In the end I don’t have all that much time in Istanbul itself
– leaving for Izmir tomorrow evening, and heading back on Tuesday night. That
said, it’s not like there’s a week’s worth of stuff to do in Istanbul anyway. Today
was the day for the mosques, and a few other places of interest. The two
imposing, regal, hauntingly beautiful domed mosques that rise up from the Bosphorus.
I remembered going to each of them last time I was here in 2007, but not well
enough to not be surprised by their beauty again.
The first stop was the Blue Mosque, noted for its light blue
giant dome and six minarets. There’s no fee, but a winding line to get in. Once
inside though, it is among the most beautiful places of worship. Non-Muslims
are kept to one side, but enough area to walk around and stare at too many to
count vantages of the ceiling artwork. It is truly hard to describe. The multiple
levels of domes, the insane amounts of calligraphy and artwork on each, the
brightness of the colors. It is all quite intoxicating, craning your neck upwards
and taking it all in.
From the middle of the area where we can walk there is the
courtyard, where you can get a truly up close look at the minarets and the
imposing nature of the Blue Mosque. I’m a person who takes too many pictures by
default, but probably never more so than here. I never want to forget the beauty
of this building. Now, I’m sure I felt something similar in 2007 and then very
much did forget the beauty of it. But now with probably 80 photos of evidence,
I for sure won’t again.
The next stop after a walk through Sultanahmet Square was
the Basilica Cistern, a giant underground Cistern that served as a primary
source of the city’s potable water for centuries. It has been excavated and
turned into a haunting museum of Istanbul’s past. The place is really well laid
out with a winding steel grate path over the remaining bits of water, and
through the hundreds of columns. It may seem a bit repetitive, but there were
two cool aspects of how they laid out the space that kept it lively. First was
the flood lighting which was turned into a mini show, changing colors every 4-5
minutes, from very dark with a hint of white light, to green to orange, making
it where you got different views at different times. Second, they had
interspersed a bunch of sculpture work by local artists throughout, turning it
into a mini-museum. Overall, a really nice experience for what is a fairly
staid spot (given most European cities probably have/had a similar thing).
Next was lunch, which was ,e taking a bit of a risk. There’s
a bunch of restaurants in this area, but it is a heavily tourist area so the
restaurants are generally similarly so. You know the set-up – some outdoor and
indoor seating, a picture-card menu facing the street, 2-3 men hounding
passerby’s (I exaggerate, generally less hounding here than other places I’ve
been). Hard to really tell one from the other. One spot caught my eye though.
The Ayasofya Kebab Restaurant was the place, with its staggering 4.8 rating on
Google, with 3000+ regiews. Now, I was of the opinion that this was probably some
stuffing of the ballot box, but the real reviews (the ones with actual
sentences and pictures) all talked about how great the food was.
They were right. I had an adana kebab plate, which may have
had the best adana kebab I’ve ever had. So juicy, so perfectly spiced, so well
grilled. It was inconceivably better than adana kebabs in the US that are generally
overcooked and dry. They also had really nice salad, herbs and onions, with
cuts of pita that you could make into mini wraps. All around great. The whole menu
looked appealing. I played it down the middle and was rewarded big time. The only
disappointment was the Kunefe dessert was merely good but not great and nowhere
near as good as Kunefe I had in Jordan. The brilliance of that adana kebab was
good enough to make up for it though.
The last strictly touristy stop of the day was the Hagia
Sofia mosque, the oldest and most famous through its history. I did remember
this one, but even this was overwhelming on a second visit. What has changed in
the interceding 17 years is that it is a fully operational mosque and to
enforce that the ground floor is now limited to only Turkish Citizens – I guess
the thinking being limiting it to only Muslims is hard to police. Everyone else
goes straight to the second floor that overlooks the cavernous mosque. Of
course, the Hagia Sophia for centuries was a Catholic begat Christian church,
so they’ve nicely left/recreated some of the mosaics of Jesus and Mother Mary,
along with the again giant, stunning Islamic calligraphy. The walk around the
Hagia Sophia gave countless views of the cavernous atrium and main area. It’s
not as stunning as the Blue Mosque, but you can almost feel the history of a
building that dates itself basically back to the founding of Constantinople as
the head of the Roman Empire (granted, the original building from those times
was knocked or burned down a few times).
The ticket for the Hagia Sophia Mosque comes with a ticket
to the Hagia Sophia museum. That was an experience, even if I don’t know if it
qualifies as a museum. The star bit was a 30-minute audio tour through the Hagia
Sophia’s history, done in a group. Basically you go through a series of about
20 rooms, all with giant video screens playing out the images, while batches of
people hear audio (in their required language) concurrently. It’s a weird, but
ingenius set-up that results in a really nice AV-enabled tour of the cool
history of the building, through its first being built and then rebuilt under
Justinian, to the conquering of Sultan Mehmet and the Ottoman Empire. It was
certainly strange, but super effective of giving you the history both of the
building, and of Byzantium begetting Constantinople begetting Istanbul in
parallel.
From there, the tourist part of my day was finally done, in theory. Not sure if you call strolling through the buzzing, giant, maze-like Grand Bazaar to be tourist or shopping or what. Certainly there were a ton of tourists along with me, but more locals (it is a Saturday, after all) and I was there to shop - get a few souvenirs for back home. There were about 4-5 different types of stalls, each having seemingly hundreds of options. There was one with spices, deserts, teas, ones with tile & metal work, ones with artwork, ones with stone handicrafts, and ones with jewelry. Maybe an additional one where they were selling Turkish lamps (something I'm curious about getting but don't know realistically if it will hold up). The sheer vastness is quite awe inspiring to experience, same with the little niceties like a team vendor strolling through giving people tea. All in all, one of the better giant bazaar/shopping experiences I've had.
Continuing the good experiences was dinner at Neolokal, one of the finer Istanbul restaurants. Perfect setting, in the second floor of an old converted bank building, the space had modern touches and floor to ceiling views of the Bosphorus, with what I think was the Hagia Sophia shining brightly. The space was packed, and the meal super professional and tidy. Eight courses, all well presented and plated and tasting excellent.
The place leans into its name, with all the ingredients coming from different parts of Turkey, which the waiter was happy to explain each time. Baby shrimps from the Adriatic Sea, larger shrimp from the Aegean Sea, lentils from here, chilies from there, lamb from the next one. The place really just featured, focused and stressed Turkish nature and abundance. None of the dishes were that revolutionary, except for one mushroom dish that featured mushroom ravioli (as in the ravioli is made from mushrooms, and stuffed with mushroom) with lightly grilled morel mushrooms and like eight other preparations of mushroom, served on a plate made of soil. Top notch stuff. The rose-flavor inspired dessert was also a favorite as well.
After dinner, I attempted to go to another cocktail spot, Geyik, but it was packed more than any spot I've seen. Seemed like a great place, it was seemingly all locals (I shouldn't be surprised about this given Feb is not tourist season), and no discernable way to order despite pretty clearly people being able to drink in the area outside the space. So instead I did what I normally don't like, and went back to Flekk. It was more crowded than yesterday, but less than Geyik and the bartenders remembered me and brought me to a seat at the bar where I tried a few more of their concoctions. From there, went to a couple clubs, neither packed but both good (one being Temple Club again, which was, glad to report, about double the crowd of yesterday but still less than the crowd should be). This will probably be my last super late nigth till Cape Town, so I enjoyed it well and ended with an Adana Kebab wrap as a parting gift, as one should.
