THE BOSPORUS AND FAREWELL ROAD SCHOLAR TOUR

Our last tour outing was a cruise on the Bosporus, which gave us an entirely new perspective on Istanbul’s unique position, on two waterways and two continents.  Tom and I would take the ferry across to the Asia side of Istanbul the following week, so this was an excellent introduction to the other faces of Istanbul.  

The iconic views of the mosque of Suleiman

 the Magnificent (stay tuned to later posts when we visited it up close and personal).  

Ditto iconic view of the Topkapi Palace from the water, with the minarets of Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque beyond.

 Cruise Ship Row

 We will visit the Istanbul Modern Museum in a later post. 

 The old and new. 

Dolmabace Palace is almost a quarter mile long.  It replaced the Topkapi Palace when the sultans discovered the opulence of western Europe. We will visit it in a later post, too.  

One was meant to arrive by water, naturally.

Mosque-in-a-box.  

The Byzantines protected the entrance into the Golden Horn by boat with a huge chain.  The Ottomans built this fortress on the other side of the Horn in less than a year (thank heavens for slave labor?), then dragged their boats  across land to the upper end of the Horn (ditto!), avoiding the chain, and attacking the Byzantines by land and sea. It was recently renovated and open for visitors.  Next trip!  

Real estate on the Asia side of Istanbul is in high demand by the ultra wealthy.  The red house recently sold for  $100 million.  It’s a tear-down, of course. 

Another $100m house-in-a-box.  

A high school whose claim to fame is that Ataturk went there.  

A closer look at Topkapi Palace on our return voyage. 

Our cruise draws to a close, as well as our Road Scholar tour.  

That evening we enjoyed a lovely meal together before our goodbyes.  

A tiny postscript.  

Our Istanbul hotel has a small fountain in the lobby with turtles from Mississippi (of all places), and each day as we left and arrived, we would drift over to see how they were doing.  

We joked that they were attempting to put on a show, but never quite got there.  

The morning of the tour departure, most of the folks left in the wee early morning hours, while we stayed on until check-out time to move to another hotel for another wonderful week in Istanbul.  As we were leaving, we noticed that the turtles had finally got their act together.  We share it with you here.  

Ta da! 

RUSTEM PASHA MOSQUE AND SPICE BAZAAR

I have to admit that things get a little fuzzy about this time in the tour.  Yesim cleverly re-arranged several stops to take advantage of traffic and crowd issues, so our itinerary does not quite match up.  And I was using two cameras, and I failed to change the date and time in one, so it thought it was in California, perhaps another day entirely.  And, of course, the number sequences in the cameras overlap from time-to-time, so it takes a keen eye to make sure that all the photos are of the same thing!  

BUT we did have a delightful visit to the Rustem Pasha Mosque and the Spice Bazaar on the same day, and here they are!  

Rustem Pasha Mosque was built by the Grand Vizier in 1561.  A Croatian slave, he rose through the ranks and married the sultan’s daughter, an example of what could be accomplished by non-Ottomans.  And often had to, since it was beneath the Ottomans themselves to do any actual work.  The mosque was designed by the imperial architect Sinan, and constructed after his death.  This is the same Sinan who began his career as an architect at age 50 after a successful military career, and designed the huge mosque for Suleiman the Magnificent.  This mosque is notable for its magnificent tiles, of which many are of unique designs and colors.  It is a small mosque, tucked out of the way in a busy neighborhood market area.  We could have walked right by it and never known it was there.  

The colors from the tiles and decorations are almost intoxicating.  There are so many designs that it is almost impossible to take in the intricacies of the interior design.  

 A framed original tile on the exterior wall. 

 The interior also displayed unusual writing, calligraphy being the highest art form in the Muslim world.  

 Yes, that's writing! 

The Spice Bazaar is nearby, and we took a brief walk through.  When we had visited 15 years ago it was deeply  exotic and foreign, with huge mounds of unknown spices, herbs and foods piled in the various shops.  No one beckoned us then, or tried to make a sale to us.  

This time the Bazaar was much more accessible, with most shops displaying wares labeled in English.   Shopkeepers would call out to us, and try to sell us saffron or tea or Turkish Delight.  It was still an interesting visit, but not the adventure to the exotic East  it was 15 years ago. 

 

 Next to the Spice Bazaar is the Egyptian Market, where food as well as spices are sold.  There were many more local people there, arguing over the freshest meat and fish. 

And olives!