I have a blow up boot thing that means I can walk! A bit! With crutches! I took advantage of this to spend the day at the movies, making the most of my free movies card and my sore crutch hands.
One of the films I saw was Skyfall, at the big screen where I saw Spiderman (well, one of the times I saw Spiderman). Like when I saw Spiderman, they had film problems. Last time it was the coordination of the 3D images. This time everything was pink for a while, which it turns out is very distracting. Everything was back to normal by the time the actual movie started (there were a very, very many ads, ninety percent of which were Bond themed) so I got to witness the Istanbul opening sequence in proper technicolor.
And I had been to many of the places! I recognised the exotic street corners and bits of mosque wall! I realised that the compositing if locations was done with quite a bit if artistic license, because there was no way some scenes could have happened in the real places, unless there was some time-space stretching going on. But what am I talking about? This is a Bond film. They laugh in the face of reality and probable-sequence-of-events.
Bond films can do this, I think. You can see the filmmakers gleefully rubbing the hands as they contemplate different action scenes. What do you mean, it's unlikely there'll be (highlight the spoilers if you want them) a digger and four VW Beatles on a Turkish passenger train? It's all right! It looks awesome! The audience will accept it! The bar of willing suspension of disbelief is higher for Bond. We want to see a fun movie. We don't really care about the little details, like the fact that Circle and District underground trains do not run in deep-level tunnels. We can forgive, if you give us villains using entire (strangely empty) Jubilee line trains as weapons at Embankment Station, where Jubilee trains do not run. Ha! That beats a puny little laser, Goldfinger.
It's a good movie and I really enjoyed it (though I was slightly concerned that the villain was portrayed as gay, considering various 'moral' debates at the moment. Yay for having gay characters on screen and having a more numerically-accurate representation of society, but not so great that it was portrayed negatively. There's already enough negativity around, and it just solidifies prejudices, doesn't it?).
I've been thinking about plotting lots this week, considering I'm doing Nanowrimo next week, and so I went into Skyfall with a particular eye. The movie follows the beats of a story well - problem, try to solve, doesn't work, try to solve, maybe we have, yes we have! Oh... no, screwed up. Badly. Try to solve... Fall back... Try to solve... Maybe... Yes! It was also interesting in that they address Bond's seeming invulnability - a character who has too much skill or power is too easy to get out of situations, so there's much less tension. I have been struggling with this in my Nanowrimo planning - how do you stop a character from becoming unbeatable, especially in fantasy? In Skyfall, you're no longer sure that Bond will be up to the challenges he faces. You're reasonably sure he won't die in the end, but there are lots of things that could happen that don't include him dying... Tension is higher because Bond isn't so perfect anymore.
And, I have to admit, I cried. This is the second time I have cried in a Bond film. The first time was when a car in one of the Pierce Brosnan movies got sliced in half by a helicopter-mounted circular saw. This time also involved the destruction of a car... No, I don't want to talk about it.
So I'm inspired, and back to the plotting! Must figure out how to heighten the tension and maybe think of a few scenes with explosions...
Showing posts with label Istanbul. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Istanbul. Show all posts
Friday, October 26, 2012
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Sunday, June 17, 2012
Turkey Days 7 and 8: Pamukkale, Night Buses and Istanbul's Grand Bazaar
I'm back in London now, and it's about twenty degrees cooler than it was in Turkey. Back to work tomorrow...
The day after Ephesus and our Turkish bath, we got a shuttle to the train station for our train to Denizli, a town further inland famous for cotton. The train was very full and we took a while to find seats, and once we did I spent the remaining three hours sleeping, or looking it the window at the tall hills and fields and towns. From Denizli we took a bus to Pamukkale, which is famous for its white terraces.
When I was tiny, we used to get pizza from a place with a poster of the terraces displayed proudly on the wall, and I always wanted to go there. I was very excited when I saw it was included on the itinerary, and it was just as amazing as I'd thought. You can see it as a white section of hill as you approach, and then as you get closer the white resolves into cliffs and terraces and tiny dots of people moving up and down. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant where the owner performed dramatic caricatures of each of our nationalities (including an attempted haka), then reapplied our sunscreen to every bit of exposed skin and walked up to the terraces.
