Turkey  - 3/24/2006
A rainy day in Istanbul. At nine a.m. our Turkish guide Ruya Koksal picked us up in a minibus and whisked us off through the streets of Istanbul to see the Sultanahmet Mosque (Blue Mosque), the scant remains of the old Roman Hippodrome area, and the amazing 1500-year-old church-mosque-museum Hagia Sophia. When these Byzantine churches were converted to Mosques in the 13th (?) Century, the paintings and mosaics were plastered or painted over and covered with tiles of geometric designs, preserving the original artwork, now revealed in these buildings converted to museums.

We were walking between the Sultanamhmet Mosque and the Hagia Sophia when the midday call to prayer came and the air was suddenly alive with the amplified wailing of the muezzins. As we were pretty much surrounded by mosques this was a beautiful, awe-inspiring, and yet slightly eerie experience. Turkey is a very progressive country but certainly a meeting between ancient and modern; trendy people side by side with the headscarves and even the occasional chador.

We ate lunch at the world-famous(?) Pudding Shop and then went down the Basilica cistern, an underground Roman cistern built in 542 AD with tall columns and water and (for some reason) Medusa heads. On the walk between there and Topkapi we dropped in at a small art courtyard where we watched people making Ebru (oil onto water, then lay paper on it). Topkapi Palace took the afternoon to explore, including a visit to the extensive harem (regretfully no longer staffed), the treasury, kitchens etc. By then we had very tired feet, but why rest when there was so much to see?

In the evening our group dinner was at Pescatore, on the coast, where we ate mezze, calamari, mussels, bream, and two bottles of wine between the four of us who partake. After that we were invited back to Ruya's apartment in Ortakoy near the Bosphorus Bridge for coffee, daisy tea, and conversation. The Turkish Government makes people train for years to become certified as guides, so she knows a huge amount of history and culture. Even so, Ruya must be exceptional; bright, literate, well traveled and well educated, she spends half her year as a tour guide and the other half making documentaries. (Of which more later.) We got back to the hotel around midnight, healthily exhausted.