Istanbul, Day One

This was a very long day. It began with a morning excursion to see the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and Topkapi Palace. We disembarked on the site of the Hippodrome, and, although it is now merely a plaza, it still contains the New Kingdom pyramid of Tutmose III mounted on a base showing the emperor Theodosius in the imperial box holding the crown of victory. At the seventeenth-century Blue Mosque, we discovered that the rule regarding removal of shoes was strictly enforced. Ron had to wait outside while the group went in. This was a particular pity, since the tour guide, an older man, was very professional and explained a great deal about Islamic religious practice, especially the Friday rituals. I was embarrassed because I was not wearing a headscarf, though many other women were bareheaded. Having never been in a working mosque before--only the mosque in Cordoba, preserved as a museum--I was surprised at the lack of furnishings compared to those of a Christian church. The walls, however, were elegantly decorated with the patterned blue tiles that give the mosque its name. Then on to Hagia Sophia, which was every bit as marvelous as I expected it to be. It is a miracle that this wonder of late antiquity is preserved so well--even the absence of the original mosaics did not detract from its beauty, because the Islamic designs that replaced them blend in perfectly. It is no longer illuminated by candles, as Paul the Silentiary describes it, and the electric lighting is somewhat harsh, but I still managed to take one or two good pictures (see left) despite difficult conditions for photography--tremendous variation in exposure. (I wonder how much literature there is on Paul's ekphrastic epigram? Now that I've seen the original, I ought to check out the nuances.) We were told that it remained a functioning mosque until the 1930s, when it was converted into a museum. I'm very grateful that I've had the chance to see both the Pantheon in Rome and Hagia Sophia, as I now have a fairly accurate mental picture of what an Imperial-era bath or temple looked like inside. Not much to say, I'm afraid, about Topkapi Palace. We saw only the council chamber and three rooms in the Treasury. The famous dagger is OK, but I'm not particularly impressed by jewelry and fancy metalwork. Bill and Suzanne Murray had organized a separate excursion to the Archaeological Museum, since that was (inexplicably) not on the official program. Six of us went--Marc and Marjorie Raynor, Chuck and Nancy Carlson, and us. The museum was indeed worth the visit. Apart from the sarcophagi from the Royal Necropolis at Sidon, including the "Alexander Sarcophagus" portraying Alexander hunting with King Abdalonymus, we saw an excellent head of Alexander from Pergamum, a portrait bust of Sappho, and, something I had forgotten I would find there, the two commemorative steles set up to honor Porphyrius the charioteer, made famous by Alan Cameron. My only regret is that we did not have time to explore all the holdings and had to confine ourselves to the first floor (though I did run up briefly to the second to scope out the holdings from Troy--almost entirely pottery). If we ever come back to Istanbul, I will skip the mosques and spend all day at the museums, of which there are several. One unfortunate incident soured the day. After the museum, Bill found two taxis for the group. There were only six of us by then, as Marc and Marjorie stayed on to see more, so three of us got into each. The taxi driver, after dropping us off suspiciously far from the dock where the Aegean Odyssey was tied up (he said there was no way to get closer because of the traffic), attempted to charge us sixty-eight Turkish lira for what we had been told by the cruise agent was only a twenty-lira ride. (For comparison, the museum entrance fee was ten lira). Suzanne complained angrily, and we got into a very heated argument with him. Then Bill came up, and we learned that the driver was trying to charge us for both taxi rides and that Bill's driver had attempted exactly the same scam. Meanwhile, I had given Suzanne a fifty-lira bill, and the driver deftly palmed it and then claimed it was only a five. He and his colleague, who were obviously in cahoots, finally drove off after many more bitter words. In short, a really nasty scene. Bill and Suzanne were very embarrassed because both Nancy and I had overpaid. However, the amount in dollars wasn't that much--110 lira works out to $18.33--and the real issue was simply that we had been brazenly scammed. We worried that Marc and Marjorie, who were by themselves, might run into the same crooked driver, but they assured us this morning that their driver had been absolutely pleasant and completely honest, as far as they could tell. Luck of the draw.