Last Day in Istanbul. Or Is It?

Traditional Turkish coffee (and hookah) in a converted madrassa in Istanbul

Last day for now in Istanbul.

Last day's in cities where I have a flight to catch later in the day are days when not much tourisming gets done. So the agenda was light on activities but heavy on local flavor. The owner of the hotel where I'm staying took me to a traditional coffee house in a converted madrassa (religious school).

This must be place.

This definitely was an off-the-beaten-tourist path experience. And it was awesome, even though I only had Turkish coffee and no drags on the hookah pipe. Even though the hookah pipe was loaded with apple-scented tobacco.

After that, I saw beneath the ground floor of my hotel.

The ceramics on the underneath are there for decoration, but, like much of Istanbul née Constantinople, it was built directly on top of something that was there before.

And the Istanbul part of the day ended in one of the best ways an Istanbul day can end: with kunefe. 

The hotel served me up an excellent kunefe. Gratis.

Soon it was time to jet my way to the next stop on this trip: Sarajevo.

The hotel is right near the Latin Bridge, where World War I started with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. It is an historic hotel.

That is the phone in the room. Of course, it is a non-functional phone. Who uses hotel room phones nowadays with all of us carrying our personal cellphones everywhere. But it lends to the historical atmosphere of a hotel where the rooms are opened with -- get this -- metal keys.

But was this my last day in Istanbul this trip? I have two nights back here, which means one day, at the end of the trip.

New Day, New City, Still Istanbul

Of the ten trillion boats doing a Bosphorus cruise tonight,
this is the only one that was gliding in front of the Suleymaniye Mosque when I snapped this photo.

The planned primary item on today's tourism agenda was not do-able. Topkapi Palace is closed on Tuesdays and this is a Tuesday. So it's time to do what I often do when tourism-ing in a new city: improvise. But there is a surprise, even shocking, plot twist: the day's tourism activities included the most disappointing funicular ride ever. Ever.

It all started innocently enough with a tram ride: Sultanahmet to the Kabataş station to start the day with a funicular ride up to Taksim Square.

There are two funiculars in Istanbul: the one to Taksim Square and another which is called the Tünel Tramway. I knew that the Tünel funicular was, as the name implies, in a tunnel. So I opted for the Taksim Square funicular.

The area in which you board the funicular is inside a station. Unfortunately, you stay within the enclosed space for the duration of the ride. You see nothing of the surrounding environment. And, to make it worse, if that is possible, the slope of the ride is very gentle. I would be OK with the enclosed tunnel if the incline were steep, giving you the feeling of climbing and ascent. This was not Taksim Square funicular experience. Enclosed and gentle. What a funicular should not be.

But once I disembarked, Taksim Square at the top of the ride was incredible.

This is the Republic Monument. And a tram car that you can ride through the New City that looks like a proper tram car.

I do not know why the Republic Monument is wrapped in cyclone fencing with police signage on it. I also do not know why the New City has historic, old-fashioned tram cars while the historic Old City has sleek ultra-modern trams. Oh the cognitive dissonance.

This is the Taksim Mosque:

With an old-fashioned New City tram car artistically placed in front of the shot.

I shot this photo through the chain link fencing so that the Republic Monument did not so forlorned:

Much better.

And this is the Taksim Mosque with banners of the Turkish flag and the nation's entire pigeon population:

Time to walk through the New City.

Dessert stores aplenty. Each looking more delicious than the last.

This is more than sweet shops selling "Turkish delight" to us tourists. Not that there is a problem with that. This just seems to have a less touristy vibe, as this seems to be a street where everyone shops, not just the tourists who have a few days in Istanbul as part of a two-week package tour of Turkey and the Greek Isles.

This child is riding on the tram.

Why is he riding on the outside, perched on a little block on the back of the tram? Because he's a boy doing things that little boys do! Or, as the instagrammers would call it: living his best life.

About a mile walk from Taksim Square is Galata Tower:

You can go inside.

It's a 30 euro ticket. There is an elevator inside to take you most of the way up, I just found out. I wasn't go to spend 30 euros, which is more than 6,000 Turkish lira, on having to climb several flights of stairs. But now, having googled it, the elevator will take you up seven floors and you walk the stairs to ascend the final two floors. Those terms would have been acceptable had I known the terms at the time.

Considering that Galata Tower was built in the 1300's, more than 100 years before the Ottoman takeover of Constantinople, I am quite surprised that there is an elevator inside.

This is an interesting building I saw walking from Galata Tower to the cruise ship embarkation zone.

It's not famous. It's not a tourist attraction. It just looks interesting in a good sort of way. And, if you're a building, isn't that enough?

