Istanbul!!! (And Cappadochia)

I'm so behind on posting, it's not even funny. And because of that, this is probably my longest post yet.

Originally this was going to be called Eh? Como? Lo Siento, No Hablo Ingles. However, I decided that although humorous, that title did not give enough credit to the amazingness of Istanbul, which is what this post is really about.

After our night in the hotel outside of Venice we got up early in the morning and dropped off our car in a parking lot, then headed for the airport. We then flew to Rome and hung out in the airport for a few hours, and then finally flew from Rome to Ataturk Airport, Istanbul's airport on the European side of the city. In the end, we had breakfast in Venice, lunch in Rome, and dinner in Istanbul! Sounds glamorous, but airport food isn't really all that appetizing.  

We arrived at Istanbul in the evening just as the sun was setting. It was beautiful. It was, of course, our second time at the airport because we had a layover there to get to Milan. Funny, we took Turkish Airlines to Milan and Alitalia to Turkey. Anyway, after a few hours figuring out our visa (it was a very stressful and not at all fun experience) we made it out of the airport and took a bus to our apartment. We were all very exhausted but we didn't have any food, so at like 9:30 at night we left the apartment and stumbled out into the streets of Istanbul looking for somewhere to eat. We ended up stopping at this really nice place which was a quite a pleasant surprise, because we had been expecting to have to eat at a tourist trap with a good location but terrible and expensive food. Instead we found our way into a really nice restaurant that was but two days old with very nice people, AMAZING food, and some random Steven Segall movie translated to Turkish playing in the background. My brother and I counted no less than five explosions, staggered throughout the movie. Anyway, the people were really nice and gave us lots of stuff on the house, simply because they had just opened and didn't have many customers. The dinner was long though so by the time we got home it was probably 11:00 and we all just konked out. 

The next day we planned to go to the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, so we headed to the southern part of the city. I was really excited because I had been fascinated by Istanbul/Constantinople and particularly the Hagia Sophia ever since we studied it in Humanities. We were pretty dazzled when stepped out of the tram, because it was a gorgeous day and literally, we had the Hagia Sophia to our left and the Blue Mosque to our right, the soaring minarets reaching for the bright blue sky. Unfortunately, someone could tell how dazzled we were, because we barely crossed the street before this guy came up to us, all friendly, talking about the landmarks and their history. It looked like he was just being nice, but every time we tried to go on towards the Hagia Sophia he followed us, continued talking, lead us away a bit. It felt like a complete waste of time. Eventually he got to his point and started talking about his carpet shop down the street, telling us to stop by later. It just went on and on until finally we broke away and headed for the Hagia Sophia again. But then another guy came up to us and started being all friendly too! And guess what? "So, I have a shop down that street, we sell the best carpets in the area." I almost wanted to laugh but I was too simultaneously annoyed. It was like a foot in the door, somewhat subtle and polite, but not about to let us go either. He was a little more pushy and it seemed for a while like he was going to make us follow him to his carpet shop, but we finally broke away, all of us very annoyed. We had wasted probably about 20 minutes following these guys around, and we had already been all too aware of the fact that we only had 5 days in Istanbul. After that we decided that every time someone tried to approach us and sell us stuff we would act like we were Spaniards who didn't understand English. It was actually a pretty clever idea since people who are marketing to tourists are more likely to speak English, the international travel language, than Spanish, and my parents speak it fluently and myself semi-fluently. That's where my original title comes from. Anyway, things didn't get much better from there. There was a HUMONGOUS line to get into the Hagia Sophia, and once we got to the front we had already decided to get the 3-day museum ticket but they had ran out of those. So we ended up going on a wild goose chase for the museum tickets, going to about four or five places before we finally got them. The day was not starting out so well, but things soon improved. We ended up taking a tour of the sultan's palace, complete with a trip through the harem (which was a lot more interesting and important than one might think). There was also an extensive treasury with humongous gems and precious metals. Overall it was very beautiful and a great contrast to the European styles of Gothic, Baroque, Rococo, and Neo Classical that we have been seeing a lot of in recent weeks. 

