Istanbul not Constantinople

The first time I met Hakan, a lovely Turkish man living in Melbourne, I talked about my journey to Istanbul and this song flew into my head and out of my mouth. A month later, sitting on a cushion in a little turkish cafe I heard this song playing and thought of that lovely day in Melbourne. So, I dedicate this blog to all the lovely Turkish people I have met, and this absolutely funky video.

It was one of the 7 days in the week that I arrived to Istanbul (as you can see, names of the days of the week are often lost when traveling...Although, they tend to come in handy when catching a plane). All I can remember about the flight was how horrible it was. Flying Spanair was like being in a hot cramped cupboard that is full of various items, one being a vacuum cleaner that somehow manage to constrict around your waist and hold you to the innards of the cramped stuffy cupboard. However, in reality it wasn't a cupboard. It was just a crappy, old, stuffy plane with broken air-conditioning knobs. On the plus side, we had Werther's Original.
Once we arrived into Istanbul airport, it was still an hour's drive to our apartment/hotel but boy oh boy was the drive beautiful. We were seated in a big van equipped with a carpet on the ground, so comfort was not an issue and the scenery was stunning. The architectural value was something of great contrast to Barcelona. Not one street looked the same. The jiggerd-jaggered shapes created by the houses seemed something of a messy brilliance.

Time flew and we arrived at the apartment/hotel type place where we were to be sleeping for the next few nights. There, we were aquatinted with Katherine, Charlie, Tom and Katie (Alice's very close family friends from when she lived in England). We settled in then headed out to explore a bit of the area in which we were staying. After not too long of searching for a Turkish cafe, we  stumbled into what we discovered later to be an Indian Turkish cafe. It was here that I tried my first Turkish coffee. It was interesting and I wasn't sure if I liked it or not (I tried it several times in my journey before deciding against it due to the grainy brown aftermath left sitting on my pearly whites. Apparently not the most attractive sight).
That night we drank gin and tonics, went out for dinner, ate kebabs, saw the blue mosque lit up and finally, went to bed...after watching a bit of the boat that rocked.

Sleep-ins are nice.
On this day, after the nice sleep in, we headed off into the depths of Istanbul with the first stop being the Topkapi Palace, which, according to Wikipedia 'was the official and primary residence in the city of the Ottoman Saltans for approximately 400 years (1465-1856) of their 624-year reign.' 

This is one of those moments where I am sitting at my computer and feeling completely blank on what to say. Basically, all I can think of to say is that the palace was pretty stupendous. But that doesn't nearly cover it. So, I'm going to use pictures (once again) to explain myself. 

Although pictures do an amazing job in explaining, I so want to write to you about one of the rooms. one reason being that it has some amazing stories and secondly, you weren't aloud to take photos... (but thanks to google i can swipe some off the internet!)

We lined up and went into a room that held some of the Sultan's greatest treasures. Emeralds, ruby's and diamonds were constantly seen in these treasures. However, there was one item dubbed the 'Spoon-maker's Diamond' which was my favourite due to the story behind it. According to Legend, a poor fisherman in Istanbul was wandering idly and empty-handed along the shore when he found a shiny stone among the litter and had no clue to what it could be. After carrying it about in his pocket for a few days, he stopped by the jewelers' market, showing it to the first jeweler he met. The jeweler took a look at the stone and appeared disinterested, saying "It's a piece of glass, take it away or if you like I'll give you three spoons for it. The poor fishermen really had no use for a piece of glass and took the deal. Later, the diamond was bought by a vizier on behalf of the Sultan.

Although there were riches of many sorts in that room, the architecture and use of tiles were a richness in their own. Although the tiles were similar in some respect to the tiles I had seen in the mosque in Abu Dhabi, these turkish tiles were certainly in a class of their own. I had to take many many pictures because I constantly stumbled upon tiles that I considered gorgeously patterned. 

We continued further after deciding against the expensive restaurant with the beautiful view located inside the palace walls. Alice, Izzy, Kate and I separated from the ‘crew’ and walked until we reached a gorgeous little shisha bar that stretched up a hilly, thin lane. The shisha bar was perfect as small Turkish, stall/shops, an art gallery and amazing street art, surrounded it. Not to mention, just on the corner was a kebab café where our shisha man popped around to get us lunch. After our delicious kebab we all treated ourselves to Turkish coffee, Turkish apple tea, and an apple shisha (this was the point where I decided against Turkish coffee due to the grainy, brown aftermath). 

After our late lunch, we headed back to meet the crew for we had planned earlier that day to head to the Asia side of Turkey, or, as Alice constantly called it, ‘China’. However, after we had paid for our ticket for the tram (which looked like the fake money you used to play with when you were about 3) we discovered that we did not reach Asia and that we were in fact, still in Europe. Nevertheless once we had conquered the massive hill up to Taksim we were indulged in the beautiful view of the harbour and the vivaciousness of the packed street. According to the signs, the Istanbul shopping festival was on.
After walking in and out of restaurants in a little laneway, we grabbed a beer (or tea) in a pub/restaurant before finally finding the perfect dinner spot.

The next day came with plans of going to the famous bazaar undercover market (apparently the biggest in the world). High hopes were blatantly crushed as it became obvious that the bazaar was way overpriced, crowded with tourists and the shopkeepers were rude. We did find one nice shopkeeper who was from Cappadocia. He sold us some traditional Turkish tea sets.
Our disappointment with the bazaar did not engulf us and Alice, Izzy, Kate and I set off for the not so Asian side of Turkey that we had visited the night before. There, we found Turkish stalls on either side of the laneway and even an old Turkish Antique shop where I couldn’t stop myself from buying magnets.

The day continued with a visit to the blue mosque and commenced with a nice warm bed…right after a night visit to the shisha bar.

Our last day in Turkey was as full as any other day for we had to be out of the apartment/hotel at 10am and our night train to Ankara wasn’t until 10pm! Filling in the day wasn’t difficult at all. We walked in several shops (one reminding me very much of home and Castlemaine, probably due to the appearance of felt), went on a boat ride, visited a spice market, walked along a bridge whilst the sun was sitting, had dinner and finally boarded our night train. It was a lovely night as we all sat in a single carriage before bed, eating Turkish delight and drinking gin and tonics. 

A special mention in this blog goes out to family of a man whom we happened to walk by on a busy street in Istanbul. The man had died on the footpath and we happened to be walking by and saw his white lifeless body on the footpath and another man lay crouched over him crying as people around flocked and stared. It was yet again another reminder that the only thing certain in life is death. Every moment counts and you must do everything in your power to live it.