3-8-20 - Power Tour of Istanbul

Today, John has booked a full day tour of Istanbul for us.  In a big city with a lot of history, it can really help to have a local tour guide.  Today, our tour guide’s name is Ozlem.  Part of the Turkish culture is a direct touching when meeting or seeing someone.  Yesterday, the taxi driver insisted on shaking my hand when I got in.  Now Ozlem wants to shake all 7 of our hands.  Ugg! How do you balance the Coronavirus pandemic with not insulting a local cultural expectation?

Turkey still have no reported cases, so we opt to shake hands and not offend the tour guide with whom we will spend the next 8 hours.  It is a small group tour meaning maximum 10 people.  Often times, we when sign up for one, it ends up being just us 7 effectively turning it into a private tour.  Not today, though.  There are 3 people from Scotland on the tour including a mom and her two adult age (20’s) kids. 

We start out at a location where the Roman Hippodrome of Constantinople used to be located. The Hippodrome of Constantinople was a circus that was the sporting and social center of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. Today it is a square named Sultan Ahmet Square with a few fragments of the original structure surviving.

The word hippodrome comes from the Greek hippos, horse, and dromos, path or way. For this reason, it is sometimes also called "Horse Square" in Turkish. Horse racing and chariot racing were popular pastimes in the ancient world and hippodromes were common features of Greek cities in the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine era.

First a note on the city’s name and history.  The city was founded in 667 BC and named Byzantium by the Greeks after Byzas, the King of Megara.  In 193 AD, the Romans conquered the city and it remained under Roman rule until the 4th Century when Roman Emperor Constantine the Great made Byzantium the capital of the entire Roman Empire and re-named it Constantinople

Much of the city was destroyed by the Fourth Crusade during the 1200’s. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks lead by Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople, renamed it Istanbul and made it the capital of the Ottoman Empire.  Ottoman rule lasted until WW I when Istanbul was occupied by the Allied troops.  After WWI and the War of Independence, the Republic of Turkey was born in 1923.   While Ankara is the capital of Turkey, Istanbul is considered the commercial and cultural center of Turkey.

Ozlem first shows us the German Fountain which is a monument dedicated to the second visit of the Prussian King and German Emperor Wilhelm II in 1898. It was a symbol of Turkish – German friendship at the time extending political meaning to the fountain.

On the other end of the open area walkway is the Obelisk of Theodosius.  The obelisk  is an Ancient Egyptian obelisk of Pharaoh Thutmose III that was re-erected in the Hippodrome of Constantinople by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I in the 4th century AD.  The obelisk itself is covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics while the base is Roman period added during the re-erection.

The last artifact from the Roman Hippodrome is the Serpent Column which is an ancient bronze column that was part of a sacrificial tripod that was built to commemorate the Greeks defeating the Persians at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC.

Next we head to the famous Blue Mosque (also known as Sultan Ahmed Mosque) is a historic mosque that was constructed between 1609 and 1619 under the rule of Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I.  It is a functioning mosque but also attracts a large number of tourists. Its Külliye contains Ahmed's tomb, a madrasah and a hospice. Hand-painted blue tiles adorn the mosque’s interior walls, and at night the mosque is bathed in blue as lights frame the mosque’s five main domes, six minarets and eight secondary domes.

There are over 82,000 mosques in Turkey and over 3,000 in Istanbul with the Blue Mosque standing out as one of the largest and most impressive.  Almost everyone who is registered as a Muslim when they are born.  Government surveys say that about 65% of the population identify as practicing Muslims while the vast majority of the rest are non-practicing or non-religious Muslims. 

While touring the inside, we ask Ozlem about life as a Turkish Muslim.  She says that the younger people are not as dedicated to the Muslim ways as their elders.  She also says that Turkish Muslims tend to be more tolerant and secularized.  For example, if you miss a prayer calling, you make up it however you see fit.  “It’s really between the person and Allah,” she says.

