sailing to byzantium, sort of

(I just Googled this and apparently it means "Let's keep the forest clean!")

My goal is to finish Turkey posts before we've been back for a month. So I've got like a week before that deadline hits—I think I can do it!

One of the fun things we did while we were still in Istanbul was to take a little day trip to Büyükada, which is part of the Princes' Islands. It's about an hour and half-long ferry ride from Istanbul and only costs like 5 lire to get there, plus it came highly recommended from one of my colleagues. The islands are apparently where all the wealthy ethnic minorities in Istanbul have summer homes (which is why there aren't as many mosques as there are on the mainland, I suppose) and it has an interesting history. Fun fact—Wikipedia just told me that Leon Trotsky had a summer home on Büyükada! There's a little nugget for you Communism buffs out there.

Anyway, the island is pretty much deserted in November, so we had the whole place to ourselves! Kind of. We took a little carriage ride (no cars—only bikes and horse-drawn carriages) up to Luna Park and hiked to a Greek monastery that once served as an orphanage—on the way up you can see where people have tied strings and fabric on the trees, which represent prayers for the different orphans. We spent about an hour at the summit enjoying the views and the peaceful surroundings. When we hiked back down to the park there were a bunch of tourists in stiletto boots who apparently caught the later ferry and decided to take a hike too, so we figured that was a good time to peace out. We walked back down to the harbor and checked out the crazy huge houses and figured out how we could get a summer house in Büyükada. Maybe if we live in Europe one day we'll summer on the Princes' Islands (that sounds really fancy).

Also, please note the CATS. There are cats all over Istanbul, and I'm surprised I only took like three pictures of them (because, well, you know I'm obsessed), but there were a TON on Büyükada. I honestly don't think I've ever seen so many cats in one spot before. But I guess you get that when you leave cat food out on the street...

Moral of the story: if you're in Istanbul, take the trip to Büyükada, especially if you don't have time to go anywhere outside of Istanbul.

topkapı palace

Holy palace. Topkapı Palace is a super-intense Ottoman-era palace and we spent the better part of a beautiful Monday afternoon exploring the grounds. Actually, we spent most of the time exploring the harem, which annoyingly requires an extra 15 lira to enter, but it's totally worth it! There are so many weird things in the harem—areas with names like "The Courtyard of the Favorites" and "The Courtyard of the Eunuchs." Life sounds like it was awesome for the sultan. Most of the pictures I took are in the harem, now that I think about it—we spent so much time in the harem that we started getting palace fatigue and I kind of stopped taking pictures. Except for Robbie's senior portrait in the tree. What a cutie. (We actually saw tons of people posing in that same pose all over Istanbul so we thought it was time to have our own version.)

And if you think this is a lot of pictures, I actually had to choose my favorites from well over 100 pictures of pretty tile and picturesque Bosphorus views and fancy Ottoman lounging spaces. I really can't get enough of any of that in my life.

basilica cistern

I promise that this is my last horribly-lit post from this trip. But look, an ancient cistern!

Surprisingly, the Basilica Cistern was the number one recommended stop from a lot of my friends who had been to Istanbul. And it's pretty cool! I'm still a little confused about the history of the site but from what I understand, the cisterns were constructed by slaves and used as a water filtration system for the buildings in what is now the Sultanahmet neighborhood. Those Romans—so smart! Some historians think that the cisterns were used to raise fish too, which is a little weird, but there are definitely tons of gargantuan fish swimming around and creeping people out. I highly recommend a visit, or at least watch From Russia With Love to feel like you visited.

hagia sophia

I have to be honest—the conditions surrounding our visit to Hagia Sophia weren't ideal. Cold, rainy, long line (in the rain) where we had to endure street vendors hawking their crap without anywhere to run... so I was kind of grumpy by the time we got in and I really just wanted to get warm. But that's kind of hard to do in a building that's hundreds of years old (over a thousand if you consider that the original building was built in 360 AD) but once I stopped whining and starting looking up my mind was sufficiently blown. Basically, this place was originally built to be a Greek Orthodox basilica and was at one point the largest structure IN THE WORLD (except for the pyramids), which is crazy. Anyway, after a lot of back and forth, Constantinople was conquered by the Turks and they slapped some minarets on the building and the basilica became a mosque, which is why there is an interesting combination of Madonna and child mosiacs along with Islamic iconography all over the building. In some places you can see where they pulled crosses off the walls and (clearly) the mosaics of Christ and his apostles are in major disrepair.

So it's kind of sad but also beautiful, and (like the Blue Mosque) incredibly difficult to photograph. Blast you, lack of natural light!