from the outside but inside are impressive in size and artwork (marble, stained glass, tile work).

All through the Egypt and Jordan, we had seen these drink vendors with their large jugs strapped over their shoulders and had wanted to get a picture of one. Outside the Blue Mosque, after unsuccessfully trying to sell us a glass of juice, one of the juice guys asked it we wanted to take a picture of him. We agreed whereupon he promptly poured each of us a cup of juice and charged us money for the picture too. Oh well.

We had been harassed all day by rug merchants but finally met a rug wholesaler who was escorting some of his American distributors around. He sources rugs from several villages around Aksaray. Of course we were still somewhat cautious but agreed to return to his office to learn about rugs. His office was completely unmarked from the outside but contained several hundred carpets inside. He explained about dying with natural vs. chemical dyes, hand spun vs. machine spun wool and showed us 20-30 rugs. Of course there was a sales pitch but overall all I thought we look at good quality merchandise and bout a nice rug. As mentioned earlier, both of us were mistrustful at first but the shop wasn't marked, sat off the main shopping streets, he taught us about rugs, had 2 other rug buyers there and had large inventory which led us to trust him more. I also took a look though his list of previous buyers and that lent credibility to him too. A couple of postpurchase beers felt really good

Day 24 (4 July)

Istanbul is better than I ever expected. The area around the Blue Mosque is tree lined with nice parks. I had expected Istanbul to be crowded, dirty, and chaotic. This is much different than my last Turkey experience - Southern Kurdistan. The phone system is also good. For 600,000 TL or $4 I got to talk to the states for approximately 4 minutes. Steven said it sounded like we were next door and the phones were very easy to use with instructions in 5 languages.

I'm glad I came on this trip. it has been a great adventure but it's also broken down a lot of my misconceptions about the Middle East and Islam. I have a much better respect and understanding now. We also expected a lot of trials and tribulations and the tribulations have certainly exceeded the trial by a longshot while the trials have been mostly minor annoyances.

The Tokapi Palace is the old imperial palace. Unlike Versailles or other European palaces, this was fairly understated, both inside and out, Once we saw the treasury however, the jewels and porcelain very nice, rivaling anything I have seen in Europe. From the place, we walked up to the Grand Bazaar which is immense. There are hundreds of shops all going for the hard sell. Of course you have to try a Turkish bath. We got undressed then proceeded downstairs with out towels around our waist. We weren't quite sure what to do so we sat around in the steamroom until people would come in, give us commands, then leave us. When you're only wearing a loincloth and a big burly Turkish man tells you to do something, you do it. The massage great and quite relaxing. I was totally loose. Just sitting in the steamroom sweating and looking up at the dome was pleasant. We finished this day off afterwards by sitting in an outdoor bar drinking beer to Irish music by Loreena McKennitt.

The exchange rate is 150,000 TL = $1US so they have 1,000,000 TL bills and you get used to paying this many million or that many million for various things. We just found it to be funny when we started to get comfortable with the numbers.

Day 25

I finally got to talk with Susana. She had just received the post card I sent from Egypt (13 days). I wanted to let her know that I was OK and not to worry but now I'm worried about her. The hotel room is fairly warm and noisy. Then again, after some discussions with other people, it seems that Istanbul is pretty noisy all over. Dan is having a hard time sleeping. I'm catching up on all of my sleep.

Today we went across the Galatia Bridge to the Beyoglu District of Istanbul. First, we stopped by the Mosque of Suleyman. The riverside is a huge change from the other sections we've seen. This is more chaotic and crowded with a great press of people. This is the Istanbul I expected. From the bridge, there is a great view of the city, ditto from the top of the Galatia Tower. Its neat to see all the mosques and minarets rising from the red tiled roofs. Walking to Taksim Square from the river, you enter another more upscale section of the city. This is a shopping district that would be at home in any other European country. Coming back from Beyoglu, I stopped by the Spice Bazaar. The smell of spices and different product mix give it a distinctively different feel than the Grand Bazaar. Outside flowers and animals are sold.

Now I know where the word byzantine" comes from. When I left the Spice Bazaar, I wasn't totally sure of where I was so I just followed the crowd. There was wall to wall shopping until I got to the Grand Bazaar. All the way back, I never knew where I was but I always knew where I needed to go . I thought this was kind of neat given the closed-in twisty streets where I never really could see any landmarks.

While we were in Istanbul, there was a huge fire at one of their munitions plants and the resulting explosions destroyed the place. At the same time, Mars Explorer was landing on Mars. For some reason, Turkish TV had a spot where they were alternating pictures of the Mars landing with the munitions plant blowing up. It was funny to see the dichotomy of the US landing on other planets, Turkey blowing up. It put things in perspective.

Dan wanted to go clubbing so we started with dinner at Hacibaba which was a good value then hit a couple of bars around Taksim Square while we waited for 2400 or so. The first bar we tried was a heavy metal bar complete with earblowing music and long haired headbangers. If was funny to see this different side of Istanbul. We hired a cab to take us to Andromeda, which Dan had heard bout in his tour book. The cab drove us all over the city it vain search for the club. We finally settled on the club strip where the "pretty people" hang out. It was neat to see this (club) side where the rich up and coming go and fun to be at club drinking beer while looking over the Bosporus at Asia.

Day 26

Turkish and Islamic Art Museum. had a nice section on the making of rugs and carpets. We had to have lunch at Doy-Doy which is advertised as "cheap and tasty" in honor of Sandra Doi. See, even then we were thinking of you. Wandering through the cisterns really cool and really cool. The place is huge with music floating through the air and fish in the water. Everyday (1600) they have concerts in the cistern - so here I am working on my journal by candlelight with my coke listening to traditional Turkish music. They had Sufi dancers too but the ones in Egypt were better. As usual, a lot of the tourists were really annoying, talking and getting in the way to take pictures.

Turkish bus hell. Everything seemed really organized until we showed up at the bus depot(what happened). Buying tickets was a snap, we got picked up at the booking office, had our hands held until we got to station, then were dropped off amidst a sea of buses. The 12 hour ride was long, alternating hot and AC. We rode all the way in the back and were fina$

Day 27

After the aforementioned bus ride, we checked in to our hotel, showered, and washed up which felt really refreshing. We started the day off with the Ephasus Museum then found that Ravi Shankar (a premier sitar player) was playing in the Ephasus forum - imagine that. Ephasus was not bad compared to Jeresh, both had their strong and weak points. On way back, hooked up with couple that is doing our trip in reverse so we sat down for lunch and beers to swap stories and compare notes. Left for concert with our bottle of wine and cheese only to find that the concert was canceled. Bummer. So we hung out in garden for wine and cheese and chat.

We're almost done with our vacation because tomorrow we go to Greece