At first it looks a lot like a ski slope, but when you get right on the travertines you feel the rough calcium beneath your feet and see the rivulets of water and patterns in the stone. I decided the texture was most like dragon skin, and if anyone ever needs to take a plaster cast of a material for a movie or some such thing, they should go to Pamukkale.
In the eighties the terraces had hotels built on top of them and a road following them up (actually on the travertines. Can't quite believe it) but when they became a World Heritage Site they demolished the hotels and replaced the road with artificial pools. The pools still look particularly man-made, but I guess they're a lot better than the road and the hotels. You're still allowed to walk on the travertines as long as you don't wear shoes, but you're not really supposed to swim in the pools because it contaminates the water that should be forming the travertines. Lots of people do, however, and I wondered if they had some kind of system in place so that the water is directed over the natural travertines when the tourists aren't there, and over the man-made parts (which don't matter so much in my opinion) when they aren't. The natural pools didn't have any water running over them when we were there, so hopefully they're doing something like that.
By the time we reached the top my feet were a bit raw and everyone was very hot. There are ruins of the ancient city of Hieropolis at the top, as well as a swimming pool with real ancient columns in it and a place where you can have Doctor Fish 'give you a pedicure' (eat dead skin off your feet). Five of us tried the Doctor Fish and spent the first few minutes squealing and clutching at the sides of the tank as all the other customers sat looking sophisticated. It got better after that, and after the fish and the Turkish bath we were confident there was no dead skin anywhere on our bodies.
We had our last group dinner on the roof of a hotel beneath grape vines and left the Aqueduchess to continue her journeys in Cappadoccia, where they filmed the cave-house bits of Star Wars. The rest if us took a bus back to Denizli before getting a luxury night bus all the way to Istanbul. I managed to sleep about half the way, but by the time we got to Istanbul I was very tired. Our airport shuttle didn't leave until 1pm, so we spent the morning wandering the Grand Bazaar and using up most (or in my case, all) of our money. I think I got some good deals - best was 75% off, but that was more because I didn't have the correct change than because of my skill in bargaining.
It was sad to say goodbye to our group, but I think we'll stay in touch. Glamgirl and I were on the same flight back to London. We ate far too much free sample Turkish Delight in Istanbul Airport and searched for chocolate and Swiss army knives on our stop in Zurich airport. I found chocolate in the shape of a Swiss army knife, and then we boarded the plane with the least hassle I've ever encountered - no lines, just scan your own ticket, show your passport and walk onto the plane where everyone was very calm and reserved. I was amazed by the flight attendants' ability to switch immediately between French and English and German.
Now considering a trip to Barcelona. Hmmm.
The day after Ephesus and our Turkish bath, we got a shuttle to the train station for our train to Denizli, a town further inland famous for cotton. The train was very full and we took a while to find seats, and once we did I spent the remaining three hours sleeping, or looking it the window at the tall hills and fields and towns. From Denizli we took a bus to Pamukkale, which is famous for its white terraces.
When I was tiny, we used to get pizza from a place with a poster of the terraces displayed proudly on the wall, and I always wanted to go there. I was very excited when I saw it was included on the itinerary, and it was just as amazing as I'd thought. You can see it as a white section of hill as you approach, and then as you get closer the white resolves into cliffs and terraces and tiny dots of people moving up and down. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant where the owner performed dramatic caricatures of each of our nationalities (including an attempted haka), then reapplied our sunscreen to every bit of exposed skin and walked up to the terraces.
We wandered around the ruins a bit and then made our way back down the travertines, which I think was better than coming up with the whole white expanse spread before you and the plains below and the mountains in the distance. Absolutely incredible.
Now considering a trip to Barcelona. Hmmm.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Istanbul Day 2: Mosques, Spice Markets and the Aya Sofya
I've had about five hours sleep and I don't do very well on five hours sleep so I'm not sure how coherent this post will be. I apologise in advance.
So. After a nice Turkish breakfast we set out on a walking tour of old Istanbul. Our first visit was to the Blue Mosque, which was just as crowded as the day before, and quite noisy. We recovered in a cafe in the square near the sixteenth-century university, where I tried Turkish coffee for the first time. It is thick, though possibly not quite thick enough to stand your spoon up in (I'd heard you could do this) and comes in a small cup. The coffee is ground up very fine and stirred in so you drink quite a lot of grounds, but it's not as unpleasant as when you drink normal coffee grounds - in fact it's quite nice. At the end you're left with about a centimetre of coffee grounds in the bottom, which you can use to tell fortunes.
The next stop was the Sulaimayne Mosque, which I enjoyed a lot more than the Blue Mosque - far fewer people and richer, more vibrant decorations. The architect considered this mosque his master work and spent a lot of time getting the acoustics right, so when you speak the sound softly echoes around the building. Even with people talking it's very peaceful and you just have to sit and gaze and take it all in. The windows high up around the dome throw light on the gold, red and blue paintwork and white walls, and electric lights glow gold on high ledges and low chandeliers. The garden of the mosque looks out over the city and harbour, and I was amazed at how high we'd climbed.
Back out on the streets we wound through lots of little alleyways and streets with steps. We saw one building covered completely in colourful randomly-applied mosaic tiles, which gave an interesting inside-out bathroom feel, and many ancient-looking walls with ivy holding higgledy-piggledy stones together. Our third mosque of the day was quite small (compared to the previous ones) and reached through a winding medieval staircase. It's called the Rustem Pasa Mosque and is, I think, more deserving of the name Blue Mosque than the Blue Mosque is. The blue tiles in this one are a deep royal blue and come right down to the ground, whereas the ones in the other mosques began above eye-level, I guess to lead your thoughts towards the heavens.
A few more turns through the cobblestones streets and we were at sea level again. Our guide suggested fish-in-bread for lunch, so we picked a brightly painted and gilded boat at the dock and got our fish-in-bread for five lira (a little less than three pounds). The boat was wildly rocking on the wakes of ships going past, to the point it almost looked like it might tip over, and service had to stop until the water calmed again. You'd have to have very good balance to work in that fast-food place. The fish was pretty good, though I seemed to have received the entire group's share of bones and spent a lot of time picking them out from between my teeth.
We had an afternoon full of free time, so we split up. My roommate Kiwi Glamgirl and I took a wander through the spice market and spent a lot of time in one shop where the man poured spices into our hands to sample and let us smell all the beautiful teas. We came out with quite a bit of tea, some spices, Turkish delight and a pepper grinder apiece, and could have bought a lot more (the man told us we were shopping like students when we kept saying 'no! That's enough! Enough!').
We dropped our purchases at the hotel and followed the tram line up to the Aya Sofya, which is the former church-mosque-now-museum straight across from the Blue Mosque. It was built in the fifth century, if my memory's giving me the right info, and is absolutely huge. It's still in the top five biggest religious buildings in the world. The interior was originally covered in mosaics but then plastered over when it became a mosque, but they've uncovered some of them so you can see. The entire building seems to be made of marble and the domed ceiling soars above you - it's so high they had to build it three times before it would stay up. There are lots of Roman arched everywhere, and it was incredible to think that the reason you only see round Roman arches is that they hadn't yet invented pointed arches when they built the Aya Sofya.
We climbed up stone ramps, round and round and round, to get to the gallery where most of the mosaics were and to look down on the vast floor below. As in the other mosques, low-hanging wrought iron frames held sparkling lights and the walls were decorated with flowers and Arabic calligraphy. I tried to get some pictures of the vibrant stained glass windows, but they never seem to show up properly on my camera.
We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the surrounding parks and shops (we were given some apple tea by one of the shopkeepers) and sitting on the grass outside Topkapi Palace. We met up with the rest of the group for dinner at a fill-a-plate style cafe, where I had a very rich moussaka, and then walked across the bridge and took pictures of the sunset and peach-lit mosques.
Our guide was very enthusiastic about taking the second-oldest metro on the world up to Taksim. The metro, unlike the oldest metro in London, actually looks like it was built in the nineteenth century, with brick walls and only one carriage. It reminded me very much of the Wellington cable car, because it runs on the same principle: two cars on cables that start at either end of the track and cross in the middle.
This side of the river is more where everyday Istanbulites spend their time, away from the tourists. The are seventeen million people in Istanbul, and while the streets weren't that crowded (I.e. you could walk in a straight line without banging into anyone for most of the time) there were still so many more people than you might expect at nine o'clock on a Sunday night. Most of the people at the cafes and restaurants and bars were men, so I guess the women mostly stay at home.
We climbed many flights of a spiral staircase to get to a roof terrace open to the night sky and had a good time chatting and getting to know our group better. I ordered a mojito in a bottle, expecting it to be mixed with rum or vodka, but it turned out to be a mojito-flavoured beer. I do not like beer. I managed to get through about half of it, concentrating on the mojito taste and not the beer.
By the time we got back to the hostel it was nearing midnight and we had to catch a bus at six-thirty a.m., hence my five hours sleep. I'm now writing this on the bus to Gallipoli (probably should be using this time to sleep... Meh...) and looking out the window at the very New Zealand-esque landscape. Sunnier and drier, though.
(Are we nearly there yet?)
So. After a nice Turkish breakfast we set out on a walking tour of old Istanbul. Our first visit was to the Blue Mosque, which was just as crowded as the day before, and quite noisy. We recovered in a cafe in the square near the sixteenth-century university, where I tried Turkish coffee for the first time. It is thick, though possibly not quite thick enough to stand your spoon up in (I'd heard you could do this) and comes in a small cup. The coffee is ground up very fine and stirred in so you drink quite a lot of grounds, but it's not as unpleasant as when you drink normal coffee grounds - in fact it's quite nice. At the end you're left with about a centimetre of coffee grounds in the bottom, which you can use to tell fortunes.
The next stop was the Sulaimayne Mosque, which I enjoyed a lot more than the Blue Mosque - far fewer people and richer, more vibrant decorations. The architect considered this mosque his master work and spent a lot of time getting the acoustics right, so when you speak the sound softly echoes around the building. Even with people talking it's very peaceful and you just have to sit and gaze and take it all in. The windows high up around the dome throw light on the gold, red and blue paintwork and white walls, and electric lights glow gold on high ledges and low chandeliers. The garden of the mosque looks out over the city and harbour, and I was amazed at how high we'd climbed.
Back out on the streets we wound through lots of little alleyways and streets with steps. We saw one building covered completely in colourful randomly-applied mosaic tiles, which gave an interesting inside-out bathroom feel, and many ancient-looking walls with ivy holding higgledy-piggledy stones together. Our third mosque of the day was quite small (compared to the previous ones) and reached through a winding medieval staircase. It's called the Rustem Pasa Mosque and is, I think, more deserving of the name Blue Mosque than the Blue Mosque is. The blue tiles in this one are a deep royal blue and come right down to the ground, whereas the ones in the other mosques began above eye-level, I guess to lead your thoughts towards the heavens.
A few more turns through the cobblestones streets and we were at sea level again. Our guide suggested fish-in-bread for lunch, so we picked a brightly painted and gilded boat at the dock and got our fish-in-bread for five lira (a little less than three pounds). The boat was wildly rocking on the wakes of ships going past, to the point it almost looked like it might tip over, and service had to stop until the water calmed again. You'd have to have very good balance to work in that fast-food place. The fish was pretty good, though I seemed to have received the entire group's share of bones and spent a lot of time picking them out from between my teeth.
We had an afternoon full of free time, so we split up. My roommate Kiwi Glamgirl and I took a wander through the spice market and spent a lot of time in one shop where the man poured spices into our hands to sample and let us smell all the beautiful teas. We came out with quite a bit of tea, some spices, Turkish delight and a pepper grinder apiece, and could have bought a lot more (the man told us we were shopping like students when we kept saying 'no! That's enough! Enough!').
We dropped our purchases at the hotel and followed the tram line up to the Aya Sofya, which is the former church-mosque-now-museum straight across from the Blue Mosque. It was built in the fifth century, if my memory's giving me the right info, and is absolutely huge. It's still in the top five biggest religious buildings in the world. The interior was originally covered in mosaics but then plastered over when it became a mosque, but they've uncovered some of them so you can see. The entire building seems to be made of marble and the domed ceiling soars above you - it's so high they had to build it three times before it would stay up. There are lots of Roman arched everywhere, and it was incredible to think that the reason you only see round Roman arches is that they hadn't yet invented pointed arches when they built the Aya Sofya.
We climbed up stone ramps, round and round and round, to get to the gallery where most of the mosaics were and to look down on the vast floor below. As in the other mosques, low-hanging wrought iron frames held sparkling lights and the walls were decorated with flowers and Arabic calligraphy. I tried to get some pictures of the vibrant stained glass windows, but they never seem to show up properly on my camera.
We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the surrounding parks and shops (we were given some apple tea by one of the shopkeepers) and sitting on the grass outside Topkapi Palace. We met up with the rest of the group for dinner at a fill-a-plate style cafe, where I had a very rich moussaka, and then walked across the bridge and took pictures of the sunset and peach-lit mosques.
Our guide was very enthusiastic about taking the second-oldest metro on the world up to Taksim. The metro, unlike the oldest metro in London, actually looks like it was built in the nineteenth century, with brick walls and only one carriage. It reminded me very much of the Wellington cable car, because it runs on the same principle: two cars on cables that start at either end of the track and cross in the middle.
This side of the river is more where everyday Istanbulites spend their time, away from the tourists. The are seventeen million people in Istanbul, and while the streets weren't that crowded (I.e. you could walk in a straight line without banging into anyone for most of the time) there were still so many more people than you might expect at nine o'clock on a Sunday night. Most of the people at the cafes and restaurants and bars were men, so I guess the women mostly stay at home.
We climbed many flights of a spiral staircase to get to a roof terrace open to the night sky and had a good time chatting and getting to know our group better. I ordered a mojito in a bottle, expecting it to be mixed with rum or vodka, but it turned out to be a mojito-flavoured beer. I do not like beer. I managed to get through about half of it, concentrating on the mojito taste and not the beer.
By the time we got back to the hostel it was nearing midnight and we had to catch a bus at six-thirty a.m., hence my five hours sleep. I'm now writing this on the bus to Gallipoli (probably should be using this time to sleep... Meh...) and looking out the window at the very New Zealand-esque landscape. Sunnier and drier, though.
(Are we nearly there yet?)
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Turkey Day 1: Wanderings, the Blue Mosque and Catamarans
Merhaba! It means hello. I've almost got the hang of thank you (tedeshekkurler, sp.) and now I just need to memorise a few more words like excuse me and sorry-I-stepped-on-your-foot. It's amazing how you can mutter a word over and over and over to yourself in your head, but when it comes time to use it, it's completely gone.
This morning I got up rather late (explaining to myself that, as Turkey is two hours ahead of the UK, I was actually getting up early) and had breakfast in the hostel cafe, sitting on cushions around a little table. Breakfast was interesting, so I'm sorry but I have to detail it: feta, two kinds of olives (I thought one kind was huge blueberries and got very excited until I bit into it), cucumber, bread and apricot jam. Just as I was getting ready to go, they were carrying large TVs outside and attaching them to their mountings. When they turned them on, there were the All Blacks doing the haka! It was a live game against the Irish at Eden Park with what I think was Turkish commentary - funny to hear Turkish-Turkish-Turkish-Man of the match-Turkish-Heineken Cup-Turkish. I watched about ten minutes of that and then decided I should really get out and find the hotel where my tour starts. I wonder what the score was.
Again, I managed to find the hotel with only prior consultation of a map. Unfortunately, the tour had changed the hotel so I got directions from the first hotel that I didn't really listen to and then spent about half an hour wandering to the right hotel, situated three minutes walk from the first one.
Bags dropped, I set off for the turquoise sea I'd seen down one of the roads (had a revelation today - turquoise must come from Turkey, right?) and crossed over a bridge to what I thought at the time must be Asia, but looking back on it probably wasn't (Istanbul is situated on both Europe and Asian continents, but there are three parts to it, two in Europe). There were lots of fishermen throwing their lines off the bridge and coming up with multiple small iridescent fish, and people selling bait and bottles of iced water.
I wanted to go back to Sultanahmet to check out the Blue Mosque, and I was reasonably confident of my ability to get back because you can see the Blue Mosque with its six minarets from a long way off, as well as the Hagia Sofya beside it. Just look for the two gigantic Mosques, I thought to myself.
No one told me there were more than two gigantic mosques.
