Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul/Unbelievable

***NOTE: If you're starting to read this, note that I just posted all of Turkey (three posts). It starts with Bodrum two posts below in case you enjoy reading these in chronological order. Also, I didn't proofread and was distracted at times so I apologize for any of the, you know, grammatical mishaps. Now scroll down.***


Let me be the first to tell you that if you are 6 feet or taller, never, ever take an overnight bus if you only have one seat to yourself. Not even an Ambien could battle the discomfort I sat through. I had to focus on the light at the end of the tunnel, uncomfortable as it was: that I was heading to Istanbul.

And I guess I wasn't expecting Istanbul to be the best city east of Amsterdam, but it was.

Some stuff to consider: Istanbul is the largest city in Turkey, the largest city proper and second largest metropolitan area in Europe, and the fourth largest city proper in the world with 13 million people (I heard it's closer to 18-20). By definition, a megacity. It's the cultural and financial center of Turkey. It is located on the Bosphorus Strait and extends on both the Europe (Thrace) and Asia (Anatolia) side of the Bosphorus, and thereby is the only metropolis in the world situated on two continents. In its long history, Istanbul has served as the capital city of the Roman Empire (330–395), the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire (395–1204 and 1261–1453), the Latin Empire (1204–1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453–1922) (courtesy of Wikipedia).

The first thing I said when we got off our bus and walked towards the metro station: "My God... all these people." It was minblowing. This is what 13+ million people feels like? I had a hard time trying to take in the sheer masses of people going in every direction. Lucky for us, Istanbul's public transit system is exceptionally efficient given the scope of its operation.

Our hostel was in a superb location. It was nearby the stunning Hagia Sophia, the-once-cathedral-turned-Mosque-now-museum:
The Hagia Sophia sits directly across from the most stunning piece of architecture I've ever seen in my life and on this trip, ever, and is also what I would say with some certainty is my "favorite" thing I've seen/visited on this trip, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (the Blue Mosque):

In as few words as possible, the Blue Mosque is completely staggering, stunning, unbelievably impossibly beautiful, moving, epic, jaw-dropping, and, of course, pretty:

None of the pictures I have/could have taken/can find on the internet could do the Blue Mosque justice, both on the exterior and the interior. All of you, all of you people reading this, I am telling you both as my advice and recommendation and as an indirect threat that you must visit the Blue Mosque prior to your death. I suppose I will say that about Istanbul in general, but seriously, seeing the Blue Mosque is more important than whatever you have plans to do later today or this evening or this weekend or whatever you intend on doing within the next five-to-ten years. Do it.

I cannot emphasize how fortunate and grateful I am for having had the opportunity to see it. The picture above is of its interior.

After collecting my thoughts after visiting the Blue Mosque (they had wandered to the Divine, the afterlife, reincarnation, life on other planets, life on our planet, the meaning of life, and can you tell that I was touched by the Blue Mosque?) we continued our grand wandering of Istanbul. We had five amazing days filled with things to do. One trip brought us to the top of the Galata Tower, which provided this gorgeous panorama (improved only by the gorgeous foreground):

From the top of the Galata Tower, you kind of get an idea on just how massive Istanbul is. It just goes on without end in every direction you look.

One thing that I found interesting throughout Turkey in general was a lot of the political campaigning going on. There are millions, if not billions, maybe trillions of little political party flags waving around the city, strewn from building to building, and then there are these campaign vans that drive around all of the crowded areas, completely painted in whatever platform/politician they are supporting, BLASTING from the enormous loudspeakers atop of them their respective propaganda. It was a trip.

The picture above is one such example, as seen from the tower.

One of my favorite places to get lost in, ever, turned out to be Grand Bazaar. I mean this place is just so cool it's ridiculous. It's one of the largest covered markets in the world, it has an endless amount of shops, usually grouped by whatever good they're selling, and it was just plenty fun walking from stall to stall asking how much some little standardized trinket is and the variety of responses were great. 20 Turkish Lira for a camel-bone letter opener? Sometimes 40? Oh this one is 80 because it's unique although the same exact one is ten feet away from me in another shop for 25. Good times. Below is me in front of one of the entrances:

So I will try to give credit where credit is due, although I really can't say enough about the Blue Mosque. Nonetheless, the Hagia Sophia was also a completely stellar experience as well. It was originally built as a church (and was the religious focal point for the Eastern Orthodox Church) and was the largest church in the world for nearly 1,000 years (until the Seville Cathedral was built). It was then converted to a mosque after the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453. Its interior was, indeed, awe-inspiring:

Those people look like ants, don't they? And this thing was built between AD 530 and 540?

