Turkye

Spring Break finally arrived at school, and my parents arrived in Israel to take their first visit to the Middle East. They took a week to see the local sights while I taught my final week, then we took off for Istanbul, Turkey.

Turkey is a history junkie's dream country. Istanbul recently found settlements and artifacts ranging back to 5,500 BCE, and the sheer depth of the history and culture is astonishing to someone from the United States, or even from Israel, which today is celebrating its nascent 61st year of existence as a state.

Here is an aerial photo of Istanbul. On the left side is Europe, and on the right side is Asia. The divider is the Bosphorus Strait, which connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. The city is home to 12 million people. For comparison, this is 20 times as many as the city of Seattle, half again as many as New York City, and half the size of Tokyo.


Istanbul is hilly and covered with buildings. When looking from a plane at low altitude, it is an undulating sea of red roofs punctuated with the occasional pair of minarets sticking up like buoys. It is intense, but only in the fast-tempo way that an ancient metropolis needs to be; the people are wonderfully kind.

Here is a good example of the synthesis of historical and modern in Istanbul: An old mosque framed on top of a light-rail train, stacked over a car tunnel:


On our first day, we went on a seafaring tour of the Bosphorus. Lots of interesting sights along the way. The weather was still very chilly, but beginning to warm up:



Check out the density -- I think this is a neighborhood for the extraordinarily wealthy:


Palace on the water. Perhaps now a hotel:


The strait is a major shipping channel. Note the boat traffic around us.


Outside of one of the Mosques, men wash their feet before entering:


The next day, we visited the Topkapi Palace, home of the Ottoman sultans from the mid-15th until the mid-19th centuries -- A compound with some amazing detail inside. The first set of photos are from the Harem, or the inner sanctum of the Sultan and his living quarters. Click to enlarge and see the detail:






Outside the harem, on the corner of the palace wall, comes an unexpected and breathtaking view of the Bosphorus, definitely fit for a ruler:


A scale model of the palace and its location on the Golden Horn. I love stuff like this.


Next up was Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque, two very important religious sites, but first, a quick detour into the cisterns beneath Hagia Sofia:

There once was a woman who lived near Hagia Sofia, and she drew her drinking water from a well. One day, the water bucket contained a fish. After alerting the authorities who explored further, it was discovered there was an elaborate and ancient underground cistern. Pictured is a strange column with Medusa's head in this place. The cisterns were gothic and damp, and felt like a crypt:


Hagia Sofia, considered by many to be one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, was originally a basilica constructed by the Byzantines in 532AD. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks conquered the city and converted it into a mosque. It is now a museum, and is being restored. My favorite feature of the building (besides its cavernous proportions) are the enormous discs with the Arabic designs:


And here is the Blue Mosque, the beauty of which, for me, outstripped Hagia Sophia. Built in 1616, it has a consistent and thematic use of turquoise (which, I was shocked to learn, literally derives from "color of the Turks" -- credit: Dad). The pictures don't come close to expressing the depth of field in this place:




And, finally, Istiklal Cadessi. This street is a miracle. After an earthquake in the late 1800s devastated a section of town near Taksim Square, the government wisely took the opportunity to rebuild it as a pedestrian-and-streetcar thoroughfare. I wish I had more pictures, but it is like a commercial street like Broadway in NYC writ narrower, taller, more tasteful, and celebratory like a year-round carnival. Restaurants, retailers large and small, movie theaters, music, street vendors, coffee shops, churches, schools, and it gently slopes downhill. Mom and Dad and I stopped for coffee just so we could watch the people:


After five days in Istanbul, we caught a one-hour flight to Antalya, on the southern coast of Turkey. More of a resort town, but also loaded with history and mountains. Here is a pedestrian path that runs along the Mediterranean:


If you follow the path long enough, it comes to a cliff where there is a beer stand and some small tables. Here are some dudes discussing serious business:


I had local beer for $4 a liter and listened to some music here. Bliss.


In the center of old town there was a building that had housed four separate religions over time:


Columns on the coast:


An ancient coliseum in the countryside:


Aquaducts:


And, one of the most transcendent parts of the trip: after looking around the shops near the aquaduct, I wandered down a country road for about a half-kilometer. The pictures don't do it justice, but Spring was just beginning to arrive, and the sense of peaceful and quiet verdant life was unusually strong -- an intense kind of peace. I sat under an almond tree and heard the Muslim call to prayer echoing across the valley.




Finally, a stop at a national park with the bluest and clearest water. A fine finish to a graceful and fascinating trip.