Day 5 - Topkapi, Artifacts, & other cats

Turkish Language

The Turkish alphabet consists of 29 letters.  Compared to English, Q, X, and W are removed and 6 new letters are added... all of which appear to be variants on existing letters.

a, b, c, ç, d, e, f, g, ğ, h, ı, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, ö, p, r, s, ş, t, u, ü, v, y, z

There are 8 vowels.  Based on the sample words in our packet, each vowel can make many different sounds, but it seems like these are the common sounds?

a = aw (alrighty) or uh

e = eh (meh) or aw

ı = ih (tid bit)

i = ee (sweetie)

o = ow (gold)

ö = oo (mood)

u = oo (clue)

ü = oo (clue) not sure of the difference between these to be honest :)

Cats

These strays have a house

Shortest paragraph ever.

Topkapı Palace (the i is not dotted)
This palace was the residence of the Ottoman sultans from the mid 1400s to mid 1800s.  The most interesting portion of the palace was the Harem.  The Harem housed the living quarters for the Sultan, his mother, his wives, and his concubines.  The only other people allowed to enter the Harem were the guards.  The guards were all castrated and were called eunuchs.  There are many similarities between the Harem and the Forbidden Palace in Beijing.  One difference is that all of the occupants of the Harem were allowed to enter/exit the Harem freely, the only restrictions being on who could enter.  Below is a pictorial walk-through of the Harem w/ Game of Thrones analogies.

Entrance

Hallways

Lower 2 floors beautifully tiled.  Not sure why panorama messed up the white balance on the top.

More Hallways

Eunuchs

The guy sitting down would be Varys.  The guy standing would be one of his spiders.

Mother Sultan's courtyard under repairs

Cercei Lannister's digs.  Pretty much this queen bee ran the show, heavily influencing the Sultan's decisions.  Also, she and the wives would get to select which of the concubines the Sultan was allowed to sleep with.  If a concubine accidentally become pregnant, she was promoted to become the Sutlan's wife.

Mother Sultan's living room

Mother Sultan's room

Sultan's Fancy Golden door

Sultan's fancy digs

Sultan's ceiling.  Huge.  Gorgeous.

I've got lots more pictures of tile from the harem, but I suspect you are over it by now :)

Harem Courtyard

View from Courtyard

I suspect the trees didn't used to be there so you could see the water and beautiful landscape back in its hay day.

Phew, finally we left the Harem and headed out to the middle of the palace.  Here are some shots from a building where the Sultan would receive guests.

Raised gold patterns in the rugs

Golden fountain

Nice View! 

Another one!

Flower Garden

Pond

Phew, lucky for you guys, the rest of the palace was no photography allowed.  We saw a bunch of jewelry, clothing, and weaponry, and we skipped the sacred relics.  Longest paragraph ever.

Archeological Museum

Next we headed to the archeological museum.  Unfortunately their biggest attraction (a bunch of sarcophagi) was closed, but there was still plenty of neat stuff.

Building on left was Tile Museum (tiles and ceramics)

Rest is Archaeological Museum

Front of Tomb

Bottom Right of Tomb

Top Right of Tomb

More Egyptian-ier Tomb

Famous Bust

Sea God

(image likeness used to create Davy Jones in Pirates)

King Arthur: Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left! 

Black Knight: Yes I have. 
King Arthur: Look! 
Black Knight: It's just a flesh wound. 

Butt!

If this person was a butt-head, then this is a butt bust :)

History

Lots of information about history and history-like things, including the town walls, walls of babylon, famous religious building, and more!  Wow!

1500's depiction of Istanbul from the sea

I'm sure the walls around the city were awfully intimidating at the time.

Lots of cool coins to see how they changed in the region over time.

Since we've seen a lot of tile from the Harem, I'll summarize the tile museum in my 2 favorite shots.

Lastly there was the Oriental history museum.  Artifacts of Babylon

This guy is huge

This one, also huge

Cat Nab

And upon exiting the museum area, we saw a cat steal some bread out of an abandoned baby stroller.