Below is the shrine facing Mecca:

I think the coolest thing about the inside of the Hagia Sophia is, upon walking in, how you feel like you are in some massive Islamic mosque, and all of the ornate Arabic decoration and calligraphy is fantastic; however, in the upstairs enclave there are all these beautiful, beautiful mosaics of Christian icons (below):

It was just such a unique and fascinating experience. The Hagia Sophia was a fantastic visit; I advise that you go there as soon as you exit the Blue Mosque.

Another day brought us to the Topkapi Palace. Certainly no Schonbrunn, but still it was absolutely gorgeous and it was so different seeing an Islamic palace as opposed to a, uh, Viennese palace. Below is the entrance gate to the palace:

Aside from the impeccably manicured gardens and the beautiful mosaics, there were some pretty cool artifacts held within the palace's exhibits, including but not limited to: Sultan Mehmed II's (the dude who conquered Byzantine Constantinople) sword, the prophet Mohammed's gauntlets, and, supposedly, Moses's staff. I don't know how these things are verified but I trust the Turkish people... they're honest and have integrity, which is nice. The icing on the cake, however, was within the palace's treasury, where we saw the fabled Spoonmaker's Diamond. It's an 86-carat diamond (yes, eighty-six carats: seventeen grams of diamond) surrounded by 49 smaller cut diamonds. It was on sale while we were there and I thought it would make a nice souvenir for my mom, and I could of bought it (on Steve Purtill's AmEx) but instead I bought her a 1 Lira bookmark. I know she'll love it.

To top everything off, one of our days in Istanbul happened to coincide with Natalya's birthday. During the day, we went to a traditional Turkish bath house. Basically, a huge marble room where it's seven thousand degrees and you sweat your life away and then douse yourself in cold water of life. Some of the braver ones (Natals) even got a massage, which she said was fantastic and not too invasive, while the thought of a 300 pound Turkish man groping my lower back didn't really sound like a good time to me. Another big plus in Turkey, the sheesha (hookah):

On the night of her birthday, by fate, the friends of mine who are studying in Budapest also happened to be in town, staying in the same room as us in the same hostel (okay that's a lie, we coordinated all of that actually) but needless to say we partied like... like it was the last night of our lives (have I used that one already?) Perhaps to your surprise, as it was to mine, Istanbul has the best nightlife we have seen on our trip, by far and away hands down. I forget what district we went to but it was just bar/cafe/pub/club one after another, it was just so cool. Unlike the other Islamic countries we were to visit (and have since), I can say that in Turkey it seems to be okay to drink alcohol, which was great for a bunch of frat dudes celebrating some bird's birthday. It was an epic night enjoyed by all.

As I'm writing this, I am missing Istanbul. I sometimes forget some places here and there that we've been to (by sheer numbers of our travels) but I can never forget Istanbul. It is a serious, serious BCS contender, my goodness it is such a terrific city. I want to go back. Tomorrow.

But, unfortunately, I can't (as of now). We were terribly sad to leave Istanbul, and we were certainly sulking in the airport as we awaited our flight (the Istanbul airport, IST, is fantastic, by the way). Our flight would bring us to the third continent of our voyages, so maybe that "Europe 2009" title is something of a misnomer. Anyhow, more to come when I have internet again.

Ancient Ephesus

That early bus brought us to the small Turkish town of Selcuk (pronounced Sel-chook), just a few kilometers away from the next area of interest on our voyage. A few of the nice travellers whom we met the nights before in Bodrum had headed out a bit earlier than us, so when we arrived they brought us to their gathering point. It turned out to be a carpet store run by a very friendly Turkish man who had a cat that just had a new litter of little kitties:

They fit in the palm of your hand and they squak instead of meow. The cats are Turkish Van cats or Turkish Kedisi cats or something like that. They are famous because they always have two different colored eyes:

You can kind of see it in the picture above. The mommy cat (above) has one blue and one greenish-yellow eye. She was a sweetheart, and I really don't even like cats.

Anyhow, the man who ran the shop was kind enough to drive us up and over to Ephesus, pretty much the reason why we came to Selcuk to begin with.

Ephesus was an ancient Greek city on the west coast of the region of Anatolia, but I'll spare you all of the history lesson that I learned on Wikipedia. I'll just tell you that each of the pictures are of something famous, as I heard tour guides saying so. You're just going to have to believe me.

This first one is the Temple of Hadrian. It dates to the second century. (!):

Okay, maybe this second picture is of something famous, but it's cool-looking:

This is the Library of Celsus, completed in AD 135. It was ordered to be built by Gaius Julius Aquila to honor his father, Tiberius Julius Celsus. It was built to hold 12,000 scrolls and act as a monumental tomb. Purtill, you can expect no such thing from me:

And this is the theater. It was capable of holding 25,000 spectators who came to watch either drama or gladiator fights:

You pretty much can't help but feel like you're walking through some serious ancient ruins as you wander throughout Ephesus. Who would have thunk?!

I was very happy we made a stop in Ephesus for the day. I think it was the third spot on our journey where we've seen some ancient wonder of the world (the Temple of Artemis, and by "seen" I mean we've been to where they were once erected), which is always cool to say. It was also just a very fascinating excavation in general and interesting to consider it all relative to the ancient ruins that we saw in Rome and Athens.

After spending the day in Ephesus, we hopped on a twenty-one o'clock overnight bus to our last stop in Turkey.

Bodrum: Asian-side Turkey

From Santorini, we hopped on a ferry that had one pit stop on the Greek island of Kos, where we killed some time during the day waiting for our ferry that would eventually take us to Turkey.

Our first stop in Turkey was the little coastal port-town of Bodrum. The sun came with us from Santorini, so we were quite pleased about that. Bodrum in general is a summer time resort/vacation spot for wealthy Europeans and UAE oil magnates. Some of the yachts in the harbor were truly impressive.

(Above, the Bodrum harbor as seen from atop the old castle).

As I mentioned, it was sunny and there was clear blue water for as far as the eye can see:


There is an old castle/fort situated along the coast that we wandered through, I think the coolest thing we saw were these amazing peacocks. One was all white and the other was the most colorful bird I've ever seen with these impossibly long tail feathers. They make funny noises by bird standards.

Bodrum is also the sighte of ancient Helicarnassus. One of the ancient wonders of the world, the Tomb of King Mausalos, is no longer around but the stones used in its contstruction are still lying around. Apparently it was the most over-the-top tomb ever. It's where we get the word mausoleum:

And not far from the first mausoleum in the world is the ancient amphitheater. Much smaller than the one in Athens, but very cool just the same:

We stayed at an awesome, awesome hostel in Bodrum where we met a bunch of other travellers and we partied one night like it was the last night of our lives. I had a conversation with some 18-year-old Danish kid and he told me it is just about every Dane's dream to go to California. I told him damn straight.

Altogether, Bodrum was a nice introduction to Turkey. I was pleasantly surprised at how friendly the Turkish locals were, and was also quite enthused to discover that Turkish cuisine is centered around spicy food. In case I never mentioned it before, I love spicy food.

Before we knew it, we were on an early morning bus heading to the oldest city... ever?

Paradise on Earth: Santorini

If I can find a picture that will do Santorini justice, I'll be sure to let you know. As we did not want to take away from our time in the upcoming countries with set flight dates (Turkey and Egypt) we had two nights in Santorini. They were, quite frankly, two of the best days/nights of my life.

Santorini is impossibly beautiful:

I will vouch that the sunsets are the most remarkable sunsets I have ever seen on the planet Earth:
There are so many amazing church steeples that dot along the coast line, we were lucky enough to still soak in the entire sunset from one (jaw-dropping) vantage point, as we could have just stopped in awe at all of the gorgeous churches.
We had met up with the other American couple I mentioned in Athens and had an amazing time being the only four drunk people dancing at some bar. Santorini, although quite small, has numerous vineyards on the island and all of the local wineries produce some delicious wine. I wish I could have shipped some home for my Dad as this stuff puts two-buck-Chuck to shame. All of the wineries bottle their wine in big two-liter plastic bottles (they are literally recycled water bottles) with a "label" on them (read: sticker). The ones we had were at least 12%, I'm not sure, but the 2L bottle is 3 Euros (4 to 5 for the high-end variety), so you can have a good time for cheap.

Anyhow, during the second day (March 19, Happy Birthday P Sir) we rented ATVs as you can get around the entire island in such a fashion. I made a point to find the sweetest European helmet I could:

That picture is taken from the top of some ancient town on top of a huge hill (there were no fewer than 25 switchbacks to get up there), its name escapes me, but the best part of it is this dog, below:
The dog, whom I named Baxter, is the best dog, ever. I miss him; I'm actually preventing myself from crying as I look at that picture. He saw our ATV cruising around town before we got to the hill, and then the little guy seriously ran alongside us through the town, up the mountain, and down the mountain again (at least 6 kilometers). He darted off to chase a cat when we got to the bottom of the mountain while we carried on our way. Some distance later I could see him in my side/rear-view mirrors as he resumed chasing us, but he slowly faded away as we were going too fast for him (those ATVs go up to 25-30km/hr). I was debating to stop and wait for him to catch up, pick him up by his neck and put him inside my sweatshirt and keep him. Baxter, if you're out there and reading this, I miss you.

Our ATV adventures lead us to the famous red sand beach:

And I should also mention we went to the black sand beach, as well. As you'd imagine, the sand is actually fine volcanic rock, which is why it's either black or red.

On the last evening, the only way to top off another amazing sunset would be a donkey ride from the bottom of the old port all the way back up to civilization (some 300+ big stairs). It's a staple in Santorini and is as touristy as it gets, but nonetheless it was fun. I discovered firsthand why donkeys are (in)famous for being so stubborn. For example, as we were a group of four (two couples), as soon as Natalya got on her donkey it took off like a world-class sprinter. We of course wanted to climb the stairs together, but Natalya's donkey was on a mission and beat all of our donkeys by a good ten minutes or so. Lucky for me, this put her in a good spot to take this picture:

Altogether, the ATVs, Baxter, the food, the wine, the people, and so many other reasons culminated together to create an unbelievable time for us in Santorini. I was pinching myself over and over; it was too good to be true. It was nothing short of paradise on Earth, and I cannot wait to go back to Santorini one day.

Sadly, our two nights had come and gone, and we were on a late ferry heading out of Greece/Europe and on to the second continent we will visit: Asia.

Athens

To note, I'm going to keep my next few posts as brief as possible in order to catch up with our travels. I'm just way far behind, I practically don't remember a lot of what we did in some of the places.

There really isn't enough to say about how great it is to have so much flexibility with our itinerary. From some word-of-mouth of other backpackers, we heard that Romania this time of year (March) isn't really the best time to visit, so we decided to axe Bucharest from our trip and instead we hopped on a flight from Vienna heading to the capital of Greece: Athens.

Probably one of the best change-of-plans I've encountered.

We loved Greece in general, and Athens was simply spectacular. In three nights we covered as much sight-seeing as possible, and it was hard not to be impressed by such a massive, modern urban sprawl centered around so much ancient history.

We couldn't have been happier to see some sun, as it makes all of the ancient ruins sightseeing much more enjoyable. Below is the Temple of the Olympian Zeus:


The temple is situated pretty much in the center of the city, and then we wandered along some distance to the mountain/cliff/hill area where the Parthenon and most of the ancient city was built. Below is yours truly standing in the Dionysus theater:

And within the few minutes of our walking from the foot of the mountain to the top, the sky decided to turn overcast on us as I posed in front of the Parthenon:
From the top of the mountain you can get an idea of how massive Athens is. In every direction, the city looks like what is pictured below, just an urban sprawl for as far as the eye can see:
We also made our way up to Lycabettus Hill to see the old (but very well preserved) St. George church:
Some other highlights of Athens include, but or not limited to:

• I ate lamb (whether in a gyro or a shank of it) twice a day, every day
• After a day of sun, when we were heading back to our hostel we were caught in the most remarkable torrential downpour, ever, and could not hail a taxi (we didn't really know how in Athens) so we walked back completely soaked
• We met another couple from Los Angeles that we spent a good amount of time with and met up with again in a different locale; they were great. We partied.

I should also note that Greek hospitality is all that it is cracked up to be. The people are overwhelmingly friendly, they're curious and nice, and at any food place they just keep bringing you food and drink(whether you ordered it or not, whether you want it or not, and it's free).

Anyhow, after some amazing days/nights spent in Athens, we continued our migration through Greece and hopped on a ferry to explore some islands. More to come.