This past weekend my Islam and the West class took a trip to Turkey and it was absolutely amazing. There is so much to write about I feel like I won't be able to describe it all. Here goes nothing...
We left London on Thursday morning and got into Istanbul in the evening. We stayed at the Hali Hotel near the Haghia-Sophia and Blue Mosques. After a bit of a rest the entire group went out to dinner for some delicious Turkish food. Everything was excellent...especially the baklava ;) After dinner we had the night to ourselves so a group of us just walked around the immediate area we were staying in. We went into some shops and took some pics of the mosques. It was an early night though because Friday was packed with things to see and do...which brings me to our first full day in Istanbul.
We woke up early in the morning and trudged up to the terrace of our hotel where we had our delicious breakfast with a panoramic view of Istanbul as our background. After our meal we headed out to our first sight, The Blue Mosque. We had a tour guide for the whole day and he was so great! He showed us the significance of everything and what it meant to the Islamic faith. For example, the carpets in the Blue Mosques were decorated with rows of designs that had evenly spaced tulips all facing the same direction. The tulips are actually meant to be a guide for worshipers as they point towards the direction of Mecca. After the Blue Mosque we went to the Haghia-Sophia Mosque which is directly across from the Blue Mosque...I call them the dueling mosques. Following the Haghia-Sophia was the Basilica Cistern which is an underground water filtration system. It's really dark and there are rows and rows of illuminated columns with a thin layer of water at the bottom...really cool.
After the Cistern we went on a boat trip on the Bosphorus and saw all of Istanbul from the water. It was really really really cold and rainy but totally worth it. The tour was actually quite long but our day didn't end there. We went to another mosque called the Rustem Pasa which was small and sort of hidden...a little gem if you will :) Then it was off to the Egyptian Bazaar. We got some really cool souvenirs and met some great people. Most of the shop owners were really friendly. It's customary to offer tea to their customers and at one shop they served us some apple tea in tiny glass cups. It was so good and the shop owner was so kind. There was one shop though that left a little to be desired. The owner took us down into the basement to show us the scarves he had which we didn't think was too weird since we had done that in previous shops. Once we were down there though he suddenly couldn't speak English very well. He wanted us to take a picture with him in front of all the colorful scarves, so we did. As we posed he promptly put his hand a little south of one of the girl's waist and we have photographed evidence. We now refer to him as the "but-grabbing guy". Needless to say we did not go into any more basements at the bazaars.
We were on our own for the rest of the day from there. We stayed for a couple of hours at the Bazaar and then headed back to the hotel to catch our breath. Oh yeah, and we had some lunch somewhere in there. That night our fearless leaders shepherded us across the bridge to another part of Istanbul which had lots of nightlife. We had an excellent dinner there. Then we went in search of a good hookah bar. The hookah was excellent and the people there were really friendly. The guy that brought us the fresh coals actually did a little hookah with us and he put us all to shame. There was a huge cloud of smoke around his head and I thought he was going finish the whole thing by himself! We took another taxi back to the hotel and immediately went to bed.
So our first day/night was quite eventful...I think I'm going to break this particular blog into two sections so we'll leave it at that for now.
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