October 6

(in which our heroes discover that the Hagia Sophia makes everything else seem lame)

They offered us earplugs, as "some of the hotels are in lively areas" or some such thing. In fact, the area was reasonably lively in the evening, but wasn't enough to bother us. The prayer call at 6am did wake me, but I'd had 9+ hours of sleep by then, so it was OK. (And, I'm not convinced that earplugs are going to work against a sound system whose job is to rouse the city. Note - no muezzins in the minarets of the Blue Mosque; they have loudspeakers instead. Must ask if that's standard. Perhaps Laura already knows and will say so in the notes.

I think they all do (and Alp later confirmed this - sort of like "yes, all churches have electric lights now"), but Jerry is dubious, having seen minarets without. But then, the Hagia Sophia has minarets but is not now a mosque, so there could be others.

First stop: the Underground Cistern. A giant underground cavern for holding water, in case of siege. This began my day of thinking of bits of the scores for the LOTR movies as I took stuff in... I really wonder if Peter Jackson, or someone, thought of this place when they designed Dwarrowdelf. The chamber is full of columns, eerily and beautifully lit. There's just enough water in the chamber to reflect light for the display.... A couple of columns toward the back used the heads of pagan figures for feet. Not, apparently, for the purpose of annoying the pagans, but rather, because when you're building columns that nobody will look at (for at least several centuries), you recycle anything you can lay your hands on. So on inspection, the columns aren't regular at all... they are the odds and ends of the time. Like so many other things here, it's an archaeologist's paradise.

Hagia Sophia next. As our guide points out, when describing it as his favorite building, it's not that you can't find better architecture... it's that you can't find better (or equal, even) architectural accomplishments for several hundred years.

The thing I found particular amazing was building it in five years!

So it's a little dark inside, and many of the mosaics you can see are heavily damaged, and there are big swaths of plaster that's flaking or coming down, and the floors on the second level are uneven... But it was built almost 1500 years ago, in an earthquake-prone area, and it was absolutely impossible-seeming architecture for the time, so really, nothing to complain about there. I'm listing these things mostly to give the right atmosphere... it's not a shined-and-fixed-and-perfectly-restored building. It's a place from another age, and everything you see reminds you of that. There's something profound there, when you look at the whole thing, and it's clearly ancient, and then you look at the mods that were made when it was converted to a mosque (plaster over all of the Christian iconography, since Islam does not permit depictions of living beings in mosques; and also, the big wooden seals of the early Caliphs, and Mohammed, and Allah), and they look ancient, and also need repair. That is standing in the middle of history.

The view which has the mosaic of the Madonna and Christ between the symbols for Mohammed and Allah is a nice juxtaposition.

I think I know why it's our guide's favorite building. On the way out, I was distracted by a sunbeam lancing through the sanctuary... made me wonder what they felt a thousand years ago, walking into a place so amazing that many thought that God must have made it, when they saw a single beam of light coming through a high window like that.

Next was the Turkish and Islamic Arts museum. It was definitely pretty heavy on the carpets. The carpets were nice, and the whole thing was nice, but it didn't really get me. (Perhaps it wasn't fair to this Museum to go there right after the Hagia Sophia.)

I seem to be in charge of talking about the food. Lunch was the Pudding Shop and Iskender kebabs, and pudding. While I knew Iskender was a Turkish general, I only have just learned he was Alexander the Great. (Jerry corrects me that Alexander the Great was not a Turkish general, but you know what I mean.) Dinner, much later, was a fish restaurant which introduces the fish to you, lets you pick one, and then cooks it. It was deboned and served to the light of a flaming aluminum foil sculpture, which I found most mysterious, but the fish was very good. The outside table also came with about four optimistic cats, which Jerry appreciated.

Between lunch and dinner was a trip to the Chora Church (monastery? Alp called it a monastery, but it seemed to be a church...) Another of the church -> mosque -> museