Istanbul Day 2

So it’s day #2 in Istanbul, and another great series of adventures.

Today Sarah and I, along with our hostel roommate Emily, got up early to go to the Blue Mosque first thing.  The sign we read last night said: “Ladies must wear long skirt and cover head”, but we were surprised by the number of women who did not cover their heads (we did, and the majority did, but not all) and we certainly were not all wearing skirts.  We arrived at the mosque, took our shoes off, and entered, and my reaction was to jerk to a stop right inside the entrance, holding my shoes, and say, “whoah”.  It’s really fantastically amazing on the inside, with huge domes, all colorfully painted, stained glass windows that let in a lot of light, and lights hanging down.

The carpet is really nice on your feet, and we sat down at the base of a column for a while to admire and rest.

Sarah taught us to recognize some of the Arabic script from the Quran that was written on the walls and explained how the musical notes you’re supposed to sing while reading the Quran are actually written in the script.  I talked to Emily and Sarah for a brief while about some of the architectural elements I had learned about in my class this semester – the huge minbar at the front to the side of the mihrab (both are places where the imam sits/stands to conduct prayer, but the minbar is raised on a high platform so that his voice can reach the far corners of the mosque and the faithful can see him), the dikkas (platforms spaced out through the mosque where some other guys pray, imitating the imam’s movements, so that those who can’t see the imam from where they are can see what they’re supposed to be doing), and the maqsura (the enclosure reserved for the sultan, very close to the mihrab or the minbar and closed off with lattices so that the sultan could pray on Fridays with the rest of his subjects without the rest of the faithful being aware of his presence).  It was really quite amazing.

We then went for a walk through the Grand Bazaar – it looked more like a shopping mall than a Middle Eastern bazaar – and through the Spice Bazaar – which was much more exciting, a bit smaller, a little more disorganized, and we enjoyed it because it had everything to do with food:

 Since we’ve been in Istanbul, shopkeepers all over the city have tried to lure us in with every imaginable catch phrase, usually saying: “Yes please?”  (To which we naturally respond “No, thank you”…  Once yesterday when this exact exchange occurred the man commented immediately afterwards, completely non-sequitur, “You all wear glasses” – why, thank you, storekeeper man, I wasn’t aware of that!)  Today in the bazaars we heard some new tries: “Hello, can I help you spend your money?”  (I liked that one – at least it was completely honest); “It’s my birthday – buy some Turkish delight!”; and “Hello, beautiful ladies!” (which we chose to ignore completely).  Between the bazaars - in the REAL market - we stopped to eat lunch at a kebab place, where I had the most delicious chicken kebab ever.

After our bazaar adventure, we took a ferry across the Bosphorus to the Asian side of Istanbul, where it was much quieter and much less touristy.  We bummed around a bit, found a nice park to sit in, found our way back to the coast and watched the sun set over the skyline of mosques from the rocks.

 We made our way back in another ferry and admired the city night lights all around us.  Upon docking we ate a delicious fresh fish sandwich on a bench covered in cardboard under a pedestrian bridge – the perfect setting for a street scene in My Fair Lady, according to Sarah – from the guys who fish all in a row all along one of the bridges across the Golden Horn (I would be surprised if their lines don’t constantly get tangled up…):

Istanbul is great.  Tomorrow (today, by the time I post this) we have a hammam (public bath) trip planned, along with the Galata Tower and wandering around the area that we’re staying in!