East meets West

Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Istanbul, Turkey
Our train entered Istanbul at 10am on Friday for the final city of our Eastern Europe adventure. I was surprisingly fit and sober considering the 22 hours spent on the train with the odd bottle or two of rum and the scant few hours of sleep I'd managed to fit in between being woken up for border controls. However, anyone not fully awake would soon be after a 15 minute uphill trek with laden backpacks to reach our hotel.

With a population somewhere between 14 and 17 million, Istanbul is the biggest city in Europe and one of the biggest in the world. It straddles both Europe and Asia, both physically and culturally, separated by the Bosphorus. Formerly known as Constantinople, the city was the eastern outpost of the Roman Empire for nearly one thousand years. It was conquered by the Ottomans in the 15th century, renamed Istanbul, and became the nerve centre of the expanding Ottoman Empire until their defeat in WWI. The Republic of Turkey was born in 1923 and the capital of the country moved to Ankara.

We were staying at the Sipahi Otel; it looked very nice in the lobby but it was basically a hostel, with various parts of the bathroom seeming to have been plumbed in odd parts of the room (or sharing outside facilities if you were unlucky) and finished by a blind plasterer. I had a sink in the bedroom, with the water draining through a pipe into a separate small room containing a shower, where it collected in a small pool of stagnant water; the outside toilet was shared but seemed to have issues with the plumbing because it smelled of poo quite a lot of the time. If you've ever seen the film Midnight Express which is set in a Turkish prison, well, the room reminded me a bit of that, but I suppose at least the sheets were clean and there wasn't anything scuttling around on the floor. However, the hostel was conveniently located in Sultanahmet, the Old City, where most of the main tourist sights were located and the staff were very pleasant. Unfortunately, I'd booked the 3 extra nights I had in Istanbul following the end of the tour in this hotel. Still, I probably wouldn't be spending too long in my room and it was cheap.

After freshening up, we headed off for lunch at a nearby kebab restaurant. Istanbul is full of kebab restaurants, it's a meat-lover's paradise. No rubbishy Eastern Europe specialties such as cabbage-this and cabbage-that or stodgy potato and lard concoctions, just good quality meat! We then had an orientation walk around the area, seeing the main sights from the outside, which was rounded off with a ferry trip across the Bosphorus at sunset and stunning views of the city skyline, with the minarets of the mosques silhouetted against the orange sky. However, a slight case of miscommunication and an over-zealous attendant meant some of our group ended up getting ushered off the ferry on the other side of the water whilst the rest of us (ie. the fare-dodgers) stayed on for the return trip without paying the return fare. Obviously, the Gypsy ways had rubbed off on some of us on our trip through Romania.

In the evening, with everyone reunited, we headed off what for most of us would be our final group meal at another kebab restaurant (which I can't remember the name of but would end up visiting on two more nights). Another mixed grill for me, the second of the day, it would be a good test of the plumbing in the hotel toilets the next day. Afterwards, a few of us stalwarts spent ages walking around the surrounding streets trying to find a place to smoke a shisha pipe. Strangely, we'd seen loads of such places on our orientation walk earlier that afternoon, but after a few too many sherbets, Mario had lost all sense of direction and it took us quite a while to find one. A nice relaxing shisha smoke (one of apple and one of strawberry) hit the spot surprisingly well, and we all remarked in the morning how quickly we had nodded off when our heads hit the pillow back in our rooms.

The next morning was goodbye for most of us, including Tour Leader Mario. A few stragglers would be carrying on another section of the tour onto Cairo, and I had another 3 days in Istanbul to do some sightseeing and shopping:

Topkapi Palace was the Sultan's private residence and the HQ of the Ottoman Empire for ~400 years from 1461. Elaborately decorated and containing many beautiful treasures, I was slightly underwhelmed by the buildings and rooms themselves. There was an extra fee to be paid to enter the Harem, the private quarters of the Sultan and his family. This was a palace within a palace, containing a few hundred rooms with its own mosques and baths, where the imperial wives and concubines were watched over by the queen mother. The best bit of the palace for me though was the Imperial Treasury, a series of rooms containing many stunning historical treasures, including the enormous Spoonmaker's Diamond, sacred relics of the Prophet Mohammed, and Moses' staff used to part the Red Sea (supposedly, or it may just have been a bit of gnarled wood).

