Istanbul Modern, Spice Bazaar, and Aya Sofya

07.22.09
We went on a walking tour of the city north of the river in the morning passing the famous Galata Tower on the way to Taksum Square. We passed along streets that were organized much like the Bazaar; one street was dedicated to music stores, another to plumbing and electronics.

Later on in the day I sat between the Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque as my friends split up to sit in an internet cafe and visiting the mosques. At the center of the small park is a large fountain surrounded by small palm trees, trees with pink flowers, and benches and grassy areas to sit and relax. I did some people-watching and reading while relaxing under one of the trees. When I was sitting there the call to prayer was issued from all the minarets in the area, the call overpowering even the persistant sound of water falling from the fountain. The call sounded like an echo as it was issued alternatingly from each mosque's towering minarets. The sunshine was warm as it came down from the baby blue sky (however, I was NOT in the sunshine, I was hiding from its rays under a tree). There small, chirpy sparrows searching through the grass for the spare corn kernels left over from the ears of corn bought from the vendors all around the square. There was a wide mixture dress in the people walking through and relaxing in the small park; some women were just wearing head scarves, others (probably visitors from Northern Africa or another more conservative country) were wearing the full-covering burkahs, while others were wearing tank tops and shorts. There was no animosity between any of the groups of people, but the lines were very distinct. Kate was asked to take a picture with an older Turkish woman who was extremely interested in her, it was really cute.

On our walk back to the ship we stopped in a large park by the waterside for a while. It was filled with families enjoying picnics under the towering trees, couples taking in the day on benches, small children playing soccer in the pathways. Back out on the street we passed the restaraunts filled with low couches, the local women cooking fresh pitas on low grills in the store fronts, the sweet shops filled with huge towers of baklava and fruit and nut confections from the last time before boarding the ship to leave Istanbul and Turkei.

07.21.09

Istanbul Modern, Spice Bazaar, and Aya Sofya

In the morning we walked to Istanbul Modern, the modern art museum a short walk from our port, with Kate's drawing prof. There we got a free tour of the museum; it was therapeutic to be there and interesting to study Turkish modern art by both women and men. There were multiple intriguing paintings there, but I don't have pictures or the knowledge of art to describe them properly, so I won't try. One of Yoko Ono's works was displayed downstairs: piles of coffins with young olive trees growing out of their depths, the sound of bird song emanating from somewhere within the exhibit. My favorite work was the display outside the library downstairs, hundreds of books were hung from the ceiling, their covers facing down, to form a book "ceiling" that was meant to signify the closeness yet unavailability of knowledge from books in Turkei (you couldn't open the books to read them).

After lunch we were off across the Galata Bridge lined with local fishermen to the Spice Bazaar. Piles of Turkish Delight. Lemon, strawberry, pistachio flavors. Chocolate or powdered sugar covered. Heaps of tea with the aroma of apple, cinnamon, lemon, orange, and "love" hanging over them. Tables covered with pistachios, walnuts, and other nuts. The Turk's phallic obsession was shown with the large tubes of nuts contained in a fruity covering. Some of the signs labeled small figs stuffed with walnuts as "Turkish Viagra". The sweet-covered tables Spice Bazaar were exactly what I had imagined. We bought small bags of the local teas at one of the shops and the vendor gave us free samples of chocolate covered Turkish delight, it was delicious. He let us sample the perfume from the bottles filling one wall of his shop. While we were walking through the bazaar one of my friends snagged a free piece of Turkish delight from the sample plate in front of each of the shops. The storekeepers still used weird lines to try to sell their products ("Oh what is that on the ground? Ah, it's a piece of my heart", as we were walking away "You break my heart!") but they were much less pushy than their peers in the Grand Bazaar. I was a bit put off my fig and date ball covered with almonds when I noticed a small pink worm crawling across its surface; must remember not to buy perishable food at places like that.

Kate and I finally got to go into the Aya Sofya, it had been closed on Monday, a former mosque now converted into a museum. The original Aya Sofya (a church) of Theodosius burned down in 532 CE in the Nika Revolt fire. The church was rebuilt by Miletus and Aydin under Justinian's orders and opened in 537 CE to the public. When Mehmed the Conqueror took over Istanbul in 1453, the Aya Sofya was coverted into a mosque and worked on by the architect Sinan. The church's paintings and mosaics were whitewashed over due to Islamic principles and the four minarets were added to the building's exterior. In 1935 the mosque was turned into a museum and is a UNESCO World Heritage sight.
Although there is work being done on the interior of the Aya Sofya, the scaffolding doesn't completely cover the huge dome and the beautiful curling designs that cover the walls. The stone that makes the columns and decorates the railings is carved so carefully that it looks airy and light. There are HUGE green disks spread at regular intervals around the walls that are covered in gold Arabic writing that praises God. The Aya Sofya is famous for it's large dome on top of the square base; it was the first of its kind to be built in such a style. The large windows that ring the base of the dome are supposed to let in the light so that the dome looks like it's floating on top of the sunlight, but the scaffolding interfered with this famous view during our visit, so we just took the art history prof's word for it. Beautiful mosaics with gold and flowers adorned the undersides of the arches and parts of the walls still had remnants of the whitewash on them.

I liked the Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque much more than St. Pauls Basilica in the Vatican. They were much more peaceful and beautiful; I found it much easier to relax without pictures or statues of strange men staring down from the walls.

We went out to see the sixth Harry Potter movie at a cinema across the street from the Grand Bazaar in the evening. It only took a few minutes for me to learn to ignore the Turkish subtitles rolling across the bottom of the screen.