Turkish Delight

Actually, for most of our time in Turkey we thought Turkish Delight was borderline disgusting and instead ate baklava at an alarming rate. It turns out, though, that only the cheap Turkish Delight is semi-nasty—if you’re willing to pay, you can get Turkish Delight that is positively delightful. Needless to say, between the pastries and the sweets (and the kebabs and the hummus and the lentil soup), we ate remarkably well in Turkey.

Jet lag has me up really early for a Saturday and I just finished weeding out some of the bad pictures from our trip, so a good time for blogging. We cashed in some of our large pile of frequent flier miles this week and spent three days in Turkey. I’m not really prepared to provide you with a complete history of Istanbul (Constantine and the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, 1500 years of history, etc.), fascinating though it is. Our knowledge of Istanbul comes primarily from Wikipedia, our guide book, and The Historian, which, being about Dracula, is of course completely historically accurate.

We arrived Monday evening and ate dinner at the Oriental Express, a nice restaurant in the train station (which, incidentally, is the end of the Oriental Express). We had the most amazing lamb we have ever tasted. Seriously. Then we started out Monday morning at Hagia Sophia, a basillica (and you thought Music and Art of the Western World was a waste of time!) that was built 1500 years ago after Constantine (first Christian Roman Emperor) moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople (now Istanbul). Seriously amazing. The church was turned into a mosque when the Ottomans took over, so it has a crazy mix of Christian and Islamic art and symbolism inside. Kind of amazing.

Inside Hagia Sophia

Mosaics in Hagia Sophia

Afterwards we crossed the street and headed toward Sultan Ahmed Mosque, more commonly known as the Blue Mosque because of all the blue tiles inside, where we took off our shoes and covered our heads (me) to the Islamic singing and look at the goregous blue tiles that lined the entire dome. As we left the call to prayer rang out over the city.

Inside the Blue Mosque

The Blue Mosque

We walked around the park that was once the Hippodrome, then went underground to explore the Basilica Cisterns, an amazing underground water structure that was built during the Roman period. We both thought it seemed a little Phantom of the Opera-esque.

After some fresh-squeezed orange and pomegranate juice (which was amazing, by the way), we took a boat cruise down the Bosphoros, checking out both the European and Asian sides of Istanbul, which set us up nicely for our day in Asia.

View of Istanbul from the Bosphoros

Wednesday we took a flight down to Izmir and got a tour guide to take us to Ephesus. There are lots and lots of reasons to visit Ephesus—largest archeological site in the world, walking the streets where Paul walked, my never ending fascination with Greek and Roman mythology. Our tour guide hurried us along inexplicably (later we discovered he wanted to take us to a rug shop where he got a bit of commission), which was kind of a downer, but Ephesus was seriously so cool. We got to sit in the theatre where Paul was supposed to speak to the Ephesians (read about it in Acts 19) and then saw the prison where Paul was held for his own protection.

At the Library at Ephesus

Ephesus Theatre

The area around Ephesus was absolutely beautiful. The weather was perfect and sunny, the Aegean Sea was shining, and there were fruit trees—oranges, pomegranates, olives—along the road. We also stopped briefly by St. John’s Basilica, where the Apostle John is buried, the House of the Virgin Mary (which is apparently one of two pilgrimage sites), and what is left of Artemis’s Temple (the rest, incidentally, is in the British Museum, which you can see here).

Statue of Artemis

On the Aegean Sea

Roadside Orange Stand

Thursday was the day for rain, and also for spending the morning in the Topkapi Palace, where we saw what it was like to live as a sultan. Then we spent the afternoon at the Grand Bazaar, where Jason brushed up his haggling skills (for the record, I like haggling with Kenyans much better than Turks. We laughed a lot more with the Kenyans.).

It was three days of go-go-going, and by dinner time, we were almost magnetically drawn to a restaurant that had cushions instead of chairs so that we could lounge a bit. Two last pieces of baklava and glasses of tea from the curvy Turkish teacups (my mom has had one of these in our house my whole life, and I only now know what it is!), and we headed home!

Note: I had a miserable time trying to choose which pictures to share, so to see more, head to the Flickr link on the side of the blog...