Next I went to see the Basilica Cistern. Commissioned by Emperor Justinian in AD532 in response to a perpetual water shortage in the city, this is basically a massive water storage facility. The cistern comprised a forest of marble pillars supporting the huge arched roof. The different decorations on the pillars and the two Medusa heads on the bottom of two of the columns suggested that many of the pillars were removed from other sites and reused here. Water still dripped from the ceiling, wooden gangways criss-crossed the floor, fish still swam in the few inches of remaining water and spotlights at the foot of some pillars created fantastic photo opportunities (although my attempts at long exposure shots were somewhat hampered by a lack of a tripod). Well worth seeing.

Haghia Sophia (the Church of Divine Wisdom) was also commissioned by Emperor Justinian in AD532 and was the most important church in Christendom for nearly a thousand years. When Constantinople fell to the Turks in the 15th century, the church became a mosque, with minarets added. The walls and pillars are patterned and decorated with marble brought from all over the world. The massive dome stands proud without any visible supporting pillars and is an architectural marvel. There are some elaborate, gold mosaics remaining which were plastered over when converted to a mosque but have since been uncovered (there were originally over 4 acres of mosaics, a small blessing that they were merely plastered over rather than destroyed).

The Blue Mosque was built in the early 1660s, so called because of the cobalt blue tiles in the prayer hall. Inside, the giant dome rests on four massive pillars. It's still a working mosque, so you can't enter during the main prayer times. It's not particularly elaborate or ornate, but it was free to get in so worth seeing. Outside the mosque is the site of the former Hippodrome, a Roman amphitheatre which could hold up to 100,000 people used as a racecourse for charioteers. It was destroyed during the Crusades with the Ottomans plundering the ruins for the Blue Mosque. The racecourse contained some monuments in the middle, some of which still survive - a 16th century BC Egyptian Obelisk with hieroglyphs so sharply etched, it looks like a reproduction, the Serpent Column from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, and the 10th century Column of Constantine.

On Tuesday, it was all over for me too as I caught my early morning flight back to the UK. I liked Istanbul. The first thing that hits you is how friendly the people are - they generally say hello when you're walking past and are always willing to help you. Some of the sellers are a bit pushy but I suppose they're only trying to make a living, and some of them don't take no for an answer and try and hound you but again, I suppose they have to come up with ways round the continual succession of no's they get. One of the things you notice when walking around is that, for a Muslim country, you hardly see any women with a full veil or burkha, maybe just the odd woman with a headscarf, unlike the West where you see women fully covered everywhere - there's a Middle Eastern vibe to the country with a modern, Western edge. I also felt completely safe everywhere I went, even walking round my own on deserted streets. The food was excellent, although pricewise, on a par with home. It was a shame there wasn't anyone staying around to sample the nightlife with as I had read that the nightlife in certain areas of the city was supposed to be great. All in all, I'm sure I'll definitely be coming back for another visit at some time.

My thoughts on the trip as a whole (from Moscow to Istanbul)? My favourite places were Prague (the nightlife and culture) and Russia (the history and sights). I actually had an idea beforehand that many of the cities in Eastern Europe were becoming very "touristy" and that was borne out in parts. I suspect in the summer months, many of these places would be unbearably crowded; however, they would also be great, cheap places for a weekend break, chilling out in the main square with a few drinks people-watching. The history of many of the countries was fascinating and in some cases, particularly the post-WWII years, new to me (I'll be dusting off my DVD boxset of the World at War, which I only got halfway through when I originally bought it). And last but not least, I made some great friends and had some fantastic, fun nights out (although not enough late nights for me!).

Comments

lisajane
2010-11-22

Turkey is no doubt a country with rich history and lots of things to see. I travel back and forth from England to Turkey work related and unfortunately haven't had the time to enjoy it but I'm considering going there on a vacation so the info was very useful. I have only been to Istanbul so far and it's extremely interesting city. The only thing I don't like about it is how often I have problems with bookings. It's not a nice experience to be searching for a place in the middle of the night therefore now I always call to confirm my reservation. It might be pricey so I use a call service which provides cheap calls to Turkey Its fast, cheap and easy to use. And be careful for the 'nazar boncuk' or 'evil eye' :)
Lisa

Tony
2011-03-09

What a great article!! 10 points

2025-02-08

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