Istanbul (not Constantinople)- Thursday, June 22

On Thursday, June 22, we finally made our first excursion into Istanbul. I don’t know if I have mentioned this already, but the ride down from Koc (be it to Sariyer or to Istanbul) is always a bit of an adventure. Istanbul and the surrounding area are rather hilly, almost mountainous, and of course, many of the streets were built before the advent of cars. This means that the streets are narrow and wind up and down hills like crazy. To complete the rollercoaster-like effect of traveling in and around Istanbul, the bus and taxi drivers have absolutely no fear, and some are downright crazy. They don’t like sitting in traffic, so oftentimes we found ourselves hurtling through a maze of side streets in order to move ahead of the throng. As a result of all of these factors, there was never a dull moment on the hour-long ride into Istanbul, and I always felt a bit ill by the time we reached the city.

When we arrived in Sultanahmet (a tourist area in the European side of Istanbul), we set up a time to meet for dinner, and we set off to take in the sites. Because we had class that morning, we only had a few hours to explore before dinner and before all of the museums and tourist attractions closed for the evening. After a brief visit to the Blue Mosque, which as you can see below is amazingly beautiful, I set off for the Topkapi Palace.
The Blue Mosque
The Ayasofia (originally an Orthodox Church, it was converted into a mosque during Ottoman rule)

The Topkapi Palace was the home of the Ottoman Sultans during (surprise, surprise) the Ottoman Empire. The palace has been transformed into a museum displaying not only the rooms of the palace, but also the jewels, treasures, and religious relics of Ottoman times. However, I am getting ahead of myself. It took me quite some time to locate the palace.

Following the map in my handy Istanbul guidebook, I wandering into a park that surrounds the palace. The park was very picturesque, and it was filled with couples of all ages walking hand-in-hand or sitting on benches in semi-secluded alcoves. When I entered the park, a young Turkish security officer yelled to me from his motorbike: “Hello, my friend! Welcome to paradise! How are you?” I continued to walk through the park looking for the entrance to the palace, but instead I found a tea garden on a hill overlooking the Bosphorus. The view and the simple fact that I was in Istanbul were too much to resist, so I took a break from my palace-hunt to sit and enjoy the view for a bit.
The park surrounding the Topkapi Palace
Tea Garden overlooking the Bosphorus

The Topkapi Palace was beautiful, if a bit expensive, and the best part of it was the Harem. In Ottoman times, the Harem was the private quarters of the Sultan and his family, which consisted of the Mother Sultan (i.e. the Sultan’s mother), his wives and concubines, and his children. The Harem also housed the eunuchs who guarded the harem, a hospital, and a school for the Sultan’s children and concubines. Concubines were instructed in the arts, including music and dance, and the most beautiful and intelligent among them were also instructed in reading, writing, etc. in order to prepare them for the possibility of being the keeper of the treasury or the Mother Sultan (both of which were powerful positions within the Harem and in the Empire itself) in the future.

The outside of the Topkapi Palace
A terrace in the Harem
Throne room in the Harem

My first trip into Istanbul also introduced me to two of my favorite things about the city (and one of my least favorite, but I’ll fill you in on that when I write about the Grand Bazaar): the call to prayer and the multitudes of minarets. One of the five pillars of Islam is prayer, specifically prayer five times a day. In order to fulfill this pillar, Muslims are called upon to pray at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, early evening, and dusk. Every day, at each of these times, mosques all over the city broadcast the ‘call to prayer’ from tall, thin towers called minarets. The called to prayer is as beautiful as it is incomprehensible (to me as a non-Arabic speaker), and it is one of the things that I will miss about Istanbul. The other is the effect that the mosques have on the city skyline. The city is dotted all over with thin, pointed towers, sometimes standing alone, sometimes in pairs. The result is a beautiful and constant reminder that you have ventured into the Islamic world.