At one point I got four gigantic mosques all in my camera shot at the same time (though some were very tiny), and none of them were the Hagia Sofya or the Blue Mosque. Surely they don't need that many gigantic mosques - what about a few smaller ones? Must be to confuse lost tourists...
I did find my way back (just follow the tram tracks...) and bought myself a turquoise scarf so I could go into the mosque. I took lots of pictures of the courtyard, with its marble paving and pillars around the edges and latticed fountain in the middle, and then found that the mosque had just closed for midday prayers. So I sat against a wooden door in the shade of the courtyard corridor roof and listened to the call to prayer from the minaret loudspeakers.
It's a haunting sound. The Blue Mosque call was answered by another mosque further away, and then another one beyond that, so there was a kind of layered echo fading into the distance. While prayers are on, they have a lecture in another building for tourists wanting to know more about the Mosque, telling you why it's called the Blue Mosque (blue tiles inside), showing pictures of other mosques including an open-air one, and translating the calligraphy. It was really interesting (and there was a teeny tiny kitten outside). I'd noticed before that mosques are decorated only with flowers or calligraphy or abstract patterns, and this is because they do not want to have any representation of anything that might be worshipped (no idols etc.), while flowers are supposed to remind you of the gardens of paradise.
To get into the Blue Mosque as a tourist you pass through a small arched passageway, take a plastic bag for your shoes and make sure you're properly dressed. It seems it's more important to have your legs and arms covered than your head (as a woman), because lots of people were using the scarves provided as shawls or sarongs and not covering their heads. No one was yelling at them, so I assume this was acceptable (though I'm not sure about the girl using hers to do a sexy pose for her boyfriend's camera...).
Everything in the mosque draws you to look up. The domes stretch high above, coloured and patterned, and beautifully-wrought iron frames hold golden lights just above your head. I should mention at this point that my camera does not talk to my iPad, so I don't have any way of posting pictures at the moment. I plan to put them up when I get back! (now done)
When I was finished staring at the huge pillars and beautiful paintwork, I made my way down the hill to the sea, where about a dozen catamarans were having races. There was quite a bit of wind, and at times one side lifted out of the water as they sped along.
I walked a bit further and found many, many people sunbathing and a few happily caught in a very strong current that was carrying them parallel to shore. In one place a man had set up a frame of balloons and a gun, and I guess you could pay to shoot the balloons, or the ferry that was just beyond the balloon frame. Your choice. Later, I saw another man doing the same thing in front of what looked to be a major water pipeline. Possibly they weren't real guns.
We had our first important meeting as a tour group back at the hotel. There are quite a few Australians on the trip, and I'm sharing a room with a New Zealander. There are also a few Americans and English people, so i think it will be a good mix. We went out to dinner at a nice restaurant where I had Adana kebab and baklava (I've been walking past windows full of baklava all day going mmmmmmmm). I think I possibly haven't drunk enough water today because I have a headache, but hopefully that will go away with sleep...
I'm very much enjoying the air conditioning in my hotel room.
This morning I got up rather late (explaining to myself that, as Turkey is two hours ahead of the UK, I was actually getting up early) and had breakfast in the hostel cafe, sitting on cushions around a little table. Breakfast was interesting, so I'm sorry but I have to detail it: feta, two kinds of olives (I thought one kind was huge blueberries and got very excited until I bit into it), cucumber, bread and apricot jam. Just as I was getting ready to go, they were carrying large TVs outside and attaching them to their mountings. When they turned them on, there were the All Blacks doing the haka! It was a live game against the Irish at Eden Park with what I think was Turkish commentary - funny to hear Turkish-Turkish-Turkish-Man of the match-Turkish-Heineken Cup-Turkish. I watched about ten minutes of that and then decided I should really get out and find the hotel where my tour starts. I wonder what the score was.
Again, I managed to find the hotel with only prior consultation of a map. Unfortunately, the tour had changed the hotel so I got directions from the first hotel that I didn't really listen to and then spent about half an hour wandering to the right hotel, situated three minutes walk from the first one.
Bags dropped, I set off for the turquoise sea I'd seen down one of the roads (had a revelation today - turquoise must come from Turkey, right?) and crossed over a bridge to what I thought at the time must be Asia, but looking back on it probably wasn't (Istanbul is situated on both Europe and Asian continents, but there are three parts to it, two in Europe). There were lots of fishermen throwing their lines off the bridge and coming up with multiple small iridescent fish, and people selling bait and bottles of iced water.
