Dan made up for his bad first night last night and slept easily until 6am, about 7 hours. He says he would have slept longer if we’d closed the curtains so the sun wouldn’t come in. I had my traditional bad 2nd night – went to bed around midnight, slept for about 1.5 hours, then up for several, finally got 2 more in between 4-6. But I managed to make it through the day. Hoping tonight is better.

We had breakfast in the hotel and went out about 9am. We walked about a mile to Dolmabahce Palace, the new home of Sultans starting 1856, when the one in reign at the time decided he needed something more modern than Topkapi (which we’ll get to later in the week). Six sultans lived there until Turkey became a republic in 1923, and then its first President, Ataturk, lived there until he died in 1938. He is generally credited with bringing lots of positive reform to Turkey and making it the more modern country it is today compared to its Muslim brethren. In addition to making it secular and underscoring religious freedom, women were given the right to vote, he banned the fez, abolished titles and had had everyone take surnames. The airport is named for him.

Above: a nice garden leading up to the palace. Below: the entrance gate we’d just walked through to get here. (Strange poses like this result from Dan going “Look up. Towards the sun. Now look at me.”)
You could not enter the palace on your own. If you weren’t with a group or your own tour guide, of which there were many, you were held to the side and put with one of the palace docents to take you through it. Photos were not allowed inside. They pushed a lot of people through this thing, and the groups were close together. The one we started with was pretty big. We eventually stole away into another smaller group, and then another still smaller one. It was a little strange but we mostly pulled it off; the middle group never noticed – despite the fact it was all Indian – and the last group leader just said “you should stay with your group.” Dan told a plausible story of how we got mixed up in one of the rooms and lost our group. At any rate, he was pretty nice and didn’t seem to mind us tagging along, in fact even invited us to join them where they were going next at the end!

 

I stole a couple of images off the internet that I thought showed several of the rooms well. Above: the grand staircase shortly after you entered. Those columns are not marble but wood painted to look like that. This palace is built on landfill and they were trying to keep the weight down. Below: one of the salons, or halls. A unique thing about the palace design is it is completely Western – particularly Baroque and Rococo – style in a traditional Turkish layout, with great halls around which are many rooms. Western palaces have thinner corridors with the rooms off of them. It’s mixture of East and West symbolizes much of Istanbul’s attitude about who she is.

When we were in this room we’d commented on the “standing chandeliers”, at which point I said, isn’t it really a lamp? In this photo, that’s exactly what it looks like.
This was the ceremonial hall. That chandelier weighs 8500 pounds and was purchased from Britain a for 2.5million “gold coins” what all he said, from a decoration budget of budget of 5mill – so half spent on this one thing. He didn’t know how much construction cost.
The palace sits right next to the Bosphorus Strait.
Our plans for the rest of the day was really just neighborhood walking. Many of the things on our list are still closed today due to the religious holiday so we moved some things around on our itinerary. Our hotel is in a general area known as “the new district” – which, in Europe of course “new” is the most relative word ever  – and this dates back to Constantine’s time when Catholics left the “old” district to form new neighborhoods north of the Golden Horn to get away from his Eastern Orthodox ways. We stayed on this side of the Horn all day and hit several distinct areas.

We walked first to Taksim Square, a gathering place where large festivals occur and protests have been held, including a recent youth based protest in 2013 that’s referred to as the Tiananmen Square of Istanbul – estimate more than 3million people participated. This is Taksim above and below. [And by the way, complete non-sequiter: there’s no “x” in the Turkish alphabet, so when you need to get somewhere you hire a taksi….]

Next was Istiklal Street, a few blocks down from Taksim. This is #33 on TripAdvisor’s list of 1051 Things to Do in Istanbul, and Rick Steves recommended highly as well. It’s literally just that – a street – with lots of side streets and passage ways off of it, with a wide array of retail and restaurants. We thoroughly enjoyed checking things out and people watching.