Walls outside the sultan's palace

I loved all the Arabic calligraphy in the tiling of the walls

WAY different from European architecture

After the sultan's palace we tried to find a restaurant for dinner (we kind of skipped lunch) but we couldn't find a recommended place in the area and lots of the stuff didn't look so appealing. So in the end we just went to the same restaurant as the previous night! They were really happy to see us, and guess what: the EXACT SAME Steven Segall movie was playing! It's like it's not the same experience without Steven Segall. :D  

The next morning we planned to go to a museum and the Grand Bazaar. The museum was called the Museum of Islamic Science and Technology. I was really excited about that because I know that the Renaissance was really started in the east with Muslim thinkers. While western Europeans were living in sewage in the Dark Ages, Muslim scholars, astronomers, technicians, scientists, and more were keeping the knowledge of the Greeks and Romans alive and continuing to add to our understanding of the world. But I was a bit disappointed. First of all, there were a lot of cool exhibits, but lots of things weren't very adequately explained. There was an entire huge section about astronomy but none of it made any sense to me. It wasn't until the clocks section that I started to get a grasp of how things worked, and that was from my own investigation. The second disappointment was how it kind of felt like propaganda sometimes. There were places where they almost seemed to be giving the benefit of the doubt that Muslim thinkers had done certain things first, as if to make them sound more impressive, but that wasn't really all that necessary because their accomplishments were already amazing on their own. Anyway, it wasn't exactly what we expected but it was still pretty fun.

After that we headed towards the Grand Bazaar, which I instantly fell in love with. There's just so many people, and so many amazing things being sold. It was indoors, with arched ceilings and lots of little alleys that were really easy to get lost in. It also pretty fun trying to bargain once we actually found stuff that we were interested in buying. It's funny, before I always felt bad about trying to bargain because it felt like getting an unreasonably low price out of an honest shop owner. But I've come to realize that in certain circumstances like that one, the original offer you're given is much higher than the item is worth, and if you really are asking for too low a price the salesperson just won't take it. I guess if you're in the Grand Bazaar and you're not smart enough to bargain your way down to a reasonable price you deserve to pay an outrageous amount. Anyway, in the end we came out with an FCB jersey for my brother (that boy is obsessed with all sports and jerseys, so he'll even buy one that has nothing to do with the place he's in), a last-minute shirt for me, and a gift for a special someone whose Bat Mitzvah is coming up! If you're reading this, you know who you are! 

Actually, my parents are having me do a writing assignment where I describe the Grand Bazaar, so I'll post that when I'm finished (although it might feel kind of random because like I said, I'm really behind on posting). 

The next day we planned to go to the Archeological Museum and, FINALLY, the Hagia Sophia! In the morning we headed over to the old section of town with the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, completely mastering the tram token machine that drove us crazy on our first day, walked across the plaza while narrowly avoiding the guys who tried to get us to come into their carpet shops two days previously, and bypassed the numerous massive ticket lines, making our way into the Hagia Sophia with a quick scan of our three-day museum cards. Herko Felton Family: 3; Old Town Obstacles: 0.

You know how sometimes you step into a building and you can’t help but look up at the ceiling and let your mouth fall open in awe? It was like that. The Hagia Sophia is HUGE. There is one gigantic main dome in the center, and then four domes supporting that, and two or three domes supporting each of those. The columns holding up the ceiling are as thick as redwood trees. Attached to the columns, facing the center of the church turned mosque, are giant circular posters with gold Arabic calligraphy, each 7 meters across. Think about it, that’s more than 21 feet. It was also pretty interesting to think about the history of the Hagia Sophia (which I knew a bit about because we studied it when we learned about Constantinople in Humanities this year). It was originally an Eastern Orthodox Church, and was destroyed and rebuilt many times, once by Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora, who put their signatures on each of the columns that was built under them. Eventually it was turned into a mosque, and finally under Ottoman rule became a museum (which is why tourists can easily visit it today). It is, however, very eastern influenced, and it looks like it was built to be a mosque in the first place.

