Turkey - Weekend in Istanbul August 2009

Sometimes you have to repair a 1500 year old building. The main dome being renovated.


We then made our way to Topkapi Palace that has a nice spot along the Bosphorus.


The grounds are quite nice. Here we see the stricter forms of Islam at play. Women in Istanbul run the gamut in how revealing they wear their clothing. Not sure if things have gotten worse these days.




The main chamber of the residence:


Back towards the front of the Blue Mosque was where the old hippodrome used to be located, you come across this obelisk. First you notice the hieroglyphics. You also notice this thing looks pretty damn new. It isn't. It is THREE THOUSAND YEARS OLD and was transported from Karnak up the Nile in he 300s AD to here.

This obelisk, along with another and the serpent's column, formed the spine of the hippodrome as the horses raced around them. Can't imagine how cool that must have looked.

Here you can see all three.

At the end of the day we headed off the peninsula to the Bosphorus bridge. Near the base of it on the European side there are a bunch of hookah bars, bars, cafes, etc. I was led to believe you could walk across to Asia..Nope. English isn't widely spoken so we were ushered on some ferry by a nice lady who thought she knew what we wanted. The ferry just kinda drives around the bridge area, which ended up being pretty cool as we enjoyed Ephesus beer. Back on land, I watched professional hookah smokers billow smoke like the animal headed guy from the 300 movie.



Getting that hookah action:




Drinking beer on the top deck of the boat:


I also recommend hitting the Turkish bath house. We ended up walking into one that was about 500 years old. How cool is that? Now, I didn't take photos in here because that would be creepy, but I'll use some stock photos and describe it.

As you walk in, you come into the foyer where you decide what kind of bath you want. Essentially there are separate male and women's areas with either a self service option or someone "bathing" you. In hindsight I should have done the latter but it sounded awkward.



You strip down to your skivvies. As we entered there was a wash room area where the baths occur. Here hairy Turkish men sat on the floor as the bathers scrubbed them down with big horse brushes, soap building all over the place. It looked kinda rough but also might feel nice at the same time.

As you pass through that area you come into the domed sauna area, which has little booth like areas around a central raised slab. Everything is marble and it is hot. Each booth has a faucet that pours cold water, which you use the metal pan they give you to collect and pour on yourself. This hot and cold mixture feels incredible.

This is what the room looks like:




After you are done, you exit and they wrap you up like a mummy.


My beautiful hookah:

Thanks.

Issue with linking Google Photos: The links are VERY LONG, which is limiting any narrative due to the character limit per post. I guess it is a positive making this not too long. I will probably just use these posts to move things around a little.

quote:

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IMGUR is awesome and they are known for never changing the URL to your pic.

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I usually use IMGUR but it is a real pain in the arse to curate what photos I'm going to use and upload them to IMGUR.

This was a lot easier to do to just go through where they all already are and link.

Ha ya, being top dog must have been kinda nice.

What brought you to Istanbul for three weeks? Work?