A true city experience

A short run and a little bit of resistance training at a local park. I hope I didn't wake the homeless guy.

S slept in, so I took off early to Istanbul Modern, Turkey's only modern art museum. It features primarily work by Turkish artists, but there were a couple of western names in there as well.  The museum is a good size, and the permanent collection has a nice selection of painting, sculpture, video, photography, etc. No sound art, btw.  There were also a few temporary exhibits that were striking, particularly one about photography in Turkey.  Photographs were not allowed inside, but I snapped this from the deck of the museum cafe.  Beautiful!

Apres museum, I grabbed a bite (meat-and-egg pide - thanks again Sinan!), picked up one garment that was getting altered, and headed back to the room to do some packing. S and I headed out shortly after to go to the Chora Museum. The building had originally been a church with some amazing mosaics, and when the Ottomans turned it into a Mosque, the mosaics had been whitewashed. Fortunately, they've been restored and are all sorts of wonderful!

This vaulted ceiling piece is about 12' square.

Cats are everywhere! This one liked to hang out where the altar would be.

This mosaic is in the back of the nave and is about 8'x6'

The mosaics are simply stunning. If you find yourself in Istanbul and like mosaics, check this place out.

BUT, if you do, you'll need to take a cab, and if you take a cab, be careful not to get ripped off like I did!  I got swindled for 50 lira today (about $27) from a duplicitous cabbie. Not the end of the world, but I'm still steamed about it.

The sneaky cabbie left S and I without cab fare back to the main part of the city, so we hotfooted it along the city walls to the nearest tram line. The tram was packed with rush hour riders, so we stood shoulder to shoulder with strangers for the whole 40-minute journey. Along the way to the tram station, we had found a bankomat for some cash, so we decided just to head back to Istiaklal Street to dine at Restaurant Vera, one of the places Anthony Bourdain ate at in the Istanbul episode of No Reservations. The food was excellent! Sarah enjoyed her spicy lamb dish, though she enjoyed my grilled meats more. The mezes were great (especially the white anchovies), though I was hoping they'd have some of the unusual dishes that they served A. B. (no such luck). Throughout dinner, S kept eyeing an old lady selling mini kleenex packs as she wandered up and down the street.

After dinner, we wandered down the street and stopped off for dessert (rice pudding for me, with a funky coagulated seal on top - yum!), then hopped the train back to the hotel.

It's 10pm here, and we need to be up in about 6 hours to get to the airport to catch our flight on time. Thanks, Istanbul, for an excellent visit!  We will be back!

Way up high, down on the water.

What an awesome frigging day.

S rose late, so I went running.  While she was finishing getting ready, I headed up to Sultanahmet Square to do a little field recording. When S found me, we hopped the tram to the north side of the European side of Istanbul, on the other side of the Golden Horn. This are has a few different names, but people refer to it as the New Side. It's definitely more European, more lefty, more young, more progressive. From there, we took an underground funicular up to the Galata Tower, which you can ascend and see the whole city laid out below. The tower offers a cheesy dinner-and-a-show combo in which we were uninterested, but the views were excellent.

After the tower, we headed down to Old Town to catch our shuttle to our Bosphorus Straits cruise. Our guide was a joker named Mustafa who was knowledgable, funny, and not too talkative. We enjoyed the cruise and his information.

After the cruise, we headed the hill to Taksim Square, one of the centerpoints of the New Area I mentioned earlier. From there, we wandered down Istiaklal Street, which was packed with people and shops. I counted four Starbucks in a mile and a half. Also, how un-Turkish does this street look to you? 

After walking the street, S and I headed towards the Spice Market to a restaurant called Hamdi that came recommended by one of my students. We had a great meal and watched the sun go down over the Golden Horn. Thanks, Sinan! 

On the way home, we stopped to listen to a British community orchestra start a concert. They began with a disco version of 'Night on Bald Mountain,' complete with syncopated beats and electric guitar.  S and I couldn't leave fast enough, but before we were out of earshot, the orchestra launched into their next tune - a disco version of Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker; S's head about exploded. 

