Wednesday, March 23rd:
Topkapı Sarayı from Galata Tower:
WOW. Today we visited one of the most incredible sites I have ever been to, the Topkapı Sarayı (Palace), but I will get to that shortly. We skipped breakfast today and went straight to the Dolmabahçe Palace for a tour of it and the Harem attached to it. The weather today was also the best we have had so far, as the annoying sprinkles of rain had given way to sun, although it was still very windy and somewhat chilly (around 50 degrees Fahrenheit). Dolmabahçe is a militarized zone, so the Turkish Army has guards with automatic rifles guarding its beautiful gates. It is a militarized zone because it is the place that Mustafa Atatürk died. A note here: Turkish people adore Atatürk. His picture is everywhere, everyone has posters of him in their homes, and the Turkish government even blocked Youtube.com for the entire country for a while because they discovered a spoof video someone made claiming that Atatürk was a homosexual. Pretty intense. I suppose that it is deserved as he was their first president and gained independence for the Turkish Republic in the 1920s. Anyways, we took a tour of the Palace which housed the last Sultans of the Ottoman Empire before Atatürk abolished Sultanship and their statuses as religious caliphs for Islam. The palace is very distinctly Western European, in stark contrast to the Ottoman and Byzantine architecture in the older part of the city. Most of the rooms have European furnishings, Baroque style paintings, and massive crystal chandeliers. It reminded me very much of some of the newer French castles I have visited. After touring the palace and its massive chambers used for ambassadorial meetings, we went into the Harem where the Sultans and their many wives and children lived. These rooms were more modest, but still very interesting to see where these powerful and wealthy men lived their daily lives. The word Harem comes from words meaning “forbidden” as women were not allowed into the actual palace, and nobody besides the Sultan and his family were allowed inside the Harem. It is inside the Harem where Atatürk fell into a coma due to liver failure and passed away. His death bed is adorned with the flag of the nation he dedicated his life to create and lead.
The Changing of the Guard at Dolmabahçe Palace:
Following our tour of Dolmabahçe we made our way over to the Sultanahmet area to go to Tokapı Palace. On the way, we were both starving, so we stopped at a corner café next to the Hagia Sophia and both got Anatolian Pancakes called Gözleme. Mine had ground meat in it and Jen’s had nuts and honey. Hers was clearly better than mine, but both were good and we also had a Mediterranean Salad before walking over to the Palace. After some small difficulty finding the entrance—we walked through a huge park twice before finding it—we finally walked inside the outer courtyard of the palace. This place is absolutely massive. It was the location of the head of the Ottoman Empire for over 400 years, and today is a museum. We did not have enough time, unfortunately, to go to both the palace and the harem, so we just purchased tickets (again, Jen’s was free with her museum card) and went inside the inner courtyard. Seemingly everywhere you look there are the traditional blue Ottoman tiles and gold Arabic scripts decorating the buildings.
There are probably 50 different rooms to enter; libraries, justice halls, meeting rooms, armories, stables, treasuries, lounges, and even the circumcision room of the Ottoman princes is open to the public. We walked around a few of these rooms, in awe, before heading into the first of four treasury rooms. Inside these rooms the museum displays collections of Ottoman clothing, such as the caftans that the sultans wore, their suits of armor, and hundreds of jewelry items decked out in some of the biggest and shiniest gems I have ever seen in my life. We are talking rubies and emeralds the size of my fist here. In one room they have both an 86 and a 74 carat diamond. All of these gems decorate even the seemingly most useless of items—these sultans were the kings of accessorizing. There are benches, thrones, altars, Koran bindings, medals, pins, rings, earrings, and necklaces galore. Some of the coolest items, to me, were the Sultan’s swords. The Topkapı Daggar is on display, made famous by a film in the 1950s, as well as “the sword that conquered Persia” for the Ottomans. Ridiculous stuff.
