Maiden's Tower

The story of this tower is that a father heard from a fortune teller that his daughter would die by an animal bite, and having watched plenty of Disney movies, he built this tower in the Bosphorus between the European and Asian sides of Istanbul. In the end, of course, somebody brought her a fruit basket with a snake inside.

Panorama from the Maiden's Tower

From the top of the Maiden's Tower, I got my first introduction to the geography of Istanbul. In the 270 degree panorama you can click on above bits of the Asian side appear on the far right and far left. You can click on the panorama above to get the huge version (3MB) and I recommend opening it in a new window by right-clicking.

The opening on the left is the Marmara Sea. On the right, you can see how the Bosphorus straight continues under the first of two tall suspension bridges. The land in the middle is the historic European side of Istanbul, and from left to right, you can see the location of sites described below: Blue Mosque, Aya Sofya, Topkapi Palace, Süleymaniye, the bridge that goes over the Golden Horn, Galata Tower, the Ritz Hotel, buildings of the financial district, Dolmabahçe Palace, and Çiragan Palace. Below are some maps and satellite images stolen from the sites listed below.

http://www.singlix.com/istanbul/istsky.html
http://sheff.caeds.eng.uml.edu/travel.htm

Fenerbaçe Park

A park that sticks out into the Marmara Sea not too far from Can's apartment. Since the view was excellent, we did what any Turk would do in this situation -- stopped for tea and hung out a bit.

St. Joseph's

Can's brother Bora just graduated from high school here. It started as a French missionary school and was secularized after the Turkish revolution following the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

Topkapi Palace Buildings

This was built in the 1450s after the Ottomans conqured Constantinople (and renamed it Istanbul) and is where all of the Ottoman Sultans lived and worked until Mecit I moved to the more European style Dolmabahçe Palace in 1868. In it's time, Topkapi had quarters for 5,000 people.

Topkapi Palace Inside

The royal crapper is the photo at the bottom left. The Harem was the living quarters of the palace rather than the business part and had something like 400 rooms where the Sultan, his mother, his wives, and his other concubines lived. Only 40 of there are restored for viewing. The Sultan's mother was in charge of every aspect of his personal life. For example, she choose his wives and which mistresses he was allowed to have any given night. Suddenly it seemed much less appealing to be a Sultan.

Topkapi View

Situated right on the tip of the historic part, on a hill surrounded by water on three sides, I had to pause as I imagined myself as the Sultan, looking out of my bedroom at the Ritz Hotel across the inlet of the Golden Horn.

Topkapi Weapons Room

Bogaziçi (Bosphorus) University

Aya Sofya

Known as Hagia Sofya to the Greeks, it was built in the 6th century and was the largest church until St. Peter's Basilica was built in Rome 1,000 years later. Nothing like it had been built and it was the peak of Byzantine architecture. As Mehmet the Conquror took Istanbul in 1453, all of the Byzantines were gathered here. For a while it served both as a church and a mosque, but later it was converted entirely to a mosque and the minarets were built to call for prayer.

Inside were many mosaics which were plastered over since Islam doesn't allow the portrayal of the human figure in a place of worship lest they be mistaken for an idol. In 1936, after Atatürk founded the secular republic, he converted it into a museum and the mosaics have since been uncovered and restored.

The dome has been rebuilt many times after large earthquakes, and even today there is constant restoration.

Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet Camii)

It's known as the Blue Mosque because of the thousands of blue and white Iznik tiles inside. It was built in 1609 across the park from Aya Sofya so the Islamic world could prove that they too could build something that looked similar, but much brighter and more cheery inside. We got a personal tour against our will and Can pretended to be American as we were reminded over and over again that there are 260 stained glass windows.

Can's Apartment

Can only had one week in Istanbul and he had to get regular things done like see the doctor and visit friends, and during these times I would walk around his neighborhood or go to a cafe on Baghdad Avenue to write postcards. It was a very relaxing low key time, and I really enjoyed my time with his parents.

Semi-Traditional Istanbul Apartments

Much of Istanbul keeps getting destroyed by fire, and this combined with the city's huge population explosion starting in the 60s means that very few traditional buildings are left, most having been replaced by 10+ story cinderblock with stucco covering. You can see this in the pictures from Can's building above and it's very reminiscent of an American beach town like Miami or San Diego.

