Istanbul Day 1

Last night I arrived in Istanbul, Turkey.  It was amazing to travel only 45min. and be in Turkey.  I was greeted by our tour leader, Zafer and our driver Mustafa.  They took me to the hotel to meet my parents who had just traveled about 15hrs. to meet me.  I couldn't have been more excited for this trip.  I really had no idea what to expect arriving in this country.  I ignorantly know very little and what I have learned recently is from the point of view of the Greeks, probably not the best lime light given their rocky history.  After our first day I am more then pleasantly surprised by the beauty and character of this city.  We had dinner on the rooftop of our lovely hotel last night.  The view is of the entire city from the Hagia Sophia down the Bosphorus.  This morning we started our day on a ferry ride down this important body of water.  The Bosphorus is a strait of water separating Europe and Asia and which joins the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara.  The shores of the Bosphorus are lined with beautiful palaces and mansions once owned by Sultans and now occupied by the wealthiest of Turks.  We exited in a town named YENIKOY and drove back towards where we came.  

We stopped atop a hill in one of the most picturesque spots in Istanbul.  From here you can see the city on both sides of the Bosphorus and far into the distance.  At this spot we had a nice lunch and some Turkish tea (my mom and I are drinking it in the picture above).  They use a lot of chili peppers in the food here making it spicy and I love it!  As you can also see in the picture above there are thousands of Tulips around the city.  They are so beautiful.  Apparently tulips originated from Turkey and were brought to Holland many many years ago.  Turkey is now trying to bring them back to their homeland and there is a tulip festival going on right now. After lunch we headed back towards the inner city.  We were dropped off in front of the New Mosque and the Spice Bazaar.  Before walking through the Bazaar we stopped at the Rustem Pasa Mosque, built in 1561 by the great architect Sinan for Rustem Pasa, son-in-law of and grand vizier to Suleyman I.  Rents from the businesses in the bazaar were intended to pay for the upkeep of the mosque.  My mother and I were asked to cover our heads and luckily we were wearing jackets with hoods and were able to throw those over.  We all had to remove our shoes and step on a carpet before entering the mosque.  The inside is beautifully adorned with Iznik tile mosaics, showing the wealth of the corrupt Rustem.  It was a very interesting place to be.  Zafer explained to us the rituals of the Muslim prayer.  He told us that the reason men and women have to be separated in a mosque during prayer is so that the men do not get distracted from their prayers if a women bends down in the traditional prayer movement in front of them.....as men so easily do.  He told us that all people are seen as equals inside a mosque regardless of class or sex.  Muslims pray five times a day and we hear the prayer chants from almost anywhere the city during these hours as they are projected from each mosque via speakers.  It interests me so much to learn about the religion and this culture from one of their own.  I feel very lucky to be experiencing this.

As we were speaking inside the mosque Zafer noticed that someone grabbed his shoes outside and he ran outside to confront them.  I immediately thought of Slumdog Millionaire!  Luckily the shoe thief was only a tourist who accidently grabbed the wrong shoes and he embarrassingly handed them over.  Sure enough Zafer told us that many shoes are stolen and as we walked back through the streets to our car we saw men selling shoes that were definitely not new, maybe just wiped down, lying on sheets.  Afterwards we headed to the spice market.  This cavernous, L-shaped market was built in the early 17th century as an extension of the New Mosque complex.  In Turkish the market is named the Misir Carsisi - the Egyptian Bazaar - because it was built with money paid as duty on Egyptian imports.  From medieval times spices were a vital and expensive part of cooking and they became the market's main produce.  The bazaar came to specialize in spices from the orient, taking advantage of Istanbul's site on the trade route between the East (where most spices were grown) and Europe.  Today an extensive amount of things can be found within the market, including everything from household goods, toys and clothes, to exotic aphrodisiacs.  The very first picture above is from this market.  

After the spice market we went back to the hotel and Zafer and my mom and I took a stroll down one of the most popular streets in Istanbul.  It is called Istiklal Caddesi and it is a wide walking street that is lined by modern shops and restaurants.  There were so many people walking down it that you had to maneuver your way through the people and the occasional trolley that went by.  It was a lively bustling street and Zafer said that there is always tons of people.  After our walk we just had a quick dinner at a nearby cafe and then went to bed, gearing up for another full day.