5 June

5 June

As expected we had kabob for supper last night.  Roger's lamb was good, my beef was tough but it's flavor made up for the extra chews.  The oven warmed pita bread was good.  What made the meal out of the ordinary was we were eating on the roof of the building and a little after 5, the call to prayer occured over loud speakers.  This lasted about 10 minutes.  I did some reading last night on the 5 Muslim daily prayer calls and I was left wondering how such a devote population can also commit such criminal acts.  Turkey is currently having government pains with clashes between secular and non-secular groups.  Only time will tell how the resurgence in religion will effect the world's largest Muslim population and government.  The population of Istanbul on the two European sides is 9 million and on the Asian side it's 7 million.  All the tourist sightseeing is in Old Istanbul where we're staying.  Newer European Istanbul is a European Shipping and commerce hub, lad Asian Istanbul is old family Asian shipping with a lot of immigrating Muslins from areas of Middle Eastern conflict in search of jobs, religious stability.

This morning I was awakened by the first prayer call of the day, a little before sunrise at 5:30 am.  Breakfast wasn't served until 7:30, so I tossed and turned for a while.  There was no bacon served with breakfast, as we've seen in Italy and Greece.  Through the front desk, we had signed up for an all day tour of Istanbul.  We were naive in our knowledge of the old city, and it ended up being an all day walking tour.  Roger and I found out that we don't particularly care for being on our feet for close to 6 hours, much less standing in line for admission to the various sites.  Call me spoiled.  What made it even more ironic eas that we were picked up by a bus and ended up being driven to the main office, which was,only 3 blocks from our hotel.  

We left the main office with our guide, who was female and I never caught her name.   Her English and knowledge were excellent, but the tour was a complete information/education bust, because there is so much noise assaulting you from all directions that we could only catch about every 10th word said by our guide.  Our first stop was the Hippodrome, which is a large oval open space area dating back to the Roman Empire.  The park was laid out by Emperor Septimius Serverus in 203 AD and enlarged by Constantine in the 4th century.  The Romans really enjoyed their chariot racing and oddly over time the Blue and Green team evolved into political factions that was the downfall of Emperor Justinian in 532 AD.  There are two obelisks in the square.  The Egyptian hieroglyphics are so sharply etched it looks like a reproduction, although it was put in place around 390 AD.  It was originally erected in Luxor Egypt at the temple of Karnak around 1490 BC.  There second obelisk is taller, and made of stone blocks and put in place in the 10th century.  Both suffered damage during the various Crusades. 

Our second stop was the Blue Mosque, Sultanahmet Camii, which was built in only 7 years, 1609-1616.  Sultan Ahmet was so determined to build the mosque that he insisted on digging the foundation himself.  The mosque quickly became Istanbul's center of religious activities and on every Friday there was a royal procession from the Sultan's palace to the mosque.  We had to remove our shoes before going into the mosque and women were required to put on a blue head scarf (even though my book said that I only had to have on long sleeves and head covering (in other words my sun hat wasn't adequate.)  There is no entry fee into the mosque, however donations are solicited at the exit when you turn in your head scarf.   Interesting obscure facts about the mosques:  women and men don't pray in the same section of the mosque, women have to stay behind a partition.  Both men and women are expected to absolve themselves with the washing of hands, feet and face before entering the mosque, but women have a separate area from the men to do their cleansing.  There are no facsimiles of God, Mohammed, or people in general inside the mosque, because Muslims don't have icons inside their place of worship.  The adornment of the interior is scripture from the Quran or geometric tile work, on the floors, ceiling and walls.

Next we headed over to the Hagia Sophia, Ayasofya Camii, which was a church constructed by Emperor Justinian in 532 AD and was finished in just 5 years.  For the longest time, the building was largest religious building in the world.  When Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, Sultan Mehmet II converted the church to a mosque.  In 1934 the building became a museum.

After the church/mosque/museum, we went to a traditional arts and handicraft school.  Of course everything was for sale: calligraphy, crewel, and ceramics.  We were then taken to a official ceramic shop that makes pottery in the Ottoman fashion which uses a combination of quartz and clay.  Nobody in our group bought anything, as the prices were high for each handcrafted item.  The demo was interesting, because the guy used a foot spun wheel.  We were told that only natural paints were used made out of mineral materials like lapis luzia for blue.

Next we had a traditional Turk lunch at a local restaurant:  small salad, tomato soup, saffron curry chicken with rice, and pistachio baklava.  Afterwards we had to walk off our lunch and strolled over to the Sultan's Palace, Topkapi Palace.  Istanbul has over 200 million visitors every year.  It felt like at least 100,000 people where at the palace, including several 1000 pushing Japanese.  (I don't understand the cultural necessity that Japanese have to shove their way around when they are sightseeing.  Orderly lines, and waiting in line aren't understood in Japan.  Even Roger gets pushed around by Japanese tourists.)  Roger and I had had our fill of crowds, so we skipped out on the tour's visit to the Grand Bazaar.  Especially since we had been there yesterday.

We're now trying to figure out how to see the Bosphorus Strait tomorrow.  We were frustrated by today's audio and have decided to skip using the same tour company.  Time for some on line research.  The other puzzling thing is the weather report.  One website says 40% chance of rain and the other doesn't even predict rain.  Today we carried our rain coats and didn't get wet, despite 60% chance of rain all day.  It did rain early this morning, but by 9 am I'd report it was sunny with scattered clouds.