Istanbul Coda: Walking Along the Bosphorus

Fishing in the Bosphorus. The cruise boat doesn't mind.

A funicular ride. A small archaeological dig. The Istanbul letters. All this and Kemal Atatürk, too, today in Istanbul.

First, the funicular ride.

As with the Taksim-Kabataş funicular ride from about two weeks ago, the Tünel funicular suffers the same problem as being housed completely within a tunnel and having a rather gentle ascent.

But this one is noticeably superior. It's historic. It passes through an old town with water dripping, as opposed to the sleek, antiseptic tunnel of the other funicular. And the ascent/descent is at just a little steeper angle. Still too gentle for a real funicular, but definitely an improvement.

I would rate this: worth a detour.

I then crossed the Galata Bridge, waded through the sea of humanity in their various queues to board various Bosphorus cruise boats and, once I was away from the cruise boat boarding area, the sidewalks cleared. Even though I was in the tourist side of town, for one of the most visited cities on the planet, I was out of the tourist zone. And at an archaeological dig:

Right there, where the Golden Horn separating the Old City from the New City in European Istanbul, flows into the Bosphorus, was a small archaeological dig.

The column fragments are a "tell" that this dig is from the late Roman Era of Byzantium.

Before it was re-badged Constantinople since this was before there was a Constantine.

But there was a cat at the dig.

It's not much, but it's fascinating that, not only is there an active archaeological in the middle of the most heavily touristed part of a heavily touristed city, but that hardly any other tourists are here.

There's only a few tourists at "The Letters."

Every tourist city has "The Letters." It's usually a major stop on the tourist photo circuit. But not here. There was a couple of tourists taking photos with the letters as a backdrop -- and by "a couple of tourists" I mean I literally saw two different tourists taking a photo with the letters in the background and that was it.

There also was a giant "walk around-able" map of the Istanbul tourist zones embedded in the sidewalk here.

Each one of those "stumps" represents a major Istanbul tourist site, with the name and a rendering of the site on a metal plate fixed to the concrete stump, including mosques, museums, towers, and bazaars.

This one answered a question I had:

Not verbally, but by its location and the description on its plate. It is the plate for the Beyazıt Kulesi, an historic fire watch tower that I saw lit up in green from my hotel room window. I knew the tower was too fat to be a minaret. I kept asking people working at my hotel and they did not know. But, thanks to the "map" in the sidewalk, I now know: Beyazıt Tower. You can see the tower design on the metal plate in the foreground. Maps rule!

We now reach the Kemal Atatürk portion of our final-day walking tour of Istanbul.

Let's move in for a closer look:

The founder of the modern Turkish state. And not just the founder, but the molder and shaper of the modern secular Turkish state.

And nearby is a statue of someone decidedly not from the modern secular Turkish state:

The Turgut Reis Monument. Turgut Reis was an Ottoman admiral from the early 16th Century who built the Ottoman Empire into a naval power. The fact that he is behind barbed wire is not a comment on his military prowess, but on the construction that is happening around him.

And we end the walk with the Ahırkapı Feneri Çeşmesi, the Ahırkapı lighthouse.

It looks like a lighthouse, even though it's on a very busy street in a massive mega-city. At this point, the time has come to meet my tour guide to show me the sights in a different part of the city. Stay tuned. There's more to come.

Rainy Day in the Ruins of Ephesus

The Library of Celsus in the ruins of Ephesus.

It's a rainy day in Selçuk. And that means there is nothing more fun to do than to walk on the steep slick stones of the Ephesus ruins a few miles out of town.

Don't worry. The ruins get more ruinous the deeper we go into Ephesus.

Ephesus once was one of the largest cities in the world. By some measures, it was the fourth or fifth largest city on earth in that time period when the Mediterranean/Aegean world (i.e., the globe) was transitioning from the Greek era to the era of the Roman Republic.

And the place was thick enough with tourists that it seemed like it has not yet lost that ranking.

Cruise shippers. The main cruise ship port is nearby Kuşadası. It is not, and this surprised even me, the Port of Izmir, which used to go by the Anglicized name of Smyrna. When the harbor in Ephesus became non-functional a couple thousand years ago, when it silted up, Smyrna/Izmir became the new commercial port.

So the Ephesus port was gone, but the malaria stayed behind.

Here is a typical Ephesus tourist of the non-cruise subspecies, standing in a church doorway. The cross above the door is a "tell." Ephesus was an early Christian center, hence Paul's epistle to the Ephesians. 

Below is a local theater.

As you can see, the tourist pictured above is looking for his seat. His ticket says he should be sitting in C-19.

A row of columns. See what I did there?

A selection of different types of marble, from different parts of this part of the world, available to choose from, like some Home Depot from antiquity.

And here is the god of over-priced upscale scarfs.

Hermes.

And this is the goddess of over-priced "woke" sneakers:

Nike. The infamous Nike swoosh was taken from this representation. You can see it in Ms. Nike's flowing robes.

These are the Gates of Hercules.

 

Only the strong may pass through, I rated, for what it's worth.

A gaggle of tourists.

I'm not sure if "gaggle" is the right collective noun for a group of tourists. But it's the one I like to use. My dictionary says "gaggle" is an informal term for noisy, chaotic, unorganized group. Groups of tourists are usually, technically organized, although they do wander around obliviously.

This surviving (ish) structure has interesting decorative features.

Let's take a bathroom break.

The men's toilets of Ephesus. Community crappers on the Roman model. I, for one, think the stall wall was a welcome invention.

We now arrive at the "Terrace Houses" section of Ephesus.

Think of this as the luxury high-rise condo section of town.

Large rooms, the hallmark of luxury living even a couple of millennia ago.

The first "home" was a large mansion, with square footage around 15,000 sq. ft., which is enormous even by today's McMansion standards. But it still was a condo, as people lived on the higher floors.

This is covered because the "Terrace Houses" still are an active archaeological site.

Ephesus as whole is still an active archaeological site.

Floor mosaics. So you know you are no longer among the hoi polloi. You are hobnobbing with the Ephesian elite.

Floor mosaics in the penthouse suite,

And then it is time to go back into the elements. Below you can see the facade of the Library of Celsus.

You also can see the construction cranes that are being used in the active archaeology of this site.

Let's check out the Library, shall we?

The rains got a little harder while I was under the cover of the "Terrace Houses," so I chose not to remove my cap, with its glasses-protecting brim, while posing at the Library.

The Library is the place to be.

Let's have a look inside:

And the books have all been checked out. The scrolls are a couple of thousand years past due. Can you imagine the size of the fine?

Across the way is not the main stadium.

It looks like it. But it's not. At this point in the tour, I went inside for the "Ephesus Experience" show. It is a very well-done immersive 360-degree sound and video display about the history of Ephesus from the Greek to the Roman to very, very early Christian era. The production values were impressive and admission was included at no extra charge to the regular park admission. (The "Terrace Houses," on the other hand, required a small add-on fee to enter.)

And we end Ephesus with sarcophagi. Or is is sarcophaguses? Despite the rain, despite the horde of slow-moving boomer tourists (of which I am most definitely not, as even deep into my dotage I am a very fast walker), the Ephesus ruins were worth the trek. This is why I came to Selçuk and it was most definitely worth it. Almost as much as the baklava (more on that in another post).

Edited to add the following fun fact related to me by my Ephesus guide: Who was the first U.S. citizen to visit Ephesus? He is a literary figure and he wrote about in his most celebrated book, well, his most celebrated book in his lifetime. Other works of his became much more celebrated after his passing. The first American to visit Ephesus? Mark Twain. And the story of his visit is recounted in his book "Innocents Abroad."