After the Hagia Sophia we walked around at the site of the city’s Hippodrome, which was around when Istanbul was Constantinople and which was built when it was part of the Roman Empire. That, actually, has a pretty interesting story behind it. The Hippodrome was the site of the beginning of the Nika riots under Emperor Justinian in the 6th century. (Nika or Nike means victory of the people in Greek.) Basically, there were these two chariot racing teams called the Blues and the Greens, and they were rivals. Think Niners versus Seahawks or Giants versus Dodgers. I mean, this ran deep. They were also, however, political parties. Pretty much everyone in the city belonged to one or the other, from the poorest street kids to the most influential upper-class families. Kind of like the Democrats versus the Republicans, if the two political parties also had, say, rival football teams. Anyway, people were generally pretty mad at Justinian because he was overtaxing his subjects in order to fund his wars, and what started out as a chariot race in the Hippodrome turned into a riot in protest of his taxes, with the Blues and Greens running through the streets of Constantinople and burning stuff, yelling "Nika!" Which is crazy enough as it is, except the Blues and the Greens actually agreed on something for once. That’s like the Democrats and the Republicans storming the Super Bowl together and shouting IN AGREEMENT for the removal of Obama from office, then running off and burning the entire city of New Orleans to the ground. It was a big deal. Justinian was all ready to leave the city and give up his throne, but his wife and appointed co-ruler, the wily and powerful Theodora, persuaded him to stay in Constantinople. Instead they invited all of the rioters back into the Hippodrome in order to come to “peace agreements,” and then locked the doors of the Hippodrome and had the waiting army inside slaughter the tens of thousands of rioters trapped inside. It was a complete blood bath.

Anyway, we eventually made our way over to the Archeological Museum. That was interesting because we got to see artifacts found in the ancient city of Troy (yes, the one from the Illiad and the Anead that got destroyed with the wooden horse). Except pretty much none of the story is true, not even the part about the war getting started because Paris stole Menelaus’s wife Helen. The Greeks were just attacking the city because they wanted to use it as a foothold for trade. I don’t even know if the wooden horse part is true. Slightly disappointing, but oh well. It was also cool because we got to verify some of our facts about Istanbul/Constantinople. For example, I had been claiming for a while that there was a wall that was built of three layers of smaller walls, with a moat behind a first, a giant ditch behind the second, and the city behind the third, and that it had been built under the rule of an emperor who got the throne at 13 or 14 years old. It turns out I was right! That emperor was Theodosius II, and although he did become emperor at that age he didn’t build the wall until he was about 18 or 19.

So that ended day three of Istanbul. Day four was the Blue Mosque and this awesome ancient Roman cistern. We began the day with the Blue Mosque, which I thought was the most beautiful building we visited in Istanbul (sorry Hagia Sophia). Not only did it have the grand scale of the Hagia Sophia, but it was gorgeously decorated with extremely detailed painting and beautiful Arabic calligraphy. I felt so lucky to be allowed inside, because it’s still an active mosque, and I’m pretty sure that generally non-believers are not allowed inside mosques. Tourists are allowed inside this one, but my mom and I had to cover our heads and we all had to take off our shoes, which I was totally okay with. Some people were kind of annoying, though, and seemed to only half try to cover their heads. One woman took her scarf/hijab off to take a selfie, which I thought was really disrespectful. Someone ended up kind of yelling at her, so the whole thing was kind of a sad interaction. Anyway, I overall really loved the mosque and its gorgeous interior, and we ended up spending a lot of time in there.

IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL!!!