We saw a sign from the street pointing to this Turkish Bath so thought – when in Rome and all that. I’d been thinking I wanted to do one while we were here. We went inside. It was a little divey and cheaply priced. We passed in the moment then checked TripAdvisor and it was rated only 2.5 with hundreds of review. A definite pass. But yes that says 1481, as in how long it’s been there. We’ll look for others to go to.

 

One of several passageways we went down.
Lots of little markets in addition to restaurants.

 

 

We ended up getting a similar lunch to yesterdays, although we both agreed yesterdays was better.

Where this street ends, the Galata area picks up. The only other thing on our list to go in was the Galata Mevlevi Museum. And odd little side trip, but on the museum pass. It focuses on the history of the Mevlevi order of Sufi-ism, which, in addition to being the order Rumi was in, is famous for whirling dervishes. Yes, they are an actual thing, not just a Sound of Music reference. You can still catch a performance of them here on Sunday nights, and several other places around town, but you have to book early which we of course didn’t. So I took a few photos of photos instead. I learned before we got here that it’s not so much a dance as a religious ritual. I came here hoping to find the meaning behind it but left still with that question in mind unfortunately. Later I found a reference indicating it’s commonly believed to be a re-enactment of birth and resurrection. But this order has been whirling since the 1300’s.

 

 

This is the hall on the 2nd floor where they dance. I found a YouTube clip of one taken at this same place in 2012. Check it out and fast forward to about 4:00.
A strange little graveyard off to the side. We didn’t notice it when we came in but could see it clearly from the windows upstairs.
No date provided, I just liked the way it looked.
Dan liked this calligraphy here but we don’t know what it means.

Next we went to the Galata Tower. Built around 1348 as a watchtower at about 220 feet high, it is now an observation point, and has a restaurant up there, too. We had no plans to go up, and even if we had we certainly would’ve changed our minds with the line we saw that indicated it was at least a 45 minute wait. While only about 83 degrees today, it was humid and seemed much hotter.

 

Up and down more fun streets.

 

Eventually we got to the Galata Bridge and I got a close-up of what I couldn’t get from the tram yesterday: Lots of folks fishing off the bridge. The bridge is actually 2 layers: cars and public transit on top, shops and restaurants below.

We took these from a landing below. Not sure which mosque that is; pretty sure it’s Suleymaniye, which we’ll also hit later. (And based on the map I just reviewed, that’s exactly what it is.)

Dan: “Look up. Now turn to the sun. Look back at me.”
Me: “Take the damn photo!” My 3.5 hours of sleep was showing.

We took public transportation back to the hotel, and rested for a few hours, including a shower and steam room for me (which we’ve done every night by the way), and probably about an hour unplanned nap. We at first were going to go out for dinner but decided to wait and see what the food in the lounge was. It was pretty good, so we stayed in.

That soup was yogurt, rice and mint and surprisingly good Other nice things: the little squares were lasagna; roasted chicken tenders were pretty tasty. In the little bowls were a kind of frittata, with plenty of dill, a taste we keep rediscovering in this lounge for some reason.

 I couldn’t really describe the two things in bowls but that cheesecake was incredible.
We left about 7pm for our final neighborhood, Besiktas. #82 on TripAdvisor’s list and very close to our hotel. We enjoyed this neighborhood a lot.
 We came across a tiny mosque on our way in, has been here since 1665.

 

Turkey has 2 soccer teams, one of them is named after this neighborhood. Their colors are black and white and I guess they just won something big? Anyway there were flags everywhere. Note the middle of the street below.

The thing to know about the next 3 photos is I was standing in the same place when I took each of them, middle of the street: to my left, in front of me (and a better photo of that flag), to my right.

 

 

 No dollar store’s here. This actually works out to be about $1.75.
 Above and below: a little park just as we got close to the hotel on our way back.

 

We really enjoyed our day, we love seeing how the locals live. And now thankfully it is bedtime.

 

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