I wanted to go back to Sultanahmet to check out the Blue Mosque, and I was reasonably confident of my ability to get back because you can see the Blue Mosque with its six minarets from a long way off, as well as the Hagia Sofya beside it. Just look for the two gigantic Mosques, I thought to myself.
No one told me there were more than two gigantic mosques.
At one point I got four gigantic mosques all in my camera shot at the same time (though some were very tiny), and none of them were the Hagia Sofya or the Blue Mosque. Surely they don't need that many gigantic mosques - what about a few smaller ones? Must be to confuse lost tourists...
 |
| The actual Blue Mosque |
I did find my way back (just follow the tram tracks...) and bought myself a turquoise scarf so I could go into the mosque. I took lots of pictures of the courtyard, with its marble paving and pillars around the edges and latticed fountain in the middle, and then found that the mosque had just closed for midday prayers. So I sat against a wooden door in the shade of the courtyard corridor roof and listened to the call to prayer from the minaret loudspeakers.
It's a haunting sound. The Blue Mosque call was answered by another mosque further away, and then another one beyond that, so there was a kind of layered echo fading into the distance. While prayers are on, they have a lecture in another building for tourists wanting to know more about the Mosque, telling you why it's called the Blue Mosque (blue tiles inside), showing pictures of other mosques including an open-air one, and translating the calligraphy. It was really interesting (and there was a teeny tiny kitten outside). I'd noticed before that mosques are decorated only with flowers or calligraphy or abstract patterns, and this is because they do not want to have any representation of anything that might be worshipped (no idols etc.), while flowers are supposed to remind you of the gardens of paradise.
 |
| Teeny tiny stray kitten outside the mosque |
To get into the Blue Mosque as a tourist you pass through a small arched passageway, take a plastic bag for your shoes and make sure you're properly dressed. It seems it's more important to have your legs and arms covered than your head (as a woman), because lots of people were using the scarves provided as shawls or sarongs and not covering their heads. No one was yelling at them, so I assume this was acceptable (though I'm not sure about the girl using hers to do a sexy pose for her boyfriend's camera...).
Everything in the mosque draws you to look up. The domes stretch high above, coloured and patterned, and beautifully-wrought iron frames hold golden lights just above your head. I should mention at this point that my camera does not talk to my iPad, so I don't have any way of posting pictures at the moment. I plan to put them up when I get back! (now done)
When I was finished staring at the huge pillars and beautiful paintwork, I made my way down the hill to the sea, where about a dozen catamarans were having races. There was quite a bit of wind, and at times one side lifted out of the water as they sped along.
I walked a bit further and found many, many people sunbathing and a few happily caught in a very strong current that was carrying them parallel to shore. In one place a man had set up a frame of balloons and a gun, and I guess you could pay to shoot the balloons, or the ferry that was just beyond the balloon frame. Your choice. Later, I saw another man doing the same thing in front of what looked to be a major water pipeline. Possibly they weren't real guns.
We had our first important meeting as a tour group back at the hotel. There are quite a few Australians on the trip, and I'm sharing a room with a New Zealander. There are also a few Americans and English people, so i think it will be a good mix. We went out to dinner at a nice restaurant where I had Adana kebab and baklava (I've been walking past windows full of baklava all day going mmmmmmmm). I think I possibly haven't drunk enough water today because I have a headache, but hopefully that will go away with sleep...
I'm very much enjoying the air conditioning in my hotel room.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Airport Adventures
I'm on holiday! And you know what that means - lots and lots of posts, probably intermittently posted as I have access to Internet. I will try not to bore you with what I had for breakfast each day. Well, actually, I can't make any promises.
I had tickets for a flight from London City Airport this morning at an early-ish hour, but because City is in the city and not an hour or two out by train, I didn't have to get up until half past six. I was extremely pleased with this, especially when it only took me twenty-five minutes to get to the airport. You can't get anywhere in London in twenty-five minutes, but I did it. I got to the Docklands Light Rail (aka the slow robot roller coaster) stop and caught the DLR with time enough to get the front 'driving' seat, muttering to myself all the while 'driving the DLR, I'm going to be driving the DLR...'. Unfortunately I was facing the wrong way, so I was actually right at the back. Ah well.