After the mosque we went to the cistern. It was basically a giant underground pool with arched ceilings holding up the regular city street above it. I kept thinking it would be a great setting for a scene in a movie, because the ancient Roman columns looked very mysterious in the dim lighting that reflected off of the water.  Everything smelled dank and wet like dirt and underground places (which it was, so I guess it makes sense) and you could hear the plop of water dripping from the ceiling and echoing off the walls. It's pretty cool, because although the water is only now a few inches deep, it could have reached all the way to the ceiling, 30 feet above. That's a lot of water. 2,800,000 cubic feet and 100,000 tons, to be exact, if Wikipedia is to be trusted. 

After the cistern we went home and did some work, then headed out to dinner. We ended up going to a really nice restaurant that served traditional Ottoman cuisine and our meal included, like, 5 courses, which was a lot for me to take. Anyway, we were eating dinner with two people who are friends of one of my mom's colleagues. It was a lot of fun, but we were out really late so we just went home and collapsed. 

The next day was our final day in Istanbul! We took a ferry across the Bosphorus Straight to the eastern side of Istanbul, in Asia. We ended up just walking around, going through the Spice Bazaar and the open-air markets. After a few hours we just took the ferry back and went home. 

The Spice Bazaar

You know, I think that although I've pretty much described everything that we did in Istanbul, I still haven't quite got across why I loved it so much. What can I say? It was just so different from any other city that I've ever been in, and that's probably because I'd never been to any city that far east. The culture was just very different from Europe--the history, the food, the architecture, the language, even just everyday things like the textiles and clothes. It was also very exciting to be in a Muslim country. Everywhere else that I've been outside of the United States has been at least Christian, if not Catholic, so it was a very unique experience. There was the call to prayer five times a day, women walking around in hijabs and even burqas, mosques around every corner, and Muslim history to be seen in nearly every single museum or historical site we visited. Everything felt so special and so different from any other place I've seen or been to.

Anyway, the morning after our last day was brutal. We woke up at 4:30 in the morning and walked to the bus station with our enormous bags on our backs, then took the bus to the airport on the Asian side of the city, Sabiha Gökçen. I don't remember any of it because I fell asleep on the bus. When we arrived to the airport we found our gate and I fell asleep again. The next thing I knew my parents were shaking me and I got in line to board the plane, half asleep. I fell asleep before the plane even took off, and the next thing I knew, I was in Cappadochia, Turkey. 

After leaving the airport, finding our rental car, and navigating our way to the town of Göreme, we found our apartment (which was a cave!!!) and went to an open-air museum. In case you didn't already know, Cappadochia is famous for its caves; giant rock formations that were dug out and lived in as early as the 7th century BC and as recently as the mid 20th century AD. There are also entire underground cities, which began as early as the 1st or even 2nd century BC. So when I say "open-air museum" I mean something almost like a historical state or national park, except you have to pay to get in like in a museum. That was pretty interesting because we got to see these awesome cave churches with some amazingly well-preserved frescoes. The only downside was that there were a LOT of other tourists around, so things got pretty hazardous when it came to climbing up to some of the caves that were built a story or two above the ground. After that we were trying to find another open-air museum, but instead we went off the beaten path a bit and ended up at this ancient monastary/church, which in some ways was MUCH cooler. We just arrived at this empty dirt parking lot and paid a mere 15 lira for the four of us to borrow some flashlights and explore the inside on our own. This didn't have the same historical importance as the other churches did, but there were no other tourists, and we ended up crawling through tunnels only a few feet high with flashlights and entering gigantic unknown rooms in the dark. It was then that we also discovered how locals created doors; we noticed that there were giant round stones positioned in some of the rooms, off to the side of the tunnels, and I realized that there were slots in the sides of the tunnels to roll the stones in and seal off the room. In that way the people living in the buildings could hide from whoever was persecuting them (and you can imagine that people must have been pretty persecuted to go so far as to dig into solid rock and live there).

