Turkey is so much better than I thought it was going to be!! I love it here!

Hi everyone!  I hope you are all doing well.  Here is an update for the last 6 days.  It will be long, so get ready…

 

Nothing exciting happened between ports.  I did get my roommate to watch Dr. Horrible with me and I think she enjoyed it.  The first day in port my plans got messed up a lot.  One of the trips I had planned with SAS changed its itinerary and we were no longer going to the Hagia Sophia mosque which meant I had to see it on my own.  So, I got up for the sunrise and that was gorgeous and it was even cooler that morning because as we got closer we were able to see the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the Topkapi Palace.  After seeing this, I went to bed since I did not have anything until 10 and that was on the ship.  I went to a discussion on virginity testing and hymen reconstruction which should have been really interesting, but was a complete waste of time.  They only told us things which we already knew and some people who were not in our class kept asking really stupid questions (yes, sometimes there are stupid questions).  Then I was supposed to meet up with Emily and Justin, but they were late back to the ship.  I waited a while for them, but decided I didn’t want to be on the ship anymore and got off the ship.  I walked out and started going down this one road.  After a few minutes, though I realized everyone on the street was a man and they were all staring at me, so I felt super uncomfortable and turned around and went back to the ship.  Eventually they showed up and we went out to see the Topkapi Palace.  The palace has been turned into a museum and is absolutely gorgeous.  There were some gems in there that were like 2 inches in diameter.  We also got to see a box where they keep the robes Muhammad wore and his sword and a bit of his beard.  In another room they had a stick in a display case which they claimed was Moses’ staff…Emily and I were not convinced.  There was, however a piece of the skull and the arm of John the Baptist.

 

We got back to the ship just in time to quickly change into nicer clothes in order to leave for a trip to a Whirling Dervish ceremony.  This is a spiritual dance to beautiful music.  It was very impressive.  I took a short video of it and took tons of pictures.  It was so gorgeous.  When we got back our tour guide told us that there was a fantastic baklava place around the corner and he would take us if we wanted to go.  Having just had Baklava for the first time in Greece, I was hooked and needed to go.  He kept telling us that this was the best Baklava you can find in Istanbul.  Justin and I decided to get one of each kind and then split each one and get some tea.  They were all delicious.  If anyone ever goes to Turkey, you need to go here!

 

The next day I went on a trip to see the palaces of Istanbul (other than the Topkapi Palace) which included going over to the Asiatic side of Istanbul.  They were pretty cool.  The first three were incredible, but the third wasn’t great.  We went to the Dolmabache Palace, the Beylerbeyi Palace, the Yildiz Palace, and the Aynali Kavak Palace.  The Dolmabache Palace was the most grand, but I think my favorite was the Yildiz Palace.  While we were there a documentary for the History channel about the fall of the Ottoman Empire was being shot, so there was hardly anyone there except for the cast and crew.  There were tons of lights everywhere though.  When we were leaving there was a group of actors in their costumes and one of the men came up to Dean Mike’s youngest girl and picked her up and asked her if she would be his princess.  Then there was some talk, and apparently they may actually want her at some point and it was pretty adorable.

 

That night Carly, Stephanie and I went out to Taksim Square to see the local night life.  We just walked around for a bit on the busy streets and eventually sat down for some tea and snacks.  We had something wrapped in an olive leaf which was phenomenal.  After Stephanie attempted to finish her Raki (very, very strong alcoholic drink) and failed, we continued on our exploring.  We were hoping to find some live music somewhere and did finally find a band playing outside of a bar.  We stood nearby listening for a bit and eventually sat down.  When we had been standing there was a man standing behind us (we assumed he was doing the same sort of thing we were) and when we sat he also sat.  After a little while the man moved closer.  The music was fantastic and they sang Perhaps (the intro to Coupling, the TV show) in Islamic, but the man started to make us nervous, but we figured it was still possible that it was all just a coincidence.  However, when we got our check, so did he and when we got up to leave he started banging on the table, trying to get the waiter to bring him his change faster.  We used this time to walk very quickly to the nearest taxi and jump in.  We’re not entirely sure what he would have even tried since there was a lot of people around and the police were everywhere, but we still wanted to get out.  We got back to the ship just fine and enjoyed a good sleep.

 

The next morning Maria, Carly and I went to the spice bazaar and the grand bazaar.  We learned by trial and error how to haggle.  Maria got a beautiful hand made rug from this one guy who brought us apple tea and sat us down in his shop and showed us tons of rugs.  When we decided we’d bought too much stuff, we walked back to the ship in order to eat lunch then went for a walk in the direction none of us had walked in yet.  There wasn’t much over there, so we sat in a park for a bit talking and eventually came back to the ship in order to shower, eat dinner and go back out to Taksim and meet up with a guy Carly had met at the bazaar who wanted to take us around.  There were three of us and one of him, so he took us to a hookah bar and while Stephanie and Carly smoked, he and I played backgammon (I beat him the first round…he let me win though) and Carly played checkers with him.  It was really relaxing.  I can’t remember where he was from originally…it wasn’t Turkey.  He lived in Istanbul because he was going to school here.  After hookah, we went to an ice cream place which was tons of fun.  The ice cream here is really thick and tastes a lot like mochi.  You can flip the cone upside down and it won’t fall out or drip at all.  By the end of the night we were getting a little annoyed by his getting annoyed with us, so we decided to leave early.  We got back in a taxi and came back to sleep.

 

Justin has a friend here in Turkey who owns three hotels and a rug store, so yesterday we went to get meet him.  We went to his hotel in the morning for breakfast and they served us a traditional Turkish meal.  It was called a Turkish omelet.  It was unlike any omelet in the states.  The consistency is more like tomato sauce.  It has egg, tomato, spices and cheese.  We also had some bread, honey, two kinds of cheese and a plate of cucumbers and tomatoes with spices.  Justin’s friend was very nice.  He goes by the name of Joy (not sure how he spells it).  Joy arranged a private car to take us to see the city.  The driver was someone who worked in his hotel and was very nice.  His name was Hakan (unsure of spelling here too).  He didn’t tell us where we were going, but Joy promised us we would enjoy it.  He brought us up a hill at the tip of the Golden Horn (a river) to see a beautiful view of Istanbul and drink some apple tea (have I said how delicious this is?  Because it is wonderful) and talked.  Then we got back in the car and headed down the hill to a glorious place called Miniaturk.  This is a place where they have put out tons of miniature versions of important places in Istanbul (and a few from abroad).  The Hagia Sophia mosque came up to around my shoulders.  When we were done with this Hakan was waiting to take us back to Joy’s hotel.  We had lunch there and Hakan showed us Joy’s other hotels and then we went off on our own to see the real Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.  Hagia Sophia was a bit disappointing.  It was incredible, but there was tons of scaffolding on the inside.  They’re working on taking down all of the plaster which for many years has been covering the original mosaics.  It was neat seeing them, but I wish the scaffolding hadn’t been taking up most of the floor.  The Blue Mosque was much more what I had been expecting.  It was beautiful.  We sat on the floor near one of the pillars for a while just looking around.  Eventually we took the tram back to the ship in order to change.  That night Joy took the three of us and three life long learners from the ship out to dinner on the roof of a restaurant.  We ate some delicious food as we watched the sun set over the city.  We had some appetizers and we all let Joy order for us.  My favorite appetizer was eggplant salad with yogurt.  For an entre I had a beef kebob and Emily got lamb on top of the same eggplant salad and yogurt.  I ate quite a bit of hers since she wasn’t feeling well.  Desert was some sort of cheese and bread thing that was fried and with honey (I think).  Apparently you can only get this in a few places in all of Istanbul and this place is ranked one of the best.  It was a grand evening and if Joy ever comes to Vermont I am to take him out to dinner someplace.  We decided to make it an early evening though and came back to the ship to watch the Life Aquatic and go to sleep.

 

This morning I woke up early and went on a SAS trip to see some more mosques and a museum.  We got to see the Blue Mosque again and the Eyup Mosque.  There isn’t really anything exciting to say about that.  It was fun, and really cool, but not much to write about.  When I got back at 1 I ate a quick lunch and Emily and I headed out in search of a Turkish bath house.  Eventually we found one near the Grand Bazaar.  It was incredible.  We went into a big room with lots of people and lied down on this warm stone in a very warm, wet room.  After lying down for a bit, a woman came over and scrubbed us down with some soap that smelled incredible.  Then we were each brought over to a sink where they sat us down and washed our hair.  Afterwards was my favorite part of the entire experience.  I went into the jacuzzi (which was really just a warm bath) where there was tons of young girls swimming around.  As soon as I got in they swarmed around me and asked me where I was from and what my name was.  We were laughing and playing in the water.  The smallest one of the group reached out her hand and I took it and she jumped up on my back and I gave her a piggy back ride around the pool.  Then a few others wanted the same.  They kissed me on my cheeks and told me I was beautiful and we laughed.  Eventually I had to go, though and try to find Emily (who had been separated from the beginning).  I found her outside and we went up and changed.  Since we were near the bazaar we decided to go back in for some last minute haggling.  We each ended up getting a beautiful lamp for a very reasonable price (mine was 20TL).  However, when we tried to get back we took a wrong turn and got very lost.  We had to be back on the ship before 6, otherwise we’d get time taken away from our next port.  After a long time of searching we finally decided to get a cab.  We were able to get to the port with only 30 minutes (a bit too close).

 

Tonight I will go to bed early so I can write a paper tomorrow and eventually have a rehearsal for Vagina Monologues.  I’ll try to post pictures soon.  Maybe tonight, but I am getting very tired.  I hope you all have a great evening!

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!