Topkapı Sarayı:
I had thought after seeing these items that I was already in awe of the lives of these Ottoman sultans and of the palace itself, but then we made our way into the Collection of Holy Artifacts room. It was in here where my jaw almost literally hit the floor at the magnitude of the significance of these items. In the first room you know the gravity of the collection, as two swords are one display belonging to two of the Apostles of Jesus. Next to them is a tall, seemingly basic rod stick. I looked at Jen wondering why this was on display next to such holy swords, and we glanced at the plaque that said “Rod of Moses.” We were immediately skeptical, as such an old, plain, and important item could not possibly still be around, let alone be validated as the actual rod. After going home for the day I investigated the legitimacy here: in one version of the Bible, the rod is said to have been destroyed. However, legend has it that the rod was passed down for generations within the community of Jews that Moses saved from Egypt. It was said to have remained in Egypt until the Ottoman sultans conquered Egypt and took the rod back to Istanbul. Frommer’s travel books also claims the legitimacy of this object, and I am still taken aback at how significant this artifact actually is. Also on display in this room are the sabers of the four original caliphs.
Next we walked farther into the Hall of Holy Artifacts and discovered a collection of items that people were tightly and closely crowded around. I remind the reader that Turkey is an Islamic nation, and we soon noticed that there are a great number of artifacts from the life of the Prophet Muhammed kept here. Swords of the men who stood by his side are on display, as well as gold shutter pieces and locks from the Holy Ka’aba in Mecca. The sword of Muhammed himself is on display along with dirt from his grave, pieces of his beard, his footprint, and a piece of his tooth that was lost in the battle of Uhud. In another room is the first handwritten version of the Koran on deerskin. The holiest of all artifacts of Muhammed is his mantle, the Hırka-i Şharif, which is kept in a golden arc behind multiple panes of thick glass. I felt that I did not appreciate these artifacts as much as I should have, as I have a very limited knowledge of Islamic history, and the rooms were all filled with Muslims in awe of their prophet’s personal items. Perhaps I will learn more about Islam before I return to this collection later in my life.
Hagia Irene:
We left the Holy Artifacts room and visited some of the other rooms of the palace, including the place where the sultans watched the moon over his empire every night. We walked around the palace until around its closing time before heading out, and stopping at the Hagia Irene inside the outer courtyard. This Byzantine church is not open to the public without special permission from the Turkish Tourism Police. The church predates the Hagia Sophia next door and is built upon the grounds of a pre-Christian temple. The inside is like a smaller version of the Hagia Sophia, however all of the tile mosaics have been lost save for a giant black cross on the sanctuary wall.
I had thought that the Galata Tower had closed at five in the afternoon, as the website online had said, but we walked over to it anyways and discovered, to my surprise, that it was open until eight! I was very excited as I had thought I would miss out on the amazing photo opportunities offered on its ninth floor balcony. This building was originally constructed in the fifth century as a Byzantine lighthouse. It still stands today as a restaurant, museum attraction, and night club. Visitors take an elevator to its top floor and go onto the outside deck offering a 360 degree view of the entire city. The view towards the Sultanahmet area is absolutely stunning as you can see Topkapı Palace, the Hagia Sophia, and the Blue Mosque all close together and unobstructed. I took a few photos from up there before heading back to the ground. From here, Jen and I walked down the road to Karaköy to catch a ferry across the Bosphorus to Kadiköy to get dinner in Asia at a Kurdish restaurant called Çiya. Another note here to travelers: this ferry across the river is the best bang-for-your-buck in the city. For just two Turkish Lira you get a half-hour ride on the Bosphorus! We also did this at sunset, and the views were awesome.
Istanbul at Sunset from Galata Tower:
The Asian side is far more difficult to navigate than the European side, and is filled with mostly residential areas and outdoor markets offering fish, vegetables, and fruits. We wondered around for a little while before finding our restaurant, Çiya Sofrasi. Here we ordered a large assortment of foods as most of the entrees come out as half orders. I had dishes called Bozbas (beef chunks, potato, coriander, onion, parsley, and lamb), Siveydiz (Lamb, chickpeas, strained yogurt, mint, garlic) and they both were cooked as stew-like dishes. I also had a rice dish called Perde Pilavi which is made from dough stuffed with rice, raisons, pine nuts, almonds, and chicken. We also sampled different drinks of Sumac juice and a juice drink called Nevrooz made from barley and honey. This meal was absolutely excellent, and if you can afford the time to get over to try it, it is a wonderful alternative to the traditional Turkish restaurants all over the city but still offers an authentic meal from Old Turkey. Following dinner we walked around and found a bar with a band playing and had an Efes before heading back to our hotel. We had to wake up early the next morning to catch a flight to Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey located on the Aegean Coast in Asia where we would stay for three nights.
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