 

Our cave home

The open air museum 

 Inside the second church. As you can see the ceiling is very low and the stairs very steep.

After we left the lonely little church on the side of the road we hiked uphill a bit and got to see a really gorgeous sunset. We also discovered even more cave dwellings, although these ones were filled with trash and graffiti, which I found surprising. I suppose there are so many cave dwellings in the area that the government can't monitor them all. Actually, for those of you who live in the Bay Area, they kind of reminded me of those old World War II bunkers and bomb shelters out in the Marin Headlands. They're relatively old and have some historical significance, but they've just gone into disrepair and now they're just full of graffiti and trash and many don't have any signage to explain what they are. Of course, the caves we were finding are a LOT older than that, but you get the idea.

It was almost too perfect! 

Thus ended our first day in Cappadochia. The next day we went to another off-the-beaten-path place, which was an awesome cliff/apartment building thing. We hiked around in that for a little while, exploring the rooms, and then headed to another open air museum. This one was a lot less crowded and we had a lot of fun climbing around. In one place we stepped into a room and saw that there was a chute going up into the ceiling. If you climbed up onto a ledge using the footholds that had been cut into the rock and worn over the centuries you could then make your way up the chute. It also had footholds, on either side, so that you could straddle the chute and step up with each foot on a different side. It was a lot of fun and by climbing around at one point we ended up looking out a window down a 60-foot drop! It was like a historical playground and it was really fun challenging ourselves to climb to different places. Some of the dwellings were eroded and entire chunks had fallen off of the mountain, leaving a whole group of homes exposed. At one point my dad and I went into an old church with a really low ceiling and we realized that the ceiling had once been much higher and the floor had simply been filled up with mud and dirt. We could see the shapes of the vaulted ceilings which are now in some places as low as three feet above  the floor! It reminded us of the original Planet of the Apes, where the human guy discovered the Statue of Liberty all buried in the sand. Anyway, after that open air museum we ate a late lunch (I was so hungry that I was getting a headache and tunnel vision) and then headed to the Fairy Chimneys. The Fairy Chimneys are these rock formations that have a large base and smaller boulders that look like they're balancing on top. The reason for this is that the formations were made of different layers of rock, and the lower layers were softer than the upper layers, so they eroded more quickly, making the upper boulders look like they were balancing on top. It was pretty cool and my brother and dad were having fun finding the shapes of animals in the rock formations. :D

It actually looks like an apartment building. 

SO COOL!!! 

 

Me and my brother looking out the window of the cave dwelling that required the most climbing.

As you can see it's a lot more difficult to climb up than stairs but a lot easier than one might think--instead of having to go up like a ladder you can straddle the chute. 

Totally like Planet of the Apes! 

Fairy chimneys. 

Quite a dramatic view! If you look carefully you can see how the rain clouds in the background look like the clouds getting pulled downwards like cotton candy.

Our final day in Cappadochia was really exciting. In the morning we did some exploring and rock-scrambling on our own and in the afternoon we went to an underground city called Derinkuyu. Originally we were going to go to this place called Pigeon Valley, but in the end we just crossed the highway (very dangerously, I might add) and explored the hillside there. At one point we noticed a few cave dwellings up at the very top of the hill and decided to go check them out. That turned out to be a lot easier said than done, as the hill was really steep and if we had gone up to the cave dwelling from the angle that we noticed it at we would have had to free climb up an entire rocky cliff thing. (Sorry, not the best description ever.) But we figured that whoever lived up there must have had to get there somehow, so we continued to circle the giant pile of rocks that the cave was dug into until we found a much easier path to a little plateau. It was then that we realized that the cave dwelling was probably a lookout post, because from the top of the hill you could see for miles in all directions, 360 degrees. But we were now directly above the cave, with no obvious way down. Luckily my mom found a ledge that went down from the plateau and around to the front, where we finally found the cave dwelling! It was really small, which fit with the lookout theory because it was just large enough to hold a person laying down, so probably someone would stand lookout at the little plateau all day and then sleep in the shelter at night. It was very cool and the view was gorgeous. After a while we hiked back down again and made our way back to the car. From there we drove for about an hour to Derinkuyu, where we ate lunch and then headed down into the underground city. Seriously, if you are claustrophobic this was definitely NOT the place for you. We were going down some tunnels that were probably a foot and a half wide and three feet high. It was also a great place for exploration. It's amazing how extensive the city is––7 stories deep underground. It was cool to see all the rooms and stuff, too: living spaces, common rooms, even a seminary and a stable! The city was really fascinating and took up most of our afternoon. When we emerged later that day it was already pretty late so we ended up just hopping in the car and driving two hours to Kayseri, the city by the local airport. There we got a hotel and stayed the night.