Boat Rides

Most days with Bilge we would take a ferry from near her apartment on the Asian side to the historical sites on the European side. The same boats have been in operation since the 60s, over ten years before the first of the two large suspension bridges was built.

Dolmabahçe Palace Outside

Toward the end of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan decided that Topkapi wasn't good enough to impress the western leaders the Ottomans began relying heavily on, so he spent a lot of money building a more European-style palace farther up the Bosphorus.

Dolmabahçe Inside

Only the pictures in the treasury where I could set the camera down for the long-time exposure really came out well. The place was pretty dark, mostly to preserve the colors of the stuff inside from the sun's UV light.

Dolmabahçe Harem

The Harem was the living quarters of the palace rather than the business part. The Sultan's mother was in charge of this area, along with choosing his wives and which mistresses he was allowed to have that night. This is where Atatürk lived out his final days, and his portrait hangs outside of the room where he died, with the clock set permanently to 9:05. Sorry about the blur, but it was very dark and the exposure setting was longer than I could hold steady. At the end are several pictures of the royal bathroom.

Golden Horn & Galata Tower

The Ottomans had conquered the area around Istanbul and were pounding on the city in various ways before it finally fell. The Byzantines kept a chain across the Golden Horn and only let in people like the Genoese, who this whole time had kept them supplied by sea and who built this tower. In 1453 Mehmet the Conqueror (he only got that title later) decided to finally end things by having his soldiers drag the ships over land one night and put them in the Golden Horn past the chain. It was was a complete psychological defeat.

The Best Fish Restaurant

Here you can see Bilge's family including her brother and sister-in-law. The view was excellent -- you can see the Maiden's tower at dusk and at night.

Drive along the Bosphorus & Robert College

Bilge's brother volunteered to drive us along the European side one morning and we'd have lunch at a particular place at the end near the Black Sea. Along the way we stopped to see Bilge's high school and it's beautiful view from the athletic fields.

Whirling Dervishes

Mevlâna Jalâluddîn Rumi was born in 1207 in what is today Afghanistan. He was educated in Islam, but had many more Eastern influences. These are the Mevlevi Order. They are Sufis, a spiritual offshoot of Islam.

Grand (or Covered) Bazaar
(or Kapali Çarsi in Turkish)

My guidebook described this as the world's first shopping mall, built in 1481, but I was skeptical -- surely it would be a bunch of narrow, barely covered streets with a bunch of guys selling things on little push carts. This was not the case. Most of it was shopping-mall sized aisles with small shopping-mall sized stores with floor-to-ceiling glass display windows and air conditioned insides. This was especially true of the 100 or so jewelry stores. Inside are 65 twisting streets crammed with more than 4,000 shops. The picture on the bottom right is a busy open section, but not very representative of the mall-looking part. Here I bought a traditional drum called a darbuka and a small woven kilim (a "carpet" is knotted rather than woven and much more expensive.)

Grand Bazaar Map -- Each of those "blocks" had at least ten stores.

Istanbul Sites

The train station that was the end of the Orient Express, the hotel where Agatha Christie wrote her novel about a murder on it, more traditional Ottoman houses, a tea cup that Atatürk drank from when he visited the same tea place, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissenger's note to the restaurant where I drank my first Cola Turka.

He is a French author who came to Istanbul in 1876 as a naval officer and fell in love with Turks and a Turkish girl. According to the web, "He frequently went to a coffeehouse on the upper parts of the Golden Horn and reminisced of days bygone as he watched the estuary and the quaint life of the boatsmen and fishermen. The coffeehouse since then has been known by the name of the author and is a frequently visited site." The place was very nice and had an excellent view. I kept hearing people say this particular phrase a few seconds into conversation and so I finally asked what it meant. "Very hot."

Orthodox Church

We visited the seat of the Orthodox Church along with an old church building famous for it's murals.

Süleymaniye

Süleyman the Magnificent and his wife are buried here. According to the web, the Ottoman Empire reached its zenith and became a world power during his reign.

