Dateline – Istanbul, Turkey
After sailing up the Turkish coast overnight, we awoke to the ship passing through the Dardanelles and into the Sea of Marmara with European Turkey on our port and Asian Turkey on our starboard. We weren’t due to dock for some hours, so it was a nice lazy morning with me working on my lines for Arsenic and Old Lace and Thomas taking a nap. We approached Istanbul shortly after noon, inching our way towards the Bosporus River as it flows out of the Black Sea. We eventually were docked at the cruise ship terminal at Galataport, at the base of the hill along the Golden Horn River which forms the European New City (not all that new as most of it was built in the 19th century). Galataport is a new development as the Turkish government tries to get more and more of the cruise industry to make Istanbul a standard stop. Not only is it the dock for the large ocean liners, it is also an underground bus transfer point and a modern shopping and entertainment district. In fact, it is the very model of a modern major terminal. (Complete with Turkish cats who act as fluffy antiverminal. And passages which could fit your tank or other autos Shermanal…)
We left the boat and headed out on our first shore excursion, a walking tour of the New City under the aegis of our guide Ada (who was something like an Istanbul feral kitten after one too many Turkish coffees). A walk along the waterfront, a ride up the hill in an underground funicular to Taksim Square, a stop for a trial of a local burger specialty (I suspect a member of Ada’s family was behind the burger joint) and then down the main thoroughfare of Istiklal Caddesi lined with boutiques, cafes, bars and other places of upscale entertainment, all with an early 20th century streetcar running up and down the middle threatening to pick off passers by who weren’t paying attention. It was very reminiscent of other major European cities to which I have been over the years with a lot of 19th century European architecture of the Beaux Arts school but with occasional Ottoman flourishes. We stopped for Turkish coffee and, after finishing it, attempted to tell our fortunes in the grounds. I thought I saw two monkeys enacting Shakespeare on the deck of a ship. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to symbolize. Further down the thoroughfare and onto another underground funicular dating back to the 1870s to get back down the hill and then past the bridge over the Golden Horn and back to the ship. We thought about going out for the evening and then decided against as we were a bit tired and knew we had a big day on the morrow beginning early in the morning.
The next morning we had an all day tour exploring the historical Old City with its Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman monuments so we got ourselves up, hurriedly consumed some coffee and left the boat in order to meet up with today’s tour guide, Donkan, who was much more laid back than Ada the day before. He was knowledgeable, had a good sense of the history and the meaning behind most of the sites, but didn’t intrude too much and spent most of his time making sure no one wandered off too far and could not be corralled back into line. Sort of an English Sheep Dog making sure his charges behaved. It was a relatively short bus ride from the port across the Golden Horn River and to the peninsula which was the historic heart of the Empire of the East. We were let out on the open area on top of the hill that was the site of the old hippodrome, site of the famous chariot races. The foundations and catacombs remain beneath the pavements, but the building itself has long been lost. Earthquakes, sacking by the 4th crusade in the 13th century and then the fall and sacking of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century will do that. There are some monumental obelisks remaining and a serpentine column that the Romans brought back from Greece and which was supposedly made from the Greeks melting down the armor of the Persians in one of their 4th century BC victories. My favorite Hippodrome story is that of the Emperor Justinian putting down rebellion and cementing the powers of the Byzantine Emperors for nearly a millennium by blocking the doors on the crowd in the Hippodrome and having his soldiers massacre those trapped inside, an estimated 30,000 casualties.
Byzantine history is incredibly rich but not much studied in the US. Most of which I have picked up comes from reading historical fiction set in the medieval world. I highly recommend the novels of Dorothy Dunnett. Book IV of her Lymond Chronicles, Pawn in Frankincense ends up in Constantinople at the time of Suleiman the Magnificent with much of the last part of the book taking place in the Topkapi Palace. Her House of Niccolo also touches on Constantinople in the years immediately following the fall of the city to the Turks and Book II, The Spring of the Ram, going into great detail about the fall of the last Byzantine Emperor, David Comenos, as the Turks, took Trebizond, the last remaining outpost of the Empire. Guy Gavriel Kay’s Sarantine Mosaic books offer a look at the time of Justinian and the construction of the Hagia Sophia but in a sort of fantasy alternative reality way.
Next to the Hippodrome Square is the famous Blue Mosque built by Sultan Ahmed in the early 17th century and so called for the blue tilework throughout the interior. From the outside, it’s a lovely piece of classical Ottoman architecture, perched high on the hill and looking out over the city and the Sea of Marmara. Inside is absolutely breathtaking with acres of tilework and decorative motifs all in the non-figurative styles consistent with Islamic Art. Every time I looked up into the dome, I saw some new detail. I would have had to lie on my back on the floor for hours to take everything in. From there, a walk around the side of the Hagia Sophia to the Topkapi palace. The palace, seat of the Sultans from the 15th through the mid 19th centuries, is a large complex in parkland built around terraced courtyards descending the hill towards the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara. It’s now a museum, a bit reminiscent of The Tower of London in that there are various wings which you can wander in and out of depending on your fancy. It was a bit of an odd stop on this day as it was the grand opening of a newly renovated wing and exhibition and Erdogan was present to do the ribbon cutting. I did not see him but there was a good deal of police and military presence and certain areas were off limits and we had to leave, when we left, by the back gate and then make our way round and back up the hill on foot. The Ottoman Sultans, like certain other chief executives, seem to have become very enamored of shiny things. (That seems to have been one of the things that led to the collapse of the Sultanate and the establishment of modern Republican Turkey – overspending on gee-gaws and palaces in which to display them). There was a lot of ostentatious jeweled things on display, most of which was impractical. I did like the palace and grounds very much though.
After reascending the hill, it was time for lunch. Lunch on these kinds of tours usually isn’t much. The backroom of a tired old tourist restaurant putting out a watered down version of some famous national dish. This, however, was quite good, a lovely buffet in an upscale hotel’s restaurant and as we were now about 14,000 steps into the day, we ate heartily. After lunch, it was time for Hagia Sophia. It was a bit of a let down. Given that the building is about 1500 years old, it’s in constant need of maintenance. They are in the midst of a huge renovation currently. The outside is surrounded by scaffolding and the green netting familiar to anyone who has traveled in Europe for any length of time. The interior of the sanctuary is filled with enormous steel support columns while everything is shored up. The building began as a church, the seat of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The Ottomans, after taking possession, remade it into a mosque covering over much of the famous mosaic work. The Turkish government made it into a museum a century ago so that it could be enjoyed and marveled at by all faiths. The Erdogan administration turned it back into a mosque in 2020 confining non-Muslim visitors to the upper gallery floor. While I am glad to have seen the space having heard of it forever, I can’t say it currently lives up to its reputation. The surviving mosaics are lovely. One wonders what it must have looked like when it was in its original form.
The last stop, another short walk away, was The Grand Bazaar. This area, begun in the 15th century, now consists of dozens of pedestrian-only covered streets and covers about 7 ½ acres. There are some four thousand shops, 3,900 of which sell cheap jewelry. It was fun to wander through and avoid the overly aggressive sellers but in the end, it’s basically a medieval shopping mall where most of the stores are Claire’s. I will admit I did buy some things to take home, including tchotchkes for my colleagues. Anytime I go some place interesting, I try to bring a little something back as a thank you for having my back while I am away. Then it was back on the bus and back to the cruise port and dinner and a couple of much needed cocktails as we both had sore feet from two days of city walking. We went to bed relatively early. Tomorrow is a sea day, and then on to more Greek Islands. The weather report is not good for the next couple of days so that may change our plans. I’ll check back in from Santorini.
