Morning: wake up leisurely at holiday timing of 8:50am. Feel it is too early. Slack a bit. Wake up again at 9am.
Head to blue mosque. Reach at 1030am (traffic is a bitch, see below). Realise mosque closes at 1130am for friday prayers and remains closed the rest of the day. Chiong through mosque with ad hoc guide who wants to "improving the english" and later wills us to "come see my carpet shop, 2 minutes. 2 minutes." Anyway. Mosque is truly fabulous in an objective secular kind of way, the inner chambers fit about 3200 people (80 prayer mats by 40 prayer mats) and there's an outer courtyard which probably fits another few thousand. One thing which struck me, the huge volumes of people which move in and out 5 times a day have smoothed the marble floors, and thresholds of doorways are much lower in the centre than at the sides which must've been much closer to their original heights.
This mosque has a sign which says "everyone" in arabic, meaning it's open to everyone of all religions, but of course some level of decorum is still appreciated, hence:
interesting people 2:
Ang mor guy made to don blue cloth over his shorts because he's not well covered enough.
Afterwhich, lunch at a small cafe. Walked in, looked at the counter, and lo and behold!
interesting food 2:
Kemal pas(h)a, a turkish dessert, which would look suspiciously familiar to the 2L people who go deepavali visiting to our favourite indian's house. Tried one later and it turned out to be a sort of cakeish thing soaked in syrup. No where near as sweet as the one (well, half of one) of the other round orange ball whose name i can't remember. But that personal excitement was dwarfed by my family's awe at the pre-meal bread which they gave us:
holy mother of naan! It's a turkish bread not unlike naan, and by the time the picture was taken it had deflated somewhat. It was HUGE. You could be full on one of those alone. Combined with the beyti i had, which was a sort of baked pita-calzone, like minced beef pita with veg and cheese wrapped in pita and peppered with sesame seeds and baked.
Couldn't finish that either.
Interesting cultural pic:
Streetside vendors of corn and this ringed chewy pretzel-like bread, only less salty. 1 YTL stands for 1 million turkish lira.
Also, a streetside vendor was selling these Arabically calligraphed plates with various set pieces on display, one of which i thought might amuse a certain cross-section of my readers:
Then on to Hagia Sophia (ayasophia), a cathedral first built in 300ish AD, which was then burnt down, rebuilt, taken over by the ottomans, converted into a mosque, then restored and converted to a secular museum. Right across the street from the blue mosque. Think 1 huge cathedral next to 1 huge mosque. Must've been a wonderful cathedral in its time, apparently it was the 'most awe-inspiring' in the catholic world when it was built. Kinda a bit odd to see a church skeleton filled with arabic and mosque-like decor, but i then realised that if not for the Ottoman muslims who came and took it over and kept the structure alive with their repairs and restoration, the building probably wouldn't have survived that long. Kinda symbolic in a religion united for the greater (cultural) good kind of way.
But the Christian mosaics inside were plastered over with ....er, plaster, and they're still under restoration and will be for a long while. This is one of them in half of its former glory:
A Shop outside seemed to be very apologetic to their competitors for their continued presence in the market:
Then to topkapi palace, a sort of mini muslim museum which was completely wasted on me. The views of the bosphorous river were nice but not really worth posting. imagine a nice big water body with houses at the side rising up from the riverbank on hills. Got there by taxi, and i have photographic evidence of how attached to their horn those horny taxi drivers can be:
Dinner by the riverside, think clarke quay with ECP restaurants. tried raki which was a sort of alcoholic drink (45%) which kinda tasted like a mix between vodka and medicine and smelt like methyl alcohol. Pity it wasn't honey raki.
Interesting dinner compatriots:
There was a table of hongkongers at the table behind us, and whilst we were there a little privately hired boat drove by on the river and made a lot of noise (boat party!). Whereupon some guy at the table called the waiter over and went "can you find me a boat? we want to take a boat to Istanbul. Taxi take us all over the place." Which, to his credit, was true, the taxis DID take you all over the (unintended) place. The poor waiter went "eh...ah....." as he figured out the english and realised what it meant. "you try! you try!" and the helpless waiter scampered off to try.
He came back a bit later. "river taksi, four hundred dollar." "okay, okay, get him to come at about...uh...... 1030!"
!!!!!!.
what can i say? different holiday budgets.
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