Next we walk over to Topkapi Palace which served as the main residence and administrative headquarters of the Ottoman sultans in the 15th and 16th centuries.  Construction was ordered by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror in 1459, six years after the conquest of Constantinople. After the 17th century, Topkapı gradually lost its importance. The sultans of that period preferred to spend more time in their new palaces along the Bosporus. In 1856 Sultan Abdulmejid I decided to move the court to the newly built Dolmabahçe Palace. Topkapı retained some of its functions, including the imperial treasury, library and mint. After the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, a government decree transformed Topkapı into a museum. 

Ozlem leads us to a late lunch.  On the driving tours, the tour guide always eats lunch with the driver.  Today is a walking tour so there is no driver which frees Ozlem up to sit at our table.  The table seats the 10 of us plus Ozlem at the head of the table.  The seating ends up with Kyle sitting across and next to the Scottish people with the kids presenting an interesting character with long hair, tattoos and numerous pierced body parts. 

The Scottish folks hadn’t spoken barely a word all morning.   The Huebners are firing questions at her from every angle all morning when the Scots look beyond bored.  We’re not sure why they signed up for the tour in the first place.

The silence carries over to lunch so Kyle tries to initiate conversation.  He tells them that we were in Scotland last June and loved it and that we took a day-trip up to inverness.  “Why the hell would you want to go there?” one of the kids snorts at Kyle.  Hmmm. “I don’t know, I thought I might actually see the Loch Ness monster or something?” 

Kyle asks more questions but this is turning out to be more painful than a root canal. They are only here for the weekend. The mom finally asks a question of Kyle, “have you been to Ephesus?”  “No,” Kyle responds. “Well, that’s the first thing you should have seen when you got here.” Jeez, that’s it! Kyle is done with this conversation preferring to chew a mouthful of glass.

For the rest of lunch, Kyle talks over the Silent Scots having a full blown conversation with Ozlem.  She tells us that after the Paris terrorist bombings in November, 2015, the major cruise ships dropped Istanbul from their routes.  After a long absence, the cruises were scheduled to return Istanbul starting April 4th but now with the Coronavirus issues on the Princess Cruises, it doesn’t look good.  In fact, it’s not looking good for the tourism industry overall. 

After lunch, we head to the famous Hagia Sophia from the Greek meaning "Holy Wisdom" which is a former Greek Orthodox Christian patriarchal cathedral, later an Ottoman imperial mosque and now a museum. Built in AD 537 in the Late Antiquity, it is famous for its massive dome. It was the world's largest building and an engineering marvel of its time. It is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have "changed the history of architecture".

From the date of its completion in 537 until 1453, it served as an Eastern Orthodox cathedral and the seat of the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, except between 1204 and 1261, when it was converted by the Fourth Crusaders to a Roman Catholic cathedral under the Latin Empire. The building was later converted into an Ottoman mosque from 1453 until 1931. It was then secularized and opened as a museum in 1935. It remained the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520. We are all duly impressed and snap away a billion pictures. 

Our power tour with Ozlem concludes with her dropping us at the entrance to the Spice Bazaar.  The Grand Bazaar is the end all, be all of Bazaars but it is closed today because it’s Sunday so we settle for the spice bazaar.  Justin purchases some various spices to add to our homemade hand sanitizer which currently overwhelms the olfactory senses with rubbing alcohol.

We continue the day with Big Sauce Tours John taking over.  We go to a local shop that makes Turkish Delight (a gummy type desert) fresh on-site.  We make our purchase and try them out in the park next door.  Some are good and some are not so good – a mixed bag.

The Süleymaniye Mosque is an Ottoman imperial mosque that was commissioned by Ottoman Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent and inaugurated in 1557. The mosque is located at the highest end of Istanbul. The architecture and craftsmanship of the mosque are very beautiful and attract many worshipers and visitors.  

Whereas the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia had some construction going on which closed parts of them and had scaffolding abound (e.g. Big Ben’d), this mosque is impressive and full intact with no renovations in sight.

We dine at a restaurant right next to our Airbnb.  Not only is it close, but it’s inexpensive.  We not only get authentic Turkish food, but we get rewarded with sit down dinner for 7 of USD $35.  We have found Istanbul to be very cost-effective so far.