Sinan the Architect

This one goes out to Pratheev who took a semester of Islamic Art and Architecture. This is the grave of Sinan, the architect who designed Süleymaniye and other important mosques. Islamic headstones are hats that indicate what position the person had. His looked enough like a soccer ball for somebody to put one in his memorial.

Bird's Nest -- on Bilge's balcony.

Wedding Dinner

Bilge's friend had already gotten married in Canada, but this was a dinner mostly for the her family and friends. You can see the moon over the Bosphorus through the dining area in this picture above.

The bride's sister and I -- taken by a real photographer.

Archeology Museum

Quite an extensive collection of artifacts from around Turkey including a good (but painfully un-air-conditioned) display of the various cities built on top of each other at Troy, photographs of the German guy who illegally stole all of the site's treasures, and photographs of his wife wearing some of the stolen jewelry. I took a lot of pictures of this finely carved tomb billed as that of Alexander the Great, but I think the fine print said it probably wasn't his.

Boat Ride Back

Dinner at Ortaköy

The pictures on the bottom are of this neat glass building they built inside a burned-out brick shell.

Tea at Çiragan Palace

I got some money from an ATM with an incredible view of the Bosphorus that was owned by the bank Bilge's father had worked for.

Trip to the South -- Click for the full map

Kusadasi

This was the jumping off point to Ephesus and where I spent the the night. Turns out that this is where Can's family has their summer place. I had a very long conversation with one of the restaurant greeters who turned out to be an electrical engineering working on a ground-penetrating radar project.

I asked him where the exciting night life was, and he gave me a card for a bar with live music called "Big Bang." Given my profession, I made a serious effort to find it, but taking after Boston, none of the streets were labeled.

I ended up instead on "Bar Street" going from place to place dancing to the Turkish music at the Turkish bar, then the Irish, the Russian, etc.

As far as I could tell, everybody there was Serbian. Of course my biased sample was limited to the cutest girls that I thought would talk to me along with their friends, but even they said they were surprised to have met so many Serbians.

Ephesus
(just Efes in Turkish)

According to the web and what I remember, the city was established with a harbor on the mouth of a River. It was an important port under Alexander the Great in the 2nd century BC. and became the capital of the Asia Minor province of the Roman Empire under Augustus in 133 BC. Unfortunately for them, they cut down all of the trees on the mountain behind the city and erosion has since pushed the coast 15km away. Because of this, the city went into final decline during the Byzantine era and by 527 AD it was deserted. The city is also important as the early seat of Christianity, visited by St Paul, whose letters to the Ephesians are recorded in the New Testament. This is the place where Mary is said to have lived out her days after Jesus died. The huge thing is the theater, once covered from the sun with wood and cloth. The large building on the right is the library.

Pamukkale

I had seen amazing pictures of this blinding-white mineral-covered mountain with amazingly blue pools in a Turkish guidebook and this was one of the things I wanted to see while I was there, so after a morning swim in Kusadasi, I took a bus inland to Pamukale. There are several large panoramas with the uncropped versions at the bottom.

Movie1 Movie2 Movie3 Movie4 Movie5

Pamukkale Top

In the top right picture, you can clearly see the source of all of the mineral water that flows down. Seriously, they steal most of it for hotels and only pipe a small fraction over to the side of the mountain. Apparently the name means "Cotton Castle," and the top of the mountain used to be a thriving Roman city where many people from around the empire would come to be healed in the water. Under the text, you can see all of my attempts to photograph myself under this Roman arch thing.

Pamukkale Sunset -- It was really beautiful on the way down.

Istanbul Last Day

The first picture is of an Egyptian obelisk given from Egypt to the Ottoman government. Labeling was unclear, but somewhere I got the impression that it was from around something like 3,000 BC.

Amsterdam

At around 4am I caught a shuttle bus to the airport where I asked for an exit seat so I could stretch out my legs. Sitting next to me on the plane was a member of the Turkish Women's national basketball team who was on her way to San Antonio to play in the WMBA for the summer. I convinced her to try to hang out in Amsterdam with me during our six hour layover, and it ended up being a good time even though the previous night was a huge gay-pride party and nobody was awake Sunday morning at 8am. I think that much of Amsterdam's economy depends on KLM's long layovers -- certainly everybody we met there was in this same situation.