Upon trying to check in, I found my flight had been cancelled due to high winds. I had been a bit dubious about the winds thrashing the trees around, but thought of all the flights I've taken out of Wellington airport and hoped it would be fine. My airline thought not, however, so I waited in line for forty minutes to change my tickets. Planes were flying out of Heathrow, so in the end I was put on a direct flight from Heathrow to Istanbul rather than the stopover-in-Zurich flight I'd been booked on.
Now I just had to get to Heathrow. The airline got us a black London cab, which took us all through central London and then out to Heathrow, which for anyone wanting to know is a hundred pound journey. I have a cancellation buddy who's been changed to the same flight as me, and when we were getting to the end we looked at each other and hoped we weren't expected to pay the fare. Luckily, no.
So I am currently sitting on a Turkish airlines flight wondering which movie to watch, or if I should brush up on my Turkish. I know there's a word 'Merhaba' (sp.) but I can't remember what it means...
Turkish airlines also has the longest safety video I've ever seen, and tells you to remove all sharp objects from your person when you use the emergency slide. I never thought about that... (and actually, what sharp objects would you have on you after going through security?).
To be continued....
Now I'm sitting in my hostel trying to figure out where the day's gone. It's 8.30 at night already and I'm sure I got out of bed only a few hours ago. I watched Another Earth on the plane (interesting, very atmospheric movie. You never actually get to see the other Earth. I think I liked it, though) and then Singing in the Rain, which I've seen parts of but never all the way through. I walked past the Blue Mosque and what I think might be the Aya Sofya to get to the hostel, which I found without really consulting a map - very proud. Next step: food.
Update: had a Caesar salad for dinner at a nice outdoor cafe and there was a cat with HUGE eyes staring at people from under the table.
I had tickets for a flight from London City Airport this morning at an early-ish hour, but because City is in the city and not an hour or two out by train, I didn't have to get up until half past six. I was extremely pleased with this, especially when it only took me twenty-five minutes to get to the airport. You can't get anywhere in London in twenty-five minutes, but I did it. I got to the Docklands Light Rail (aka the slow robot roller coaster) stop and caught the DLR with time enough to get the front 'driving' seat, muttering to myself all the while 'driving the DLR, I'm going to be driving the DLR...'. Unfortunately I was facing the wrong way, so I was actually right at the back. Ah well.
Upon trying to check in, I found my flight had been cancelled due to high winds. I had been a bit dubious about the winds thrashing the trees around, but thought of all the flights I've taken out of Wellington airport and hoped it would be fine. My airline thought not, however, so I waited in line for forty minutes to change my tickets. Planes were flying out of Heathrow, so in the end I was put on a direct flight from Heathrow to Istanbul rather than the stopover-in-Zurich flight I'd been booked on.
Now I just had to get to Heathrow. The airline got us a black London cab, which took us all through central London and then out to Heathrow, which for anyone wanting to know is a hundred pound journey. I have a cancellation buddy who's been changed to the same flight as me, and when we were getting to the end we looked at each other and hoped we weren't expected to pay the fare. Luckily, no.
So I am currently sitting on a Turkish airlines flight wondering which movie to watch, or if I should brush up on my Turkish. I know there's a word 'Merhaba' (sp.) but I can't remember what it means...
Turkish airlines also has the longest safety video I've ever seen, and tells you to remove all sharp objects from your person when you use the emergency slide. I never thought about that... (and actually, what sharp objects would you have on you after going through security?).
To be continued....
Now I'm sitting in my hostel trying to figure out where the day's gone. It's 8.30 at night already and I'm sure I got out of bed only a few hours ago. I watched Another Earth on the plane (interesting, very atmospheric movie. You never actually get to see the other Earth. I think I liked it, though) and then Singing in the Rain, which I've seen parts of but never all the way through. I walked past the Blue Mosque and what I think might be the Aya Sofya to get to the hostel, which I found without really consulting a map - very proud. Next step: food.
 |
| Aya Sofya and watermelon |
Update: had a Caesar salad for dinner at a nice outdoor cafe and there was a cat with HUGE eyes staring at people from under the table.
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