The "castle" of Cappadochia

My mom, brother and me in the shelter of the lookout post.

The tunnels of the underground city were tiny!

There you have it--7 stories deep.

The lookout post

We've already got Holiday Card 2015!

The next morning we got up pretty early again and drove to the airport. There was a huge mess-up with the rental car in which we couldn't find the drop box, all of which was extremely stressful at the time and which now feels like no big deal. Anyway, it was the start of a VERY long day of travel. From Kayseri we flew to Ataturk Airport in Istanbul. Then we had to take a van from Ataturk on the western side to Sabiha Gökçen in the east. That was about two hours. We then flew from Sabiha Gökçen to Rome. But our flight was kind of delayed, so were really worried when we got to Rome because we only had a one-hour layover in which to make our next flight. Things went form bad to worse. We needed to get from the plane onto a bus which took us to the main airport building, but we were slowed down because we needed to wait for the entire rest of the plane before we could leave. Then when we arrived they only opened up one of the bus doors as a bottle neck so that we would all have to file out, and when we got into the building we had to go through security check, which is stupid because we already had to go through a security check to get on the plane in the first place. That took probably about 45 minutes because there was only one security check station and only two people running it, so by the time we got out we had about ten minutes before our plane started boarding. We were in a huge rush to go, but first they had to check our passports. We made it past there, ran up the stairs, and lo and behold! we have to go through ANOTHER SECURITY CHECK. We were all in a pretty bad mood but we luckily got through that pretty quickly. Why on earth they needed to slow us down that much and have us go through two security checks, I do not know. We ended up sprinting through the airport, clutching at the straps to our backpacks, with me in the lead, my dad right on my heels, my brother behind him, and my mom bringing up the rear. It actually felt pretty good to get some exercise, in retrospect, but at the time I just kept thinking over and over, Do not mess with me right now. Don't you dare mess with me. Don't you dare ask for my passport, don't you dare ask for directions, don't you dare talk to me. Everything revolved around catching our plane. We finally slowed down for customs. The guy was really nice and was fast about it, and then we just went through and sprinted on, dodging people, luggage, wheelchairs, and cars. Sometimes I think we were a bit rude and I might have ran between groups of people walking together, but oh well. We finally made it to our gate and were relieved to see that everyone was still lining up. But when we finally made it to the front with our boarding passes and passports, the woman there looked at our boarding passes, looked at her computer, called a few people and then finally told us that we wouldn't be able to get on our plane because our luggage still hadn't arrived from our previous flight. We were really annoyed–we had sprinted through the airport to catch this plane–but in the end there was nothing we could do. So it ended up being a really good excuse for getting gelato. 

Later that night we got our plane and arrived, finally, to Venice. We then took a bus and a boat to our apartment. Everything looked so amazing and mysterious; I was really excited. I couldn't stop saying to my parents, "Look! The streets are made of water!" We walked through the tiny little alleys and then finally climbed up to our apartment and konked out. We had, after all, been traveling for 17 hours and had taken two cars, a bus, three planes, and a boat, spanning two continents. Our exploration of Venice would have to be for another day.