I ate local for a late lunch. Doner. The sauce on the left was awesome and perfect. The sauce of the right was too mild and too eggplant-y. There might have been a little eggplant in the spicier sauce on the left that I loved, but the flavor was so awesome, I will forgive it for its eggplant ways.

And, quite sadly, Istanbul is a Pepsi town. It's like that old Saturday Night Live skit from way back in the original cast days: "No Coke. Pepsi."

After my late lunch, I moseyed down to the waters of the Golden Horn.

The Golden Horn separates the Old City and the New City on the European side.

This is the Galata Bridge, which is the first bridge in succession crossing the Golden Horn, starting at the point where the Golden Horn flows into the Bosphorus.

There are plenty of restaurants on the underside of the bridge. And on the top deck?

People fishing. The Galata Bridge is well known for the number of people who gather on it everyday to fish. With fishing line and fishing poles. Old school fishing.

Oh and wedding photography, too:

Is she being married on the Galata Bridge? I don't know. But I don't see a groom, so I am guessing that these are only pre-wedding Instagram photos.

There are millions and millions of boats in this area, all there to take people on late afternoon Bosphorus cruises.

I would have been tempted to take one myself, since there are sights along the water that are seen best from the water, as that is the angle and direction these buildings were designed to be seen. Such as the Dolmabahçe Palace, north of here, where the final Ottoman sultans ruled during the Ottoman Empire's "Sick Man of Europe" phase. Things were much better for the Empire when everything was based in Topkapi Palace in the Old City.

I didn't take a cruise so we will save Dolmabahçe Palace for another time. But Galata Tower is visible in the above photo looking back at the New City from mid-Galata Bridge.

And this is the view of the Old City from mid-Galata Bridge:

Look at the cruise boats lined up, like taxis at McCarran airport on a busy Friday night. It's like everyone in the whole world but me is taking a Bosphorus cruise in Istanbul tonight.

Bosphorus cruise boat with the Golden Horn Metro Bridge, or Haliç Metro Köprüsü, in the background.

The Golden Horn Metro bridge is a bridge that is there simply for the city metro and pedestrians. No cars. No trucks.

Once you cross the Galata Bridge, you are in a sea of humanity, filled with people embarking on, and disembarking from, their Bosphorus cruises,

There are only two types of food carts here, and there a million of each. Turkish bagels, which are sort of a hybrid between a bagel and a soft pretzel. And roasted corn on the cob (which is surprisingly popular here) and, out of the same cart, what I believe are chestnuts.

I skipped the food carts and headed for a dessert restaurant closer to my hotel:

Kunefe! With an espresso on the side. From this shop:

What is kunefe? I will describe it, but it will not sound nearly as delicious as it is. Imagine a giant shredded wheat biscuit. Filled with mozzarella cheese. And soaking in simple syrup. With a few ground pistachios on top. Mmmmm. Seriously. Mmmmmm. It sounds like a train wreck from my description, but it is beyond awesome. It is definitely not something you want everyday. But my favorite Turkish restaurant in Las Vegas closed during the covidiocy, so it has been several years since my last kunefe. I will not wait that long for my next.

Long day. I'm tired. Tomorrow I will be a new destination, but the flight got postponed from early afternoon to evening, so I will have one more tourism day in the Old City.

I will end with one last photo of the Blue Mosque, with the German fountain in the foreground, in the late afternoon sun.

Tear Down the Walls of Troy

A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
Unless the horse is in the harbor of Çanakkale and not outside the walls of Troy.

I've read the Iliad. I've read the Aeneid. So it was time to see Troy for myself. Well, what's left of the place. And that's not much, but more is being uncovered all the time, complicated by the fact that there was no one City of Troy. There were nine. Layered on top of each other.

And that complicates the archaeology, especially in a world where archaeologists are trying to balance preservation with discovery. And in a place such as Troy, the fact that the pendulum has swung hard in favor of preservation, that makes the process of uncovering the deeper layers, going back to 3000 B.C. (And, again, B.C., not B.C.E., because what makes the "common era" common? Or should I ask, who makes it common? Exactly.)

It's about a four-hour drive in a large passenger travel van (the van is large, the passengers vary in size). You travel along the Sea of Marmara, the body of the water with the Bosphorus to the north and the Dardenelles to the southwest, for a long while. (It is the set of three bodies of water, the Dardenelles, the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosphorus, that separate the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas from the Black Sea.) After you reach the Dardenelles, you take a ferry across the water from Eceabat on the European side of the Dardenelles to the city of Çanakkale in Asia. The sign in the above photo shows you where to go to get the "feribot," so, yes, it is not a ferry and it is not a boat. It is a ferry-boat. Like a tuna fish or a turkey bird.

Eceabat does feature statuary near the ferry-boat harbor.