When we got back to the room, we discovered that one of our credit card companies called/emailed to check in with us about 'suspicious charges' that had appeared on our bill. I checked into it (all of the charges on our card are legit) and wrote them a long email in which I a) assured them that the charges were legit, b) chastised them for making us go through this confirmation garbage when I called them a month ago to let them know about our travel plans, and c) suggested that they needed to figure out an easy way for travelers to confirm charges over the internet.  I mean, why did I go through the hassle of calling the companies in the first place if they were just going to panic when I started spending money abroad?

Gah.

One more day in this staggering city. Not sure what we're gonna do... but it'll be great!

Old things and dead men.

Today was not my favorite day. It could have been a lot worse, but it wasn't great.

S & I got a late start today to hit Topkapi Palace. The Palace used to house the Sultan and his retinue, but about 90 years ago, it got transformed into a museum. Now, the grounds are open to visitors, who can tour the buildings and a handful of small museums in some of the larger buildings. Also in the Palace is the harem, which you can tour for an additional fee.  At Topkapi Palace, we visited the harem, the treasures museum, the armory museum, the library, an unknown number of pavilions, and four courtyards.

Hagia Irene is a church on the grounds.

Somewhere deep in the harem.

Frankly, I was underwhelmed by everything except the harem. The architecture was beautiful, but it wasn't anything we didn't see yesterday. The museums were neat, but packed with people. The food at the cafeteria was tasteless, dry, and outrageously-priced. The grounds were beautiful, but not worth the entry charge. After spending yesterday looking at old things built by dead men, I was disappointed that today's trip was also so monochromatic.

So, we moved on out of Topkapi, down the street, pit-stopping at Starbucks for S, and then into a leather store that S read about online.  We had a great time in there with the proprietress and her clerk, and we may have spent some money.

Then, onto the Grand Bazaar, the world's oldest shopping mall, where shoppers of all walks of life haggle with grizzled shopkeepers for exotic wares...

In the Grand Bazaar. Where are the exotic wares?

But which was much more like a huge souvenir stand. The shopkeepers are often pushy, but they're not grizzled. The wares are occasionally exotic (I bought a bell that is purportedly 100 years old), but they're mostly kitchy (S suggested I buy a fez emblazoned with 'Turkey' for my dad). The guide book says that the Grand Bazaar is now reserved almost entirely for tourists, with real Turks doing their business in the open-air markets outside the Grand Bazaar. Even the idea of haggling has gone by the wayside. The merchants haggle to please the tourists, but I'm told that real Turks just walk away if the price is too high. Still, we bought some gifts and headed home.

On the way, we passed a music ensemble doing a sound check in preparation for a concert tonight.

Then home to the hotel for a mini-siesta before dinner. Dinner was back at the place we discovered on Monday. When we walked up, the maitre'd asked us if we wanted the same table from Monday.  Neat! We had a great dinner - a nice end to what had otherwise been a mostly-disappointing day. 

Tomorrow, the plan includes a boat cruise and some drum shopping!

Getting the lay of this awesome city...

So, Istanbul is awesome. Truly.  I might love this city.

Quick rundown of the day. I got up at 6 (well, 6.15) to run so that S and I could breakfast at 8 and be out by 9. That didn't happen. We were out the door closer to 11.30.  From there, we went to the Blue Mosque, Sultanahmet Square, Basilica Cistern, the Hippodrome, Hagia Sofia, the park next to Topiki Palace, the train station (where the Orient Express arrived), the Spice Market (Egyptian Market), Galata Bridge, Rustem Pasha Mosque, and then a long walk home, passing a baklava vendor as we went. Along the way, I learned a whole lot.  Here's a sampling:

• Beds are hard in Istanbul.
• The craziness of traffic is somewhere between Paris and Rome.
• The Blue Mosque is beautiful, but the blueness is a bit overrated.
• Mosques smell like feet. They may be a feast for the eyes, ears, and soul, but they're no good for the nose.
• Mosques in general would be more beautiful if they didn't have to suspend huge ugly chandeliers from the upper dome down to a 9' trim. All those cables get in the way.
• City parks are great to watch the world go by.
• Vendors will do anything to get you into their shop/restaurant, including reaching out to shake your hand, and then leading you over to the proprietor by the hand, never letting go (true story). If you refuse, they ask harder. If you refuse some more, they call you an ugly American.
• There is a cistern underneath a block of Istanbul that used to hold water but now holds tourists. It's well-lit with warm uplight and populated with fish.
• Hagia Sofia started out as a church, then became a mosque, and is now a museum. There are a lot of elements from the church era that only lasted through the years because the Muslims whitewashed over them during the mosque era. Moral: sometimes, the best thing to preserve a thing is an opposing thing (I learned this in Mexico too...).
• Small mosques are just as lovely as big mosques.
• There's something magical about hearing so many languages spoken aloud. Today I counted English (American, Australian, and British), Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and a few I didn't recognize. And American likes to say that IT'S the melting pot of the world!  Hah!
• S doesn't like fried calamari. Combining that with her distaste for shrimp in-shell, most shell-fish, and whole fish, and eating seafood with her while abroad is a great challenge (one which we failed at tonight).

Here's a little selection of photos for your enjoyment...

Entering the Blue Mosque.

Inside the Blue Mosque.

The Basilica Cistern is lovely, but kind of a one-note gimmick.

Hagia Sofia is friggin' awesome.

If I told you this was NYC, you'd believe me.

We bought spices and tea at this market stall.

The interior of Rustem Pasha Mosque is filled with beautiful blue tile.

The view from the hotel terrace.

Croatia/Turkey

The Zagreb airport was a bit of an adventure. C & E dropped us of, but once inside, the signage was poor. We eventually found our check-in line, and when we got to the front, the agent sent us to another window for security reasons. The next window needed to confirm our credit card, since we bought online. Back in the first window, we checked in, but then had to take one bag (not both?!?) to a third window for another security screening. That done, we zipped through security and to our gate with enough time to blow the remaining 110 kuna (about $20) in the duty-free shop. 

Our flight to Istanbul was full of wrestlers. Apparently, there was some inter-continental wrestling tournament in Croatia, and we had teams from Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and two other countries on our flight. Fortunately, they left the competition on the mat, and despite my fears to the contrary, there were no impromptu wrestling matches on the plane.

When you land in Turkey, you have to buy a visa. For Americans, it cost $20 (or 15 Euro) and is available at a kiosk right by passport control. The guy who sold us our visas barely looked at our passports - it's just a legal shakedown for some cash from tourists. I guess the Turks think Canadians are richer - their visa costs $65 USD.

Anyhow, we got into town and to the hotel okay. The hotel is pretty nice - unusually shaped rooms in an old building. Clean and well-maintained, but definitely not new. We spent most of the afternoon in the room, getting unpacked and settled, and generally being excited about not having to live out of suitcases for 5 days.

For dinner, we found a nice casual local restaurant. The food was good and the price was awesome. S had a mixed grill (lamb, chicken, breads), and I had lamb wrapped in bread with pistachio yogurt. We had two mezes (appetizers) - roasted red peppers and marinated eggplant, and a pillow bread similar to poori.

After dinner, we walked up the hill to the Blue Mosque at sunset:

We'll head back tomorrow and go inside, but we couldn't tonight (we were there at evening prayers).

There are so many exciting sounds in Istanbul! From the muezzin to the babel of languages to the sound of various vehicles held together by chewing gum and zip ties, it's a recordist's dream. If you want me to record anything, let me know - I'll try my best!

After the Mosque, we headed back to the hotel room so that I could take part in a video chat with sound designers around the world. Where is the future? The future is NOW.