Ok, one last thing from our first full day in Istanbul.  After lunch, we got a bit of time to visit the Spice Market, a covered area, but much more the open market that people imagined.  Stall after stall has piles of spices,
a fortune in saffron,

olives,

sweets,

notice the carved blocks of Turkish delight with pistachios,

and more...

                                     

Oh, after the Spice Market, many of us crossed the street and jumped on a boat for a two-hour tour of Istanbul from the water.  Great views, like one of the bridges that crosses from Europe to Asia,


But as I was pretty sleep-deprived and groggy by then, despite the couple cups of hot tea (chai), maybe someone else will fill this in.

Alive and well...

After lunch, a few of us went with Suleiman to the nearby Rusdem Pasha Mosque—a small structure, built over several businesses, but notable for the quality of its blue tiles. These were a specialty in the 16th C., the blue formed with cobalt, in dozens of abstract symmetries.




Again, they asked that we remove our shoes, and leave them at the front, and that the women cover themselves.


Later, bob

Lunch, down by the harbor


A quick, set menu—fresh vegetable salad, some rolled cheese pastries, and the house specialty, a kind of sausage patty made of beef and lamb.



We found out it’s good to eat beside Sarah—I got an extra salad (and rice and baked tomato), and Steve a great deal of extra meat, and I think he had 5 baklava.

Pretty, filling, inoffensive, bland--ironically, spiceless...

Later, bob

A last stop before lunch, we made it to the Grand Bazaar, not a quaint open-air market, but really one of the oldest “malls”—a hatchwork of covered streets, with shops crammed together and the art of selling refined to high quality.



All sorts of things can be found here—jewels, gold, silver; tea sets, ceramics, lamps; leather, rugs, shawls; and souvenirs galore.

A new mascot image?

What I found much appealing were pages of old books, individual pages, worked with gold leaf and hand-illustrated, crumbling edges, fire touched, antique or well-dissimulated. I looked through a stack that dealt with religious themes, such as a mounted, veiled Prophet, Jonah with the fish, learned sages with emblems of the zodiac, and so on. These caught my eye now because I’m reading Orhan Pamuk’s novel, My Name is Red, which treats a murder among 16th C. miniaturist painters in Istanbul. I’d planned to finish the novel while in Istanbul, but alas, our schedule won’t permit. And at the un-bargained starting price of 180 TL per page, well, I didn’t buy.


I bought a few (cheaper) souvenirs, and wandered in the dense crowds, watching the dance of commerce, and the waiters running trays of covered tea, sugar chunks atop, to the ever-alert merchants.

Later, bob

Still morning of 5-21, we made it to the Topkapi Palace, home to the Sultans for centuries.  According to Sulieman, the Palace grounds cover some 170 acres, not what we think of as a European palace.  The grounds have 4 courtyards, progressively more restrictive in the old days, with both walls and link buildings enclosing this vast government complex.  So, it's hard to give one picture, one vista like Versailles.

Now various museums are here--a room for armory, portraits of the Sultans, clothing the Sultans wore, one kaftan back to the 1400s, a jewelry room (I didn't have the patience for the line, but Fred and Dawn got in to see the 86-carat Topkapi Diamond--and Dawn recalled this as the focus of an old movie, also Topkapi, about ambitious jewel thieves), a disply of holy relics (perhaps the staff of Moses, the sword of David, things touched and used by the Prophet) and somewhere, through a gate I didn't find, the infamous harem/women's quarters.

There were formal places, like the Gate of Felicity, where coronations would once have taken place...


and great views looking out over the Bosphorus...


and certainly now the feel of public gardens...


I skipped the cafe time, and wandered by myself, trying to get a sense of this place. Mysterious windows--who might have once peered out, what plots may have unfolded, what jealousies...

And this would have been a place of very deliberate peacefullness


But the crowds are impossible to ignore. Here, the small pavilion set for a sultan to 'break his fast' during Ramadan, filled with tourists, pushing to stand there, pushing to get that photo.

                                  

Such a democratic impulse conflicts with, destroys, whatever purpose this place once had.  Though there are still tranquil moments, and some stunning, surprising images:


Once, the kitchens of the palace fed 3000 people a day, the officers and bureaucrats and soldiers--a whole assembly that employed thousands more.  I had some of these roasted chestnuts on the way out.  Maybe the same thousands are still employed here.

later, bob

Our next stop, a short walk away, was the Blue Mosque--the largest in Turkey, built by Sultan Ahmed I in the early 1600s.  Suleiman, our guide, filled us in on some of the history and purpose of this mosque, while we were stopped in the courtyard--the only time today it threatened to drizzle on us, despite the gloomy weather reports, and the curious appearance of our mascot.


Suleiman stressed how many other social functions clustered around this mosque, beyond the prayer space itself.  A curious comment, that "mosques are built for men"--that women could come here to worship, but there is far less space segregated for women, and the less room for ablutions (ritual washing) before prayer.  To enter the mosque, we all removed our shoes and were given plastic bags to carry them along, as we would exit on the other side of the building.  Women were offered scarves or wraps to cover their heads or bare legs.

The dome, Suleiman suggests, was the only practical way to roof over such a large space, without using many internal supports.

The mosque itself is named after the some 21,000 blue tiles used inside.  Notice also the hanging lines--now supporting electric lights, but once meant for oil lamps, which had to be low enough for some patient folks to light.


While outside, the perhaps more secular images of the nation appear--
later, bob