2010 - Turkey - Day 3 - Istanbul, Turkey

Today was a busy day. We met at 8:00 am. to see the Blue Mosque. It is the most famous mosque in Istanbul. It was big and beautiful. Afterwards, we went to the Topkapi Palace, where the sultans lived and ran the government for hundreds of years. Now it is a big museum. It has many courtyards and gates and buildings. The first area had the headquarters, or the “Whitehouse of the sultans”. The second area past the felicity gate was the throne room and the costumes of the sultans for the past 500 years, and the treasury. There was a cool Turkish dagger and an 86 karat diamond with 45 smaller diamonds surrounding it, which was used to decorate the sultan’s turban. The story behind the diamond is interesting. A man found it, thought it was just a pretty but useless rock, and traded it to a spoon maker for some wooden spoons. The spoon maker sold it to the jeweler for 10 pieces of silver. We then came back to the hotel for a short break and left again to go to Sophia’s Mosque. It was built in 500 AD by the Christians with beautiful mosaics. When the Muslims took over 700 years later, they whitewashed, or put plaster over all the Christian mosaics. In 1935 it was turned into a museum, and they took all the plaster off the mosaics. So they were still in good condition. It was the largest mosque or cathedral in the world for 1100 years, until the Cathedral in St. Peter’s square was built in the 1600’s. I liked it much better than the blue mosque. It was beautiful. There was a library and a partitioned off room where the sultan would go to read. We then went to the underground cistern. It was really dark, and supported by several columns. There are fish in the water now, and a little restaurant that will serve you fish. We then went to a couple bazaars. The first was a spice bazaar, selling mostly spices, nuts, and Turkish delight. I made a big mistake on the way out to our bus after leaving the market. I got stopped by some vendors selling knockoff expensive perfume. I am out of perfume, so I thought I would go ahead and get one. He ended up charging me more then our agreed price, when he saw I had more money, the price doubled. So I was a bit upset over that, when another guy told me he would give me 5 for $20 (which is what I spent for the ONE bottle). I said ok, 5 for the price I bought one bottle for, not bad. After I gave him the $20, he said I needed to give him another $10. I said no, and never mind about the whole sale, but he wouldn’t give me my money back. Instead he took 2 bottles out of my bag. I’ve been mad all night about both of those dishonest men, but I’ve learned my lesson now regarding the vendors here. The next bazaar had about 4,000 shops and was a maze! All I bought were some nice bookmarks for me and my kids for $2.50. I’m happy with that purchase. Mom bought a couple nice ceramic bowls. Our evening was spent at a restaurant, featuring traditional Turkish food and entertainment. They served us a strange appetizer plate with random weird stuff. Next was a salad and an eggroll and fried potatoes. The dinner was chicken and rice and veggies, but the chicken was different, it was a thigh that was pounded flat, bones, skin and all. During the most of the dinner, there was a musician and singer. To me, it sounded similar to the call to prayers that come from all the many minarets all over the city 5 times a day. There was then some dancing. They had a few whirling dervishes which was cool. The other dancing was slow and boring. Next were 2 belly dancers. The first part of the dancing was nice. But then they would go around to the men trying to get money, and being very suggestive and dancing on tables, and I felt like I was in a strip club. It was almost 11 pm, and our group was pretty tired from our long day, so we left early.