This guy stole the bread

He took the money and ran

This guy was stalking the thief, but the thief ducked away under the fence

This kitty family came to check out the commotion

They looked for more magic bread-stuffs, but none was to be found.

Cute family!

Pool Time
After a long day, I took a quick snorkel at our hotel pool.  It was 140cm deep.  No fish.

Day 4 - Arrivals

Wandering
Today we mostly wandered around, exploring and scouting out things we could do when more people arrived.  First we headed past the Hagia Sofia.

Hagia Sofia

(we are saving this adventure for another day)

We arrived at the Hippodrome, which is a square erected in ~200AD to hold sporting events, chariot races, and entertainment.  The square contains various monuments, including

The Obelisk of Theodosius

Built in the 1400's BC in Eygpt, this obelisk was brought to Constantinople in the 300's AD.  The base of the obelisk was damaged (likely during transit) so only the top ~20m of the original 30m obelisk is on display.

This green serpenty thing that is broken, and a smaller obelisk of something-or-rather

Stray dogs, resting in the square

Toward the end of the square we found a cool tile/pottery gallery and shop, but they did not allow photos.  After the square, we found some famous graveyard that housed many former Sultans.  There were lots of stray cats roaming the cemetery, including these guys who didn't seem to be showing much respect for Mr. Efendi.

Next, we darted through the grand bazaar.  There were many cruise ships in that day, so it was impossible to make it close enough to a shop to see what was inside before getting approached by a shopkeeper who had "the best" something-or-rather in all of Istanbul and/or the world.  We escaped the bazaar and wandered to find some lunch, and then stumbled upon this closed shop that apparently sells baked potato flavored ice cream.

Finally, we headed back to the hotel for an afternoon nap.

Jet Lag Hendricksons
Nora's parents arrive just before 7pm, and we had dinner on the top floor balcony restaurant of our hotel.  I had an excellent vegetable soup and lamb on a bed of hummus.  This hummus was much sweeter than the hummus you would typically use as dip for chips.  It was quite tasty.  We also saw some small fireworks going off during dinner as it just so happened to be Turkey's independence day.  Nora's parents were hilarious, particularly due to their extreme jet lag.  Mr Hendrickson told us a very interesting story about how he accidentally got a super-duper video camera w/ a built-in projector, and wicked crazy zoom.  Then he ate some mystery dessert, that turned out was Quinse, which, it turns out, he thought he was allergic to, which, it turns out, he isn't.  Yep.

See day 2 post for panorama image of the view

Lamb over Hummus

Meet-up
We dropped off the Hendricksons to get some much needed sleep and headed out on the town to meet up with Yaz, Adam, and the African crew.  They are a fun, lively bunch... so I think we are in good shape for having a great week.  Adam told me a hilarious story about how his niece bought him a catapult (slingshot) so that he could fire rocks at innocent bystanders.  I can't wait to meet his niece! =D

Never Trust a Cabby
And lastly, we got ripped off by a cabby who didn't start the meter.  Adam was quite upset, because he specifically listed this as rule #5 in our itinerary for how to take a cab.  However, he mentioned that we would know the meter was on by some red light in the rear view mirror.  This guy's rear view mirror was littered w/ different red lights and numbers, but as we realized half-way to our destination, none of those lights were actually the meter.  Upon arrival at the Topkapi Palace (I'm not sure why he took us there, but it was close enough to where we wanted), the cabby would not tell us how much the fare was.  He didn't speak a lick of English, but I assumed he'd write down the amount, or at least use his fingers to indicate the cost.  I handed him a 10 and got out of the cab, but he started talking a lot louder and more quickly, so I assumed that 10 was not a sufficient amount.  I tried to signal w/ my hands to ask how much more, but he just kept speaking Turkish very quickly.  I gave him another 10 and he seemed happy.  Adam arrived behind us and said his ride was only 10 total.  Sneaky cabby!