THE TOURISTS
- Hannah McDonald
- Jul 24, 2014
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 10, 2022
AYA SOFYA, BLUE MOSQUE, THE CISTERN, TOPKAPI PALACE
Getting up nice and early we headed to the Keppler’s place to pick up Sierra and Aleah for the big tourist day. Mr. Keppler had to work and Mrs. Keppler left for the US on Tuesday to visit her mom, so it was just the six of us. We only had a couple of “tourist” days, so that meant that we were planning to see many places in one day. After arriving at the Keppler’s we took a taxi and a tram to get to the general area in which everything we were going to see was.
We started with the Aya Sophia. We got up early so that we didn’t have to wait in a huge line like we noticed when we passed the Aya Sophia on the way to the Grand Bazaar on Tuesday. It worked and we breezed through the entrance. We purchased audio guides so that we knew what we were looking at. Sierra and I shared and Joelle and Aleah shared. Joelle and Aleah listened to the whole thing, very impressive. Sierra and I got about halfway through the audio guide and then decided to play with indoor camera settings on our cameras instead. The Aya Sophia was once a mosque then a church and then, again, a mosque, and now a museum. There were some amazing details in the paintings and mosaics on the walls and ceilings.
Next, we headed to the Blue Mosque. It is beautiful. There are fountains going in front of the mosque, with trees, bushes, and flowers on the paths leading up to it. It is one of the few, or maybe only, mosques that has six minarets (the tall pointy things) instead of four. All of us girls had to put on long skirts to cover our legs and scarves to cover our hair and shoulders. Inside it is beautiful. There is a lot of blue in the tiles on the wall, hence the name. The only downside, the overpowering stench of smelly feet because everyone had to take off their shoes prior to entering. The carpet was damp from all the sweaty feet.
We exited the Blue Mosque and started walking towards the obelisks. A friendly man approached us to try and sell us his tour book. We said no, but we began a conversation with him. It was very fun. He would speak some Turkish to Sierra and Aleah, then English to everyone. He thought that mom had four daughters, everyone seemed to.
The obelisks were the shape of the Washington Monument. It didn’t take long to see them. There were some carvings in the sides of one, and the other had a pattern.
Lunch time! We went to a kabob restaurant. Sierra and I split fajitas. Turkey is definitely not the best place to get Mexican food, or at least it is much different than the U.S. version of Mexican food. It didn’t come with tortillas, beans, and other stuff like that. We ordered some rice to go with it. The chicken itself was pretty good though.
The Cistern was next. There was no line there either. The Cistern is really cool, literally. It is underground and is where water used to be stored for the city. There were a lot of pillars with little lights illuminating them. We walked on wooden pathways above the water and the big fish. At the base of two of the pillars, at the far end of the Cistern, there were two Medusa heads carved into the stone. One head was upside down, the other sideways. No one knows for sure what they were there for or why the were oriented as they are, maybe to protect the cistern.
Since, according to some of us, we hadn’t seen enough or walked enough we decided to go to Topkapi Palace since it was just around the corner. It had amazing tile work, but it was very big and a lot more walking. We went through the Harem which was where the Sultan’s wives and children lived. Unlike palaces in France, the walls weren’t covered in tapestries, but tiles instead. It was pretty! We were all ready to be done, but we still had to go through the regular part of the palace. We went into some rooms, but after a while they all started to look the same, so we decided to be done. Of course on the way out mom saw the “jewels” room, so we had to go in. We look in all the displays, but we didn’t find what is supposedly the biggest diamond in the world. As we were about to leave, again, Sierra suggested we look in one more room, and there it was. It was gorgeous and crazy big, 86 carrots! Way bigger than the Hope Diamond in Washington DC. It was found in a garbage bin a long time ago and then traded for three spoons. I was surprised by the lack of security. There were two ropes keeping people back a bit, and one security guard. There also wasn’t a huge crowd around it, we were one of the only people looking at it. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos of it.
Totally exhausted we took the tram back as far as we could. Then was the torturous, stuffy and hot bus. It was horrible and yet everyone still fell asleep. Dad got off and went to run a few errands while the rest of us went up to meet Mr. Keppler at a sushi restaurant near their house. It was very good. We had soup, sushi, and noodles. The sushi we had was like a California roll, but it had a fried “cornflake like” coating. After our meal we met Dad and then walked into town for a well deserved waffle. It was amazing!! As if we hadn’t done enough walking already we walked all the way back to the Keppler’s apartment instead of taking a cab or a bus. The girls relaxed for the rest of the evening and the boys went to play in a soccer match at 10:00 that night.
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