Birthday breakfast on the Bosphorus - a Turkish delight!

Istanbul has some truly magnificent and historic buildings.  On Wednesday, we went to Topkapi Palace, which was home to the sultans hundreds of years ago.  The palace complex is amazing, with an open-air garden courtyard leading to a throne dais, behind which are many opulent buildings where the sultan mixed business with pleasure as he conducted the affairs of his country in luxurious quarters, surrounded by his stunning treasures and his beautiful women.  Well, I can’t personally vouch for the beauty of the women since I didn’t meet any, but I did see some of the sultans’ treasures, which are truly incredible.  There were solid gold vessels, fine glass boxes studded with jade and rubies, bejeweled swords, mother-of-pearl furniture, a golden baby cradle, and ornaments such as turban pins and brooches that are covered with enormous, costly, several-carat diamonds.  However, you don’t notice the diamonds that much because they are simply ornamentation for the main event, so to speak, which were rubies, emeralds, and diamonds the diameter of golf balls.  Some of these pieces were literally jaw-dropping.  

Also stunning were the sultan’s quarters, where he lived in the harem with all of his ladies.

The sultan made sure that his rooms reflected his royal status, and the intricate tile work and the extensive warren of rooms for the wives, consorts, concubines, slaves, and subsequent offspring certainly were fit for a king!  It was really cool to see such a different piece of history than I’m used to.  This is not the small-scale (yet important) colonial New England history with which I’m familiar; this is a glimpse of a chapter from some of history’s most decadent chapters.

Here is part of the queen's rooms with some manikins dressed in period-style clothing to help your imagination along, although I think it's impossible to imagine an entire palace based on such a limited snapshot.

The palace was amazing, and we spent most of the day there trying to absorb a sense of a what life was like for the residents of the palace that we were wandering.  After the palace, we stopped by the Blue Mosque, which is another feat of Ottoman architecture.  It’s perhaps not quite as impressive as the imposing Hagia Sophia, but what it lacks in architectural brilliance, it makes up by bursting with color, as opposed to the somewhat more drab Hagia Sophia.

By the way, I’m wearing that blue piece of fabric as a shawl since, despite the fact that Kim and I were both wearing pretty modest clothing, we had to cover our bare arms inside the mosque.  We also had to take off our shoes to walk through, and anyone (including men!) whose shorts were too short had to wrap a piece of fabric around their waist as a skirt in order to not expose too much skin.

Wednesday night, we got a head start on celebrating Jim's birthday by going out to a special Turkish dinner.  This involved several courses of food, including stuffed grape leaves, Bulgarian couscous, eggplant (they call it aubergine) puree with bread, as well as "koftë" (Turkish meatballs) and sea bass, which came out as a whole fish.  Jim ate the fish's eyeball, which grossed me out.  We also tried the traditional licorice-flavored Turkish alcohol called "raki," as well as Turkish coffee and tea.

Jim really liked his fish. :)

On Thursday the 14th, my dear husband’s actual birthday, we had another fabulous day.  We started with a late breakfast (another lovely meal... warm bread, cream and honey, fried cheese, seasoned tomatoes, olives, etc) at a restaurant overlooking the Bosphorus.  It was such a gorgeous day!  The sun was warm and the water was lovely, and we even saw several groups of dolphins playing in the current!  After breakfast, we wandered around an old fort strategically placed to guard the waterway.  It’s a tourist attraction now, and is great fun to climb around and take in the awesome views.

During the afternoon, we also had some Turkish delight, which I did find quite delightful!  I had tried some in the US at one point and was not very impressed, but the Turkish delight freshly made by the delightful Turks was delicious.  I felt I understood a little better why Edmund is lured away by the White Witch’s Turkish delight in C.S. Lewis's book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  :)

We had fun wandering around that part of the city, seeing all the boats that make their way up the Bosphorus, taking pictures, people-watching, and eventually meandering our way to a really fun dance show.  The cast is a dance troupe who perform the various folk dances of different parts of Turkey.  This of course includes belly-dancing, which is really quite something, but what I didn’t expect was to see a male belly dancer performing by himself.  Who knew?!

This morning our time in Istanbul and hanging out with Kim came to an end, and we flew to Cairo, Egypt, this afternoon.  The flight was simple and easy, and we are so impressed (and grateful!) at how smoothly our trip is progressing so far.

Cairo is really incredible, too.  First of all, the city is in the middle of a desert and the color palette of the city matches the sand that stretches out around it.  Secondly, I can't believe I'm here in the land of pharaohs, pyramids, and hieroglyphs!  I loved studying Egyptian history during home-schooling, and I am so excited to spend the next few days touring the country that sparked my intrigue.  Thirdly, and most mind-blowingly, we arrived on the eve of the presidential elections, which start tomorrow, and our hostel/hotel is about a two-minute walk from Tahrir Square, a name which by now is familiar to the world as the home base of last year's Egyptian revolution.  We left the hotel to go find some dinner and walked right through Tahrir Square.  There were people protesting in the street, just like we've all seen on TV, and we were right there!  It was not violent, and women and children were walking through the square as well, but there is certainly tension and expectancy in the air, so we didn't stick around too long.  Egypt is still trying to figure out where it's headed as a country, and the physical remnants of last year's revolution are still here to remind them where they've been so far.  We passed right by a row of graves that were in the middle of the square... very sobering.  The people are not done yet, though.  Jim posted the video we took on YouTube if you want to see what we saw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lffGtckrtE&feature=youtu.be  

This is all totally blowing my mind... we are witnessing history right here in person!  It's amazing!