I had limited time in Eceabat, so I saw this one, but missed the massive "Respect for History" monument and the trench warfare. (There were a huge number of Aussie and Kiwi tourists on my van and nearly all were going to Gallipoli, a famous WWI battlefield where an enormous number of Australian and New Zealand troops were slaughtered,)

Off to the ferry-boat and to Anatolian Turkey.

There's more than one ferry-boat operating these waters. I'm not sure why there are multiple bridges over the Bosphorus but, at most, one over the Dardenelles. I am guessing it's the combination of the fact that the Dardenelles is a wider channel and Bosphorus has one of the world's most populous cities built astride it.

Once you land in Çanakkale, the setting of the Trojan mood begins.

There is a replica of the Trojan Horse in the Çanakkale harbor. Actually, that is not a replica. It's apparently the real thing. The "real thing" as in the real Trojan Horse from the filming of the Brad Pitt movie "Troy" several years ago. The movie studio gifted the horse to Çanakkale after filming. So this is the real deal. In a way.

A little aside of town are Trojan busts.

 

Above is the happy loving couple that, according to Homer, caused the whole Trojan War mess. I guess this couple sort of served the same role as the Archduke Ferdinand and his spoiled wife Sophie did in fomenting WWI. History does not repeat, as they say, but it rhymes.

This is King Agamemnon. You also may know him from the Aeschylus written Greek tragedy play named for him.

Odysseus. He was the star in Homer's sequel to the Iliad, the Odyssey.

This is a tragic figure:

No. I am not referring to the man in the foreground who made the tragic fashion choice of fluorescent yellow. I am referring the Achilles, the man with the famous heel, over his left shoulder.

And here I am posing with a heroic figure, not a tragic one:

  

Me and Mr. Ataturk. Kemel Ataturk, the founder of modern day Turkey. Now modern-day Türkiye.

As an aside, I really should get used to spelling it "Türkiye," since the locals, when speaking English, pronounce the name of their country "tur-KEY-uh," with a pronounced extra vowel sound at the end, and not "tur-KEY," as we do. R.E.S. P. E. C. T. And all that.

We now are in the Troy archaeological site, with a very sad and not-at-all-original Trojan Horse, The Trojans would have got what they deserved if they couldn't figure out a giant wooden horse with a staircase coming out of its belly was trouble. With a "T" and that stands for "Troy."

Time to explore some ruins. Time to tear down the walls of Troy:

This is from the Homeric Era of Troy, which would be the sixth of seventh of the nine incarnations of Troy.

I am here:

The path doesn't neatly go from Troy #1 to Troy #9, or vice versa, because archaeology doesn't work that way. What got uncovered got uncovered and it's impossible to put them in numerical sequence. So you walk along the designated route, see what you see, and hope you can make sense of the historical perspective necessary.

All in all, I was surprised that there were nine Troys, ranging from 3000 B.C. to 500 A.D. in the late Roman Era. I though there was one Troy and it was destroyed in a war with Greece, fictionalized and sensationalized by Homer -- whoever heard of author sensationalizing reality -- and once Odysseus started his long, long journey home, that was the end of the saga of Troy.

Actual history, as it always is, is more complicated.

And we only guess it what those complications were. We can't interview the eyewitnesses, after all. We can only unearth what is there and hope to guess the right answer from extremely limited data and our overwhelming expectations and pedelictions.

This was a trench dug by a German archaeologist in the 1870's, Heinrich Schliemann, who dug a deep trench through the middle of the Troy ruins. Which, under the current rules of archaeology, was verboten. But, again, life is complicated, it is from his trench we learned over the nine Troys and that there was not just a single one. Under the current rules of practice in archaeology, we never should dig deeper than the Roman layer on top.

Was this the ramp they used to get the Trojan Horse inside the walls of Troy? Assuming there was a horse ... as that may just be a conspiracy theory.

This sidewalk in old Troy shows evidence of a massive earthquake. I still choose to believe Homer that Troy was destroyed by Greeks bearing gifts, all because of that shameless hussy Helen, But history and the archaeology seems to bolster the "massive earthquake in earthquake country" theory regarding the destruction of Troy.

This is a Trojan oak:

It is a form of oak tree, but the leaves have needles at the points, like holly. Look, don't touch.

This is an ampitheater:

Trojans did not have massive American sized butts and bodies to fit into these seats. In fact, they were so petite that they could have fit comfortably well in a Spirit Airlines seat. Almost. But could they have offered the price of a plastic bottle of water?

And the tour of Troy comes to an end. Evening is falling and it is time to get back to Istanbul and my hotel room bed.

But if you are ever in the neighborhood, visit Troy.

You will jump for joy. (That is my attempt at the instagram leap. Kudos to the photographer who caught me mid-air before gravity won the battle.)