Istanbul = San Francisco + lots of Mosques + 18 Million People + 30 F
It is a beautiful place, in spite of the 18 million people. It is clean and well run: there is order in the chaos. The first thing on the agenda was to walk to TOPKOPI palace. (I love this hotel, you can just walk everywhere). Remember the old heist movie, Topkopi? It was the palace for the Ottoman empire for 500 years… the longest running empire in the history of human kind. It is beautiful, huge and comes with the necessary gardens, king’s trappings, a Heram and lots of beautiful carpets, mosaics and art work. Among the collection are the 5th biggest diamond and the famous dragger (movie was all about stealing the dragger). It also has the weapon’s collection etc. But the most intriguing thing for me was : 1) Moses staff 2) Abraham’s turban 3) Joseph’s turban and few more things that I am already forgetting: that is why I do this blog. You are reading this right, they claim they are real and the Romans got them from Jerusalem in ancient times. There are also relics from Mecca (just to keep things in balance).
Maybe a very short history lesson is in order: Turkey has been the crossroads of the “silk road”, the “spice road”, and of civilizations starting from prehistoric times to Romans, Greeks, Christians’ and Muslims. It was the seat of Roman Empire until it fell apart. (I do not want to bore you but you get the idea) . So, even though it appears to be a Muslim country now, it has many valuable historic physical and ideological relics from Roman/Christian and even Egyptian times. Walking around in Istanbul is like peeling the layers and complexity of human behavior.
After Topkopi, we walked to the Blue Mosque (across the street and over) and it is really blue inside... blue tiles all over. It is huge and beautiful and is an active Mosque. The nice thing about Mosques is that they are empty space with Mihrab (prayer helper) pointing in the direction of Mecca. This place is 500 years old but everything is shining like new.
The boat ride in Golden Horn and Bosphorus (bodies of water around Istanbul) was beautiful. One side of this ocean is in Europe and other is in Asia (literally East /west combination) . Beautiful homes, restaurants, parks and all essential Mosques. Also a castle. If you look at the map, you may realize how important this body of water is. This is the only way Russia and others trade with the outside world ( if they are shipping oil for example..I had not realized that). In old times too, Turkey essentially controlled the “silk and Spice routes”, now it controls the flow of oil.
Back on land, we saw another Mosque….Sultanate Mosque, smaller, quieter but pretty in it’s own way. Had dinner in the cafeteria, BTW, we have yet to find any food here that we did not enjoy.
This sums up the day, will write tomorrow …….Insha’Allah ( God willing)
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| Blue Mosque |
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| Blue Mosque from Inside |
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| Suleiman Mosque |
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| Bosphorus Tour |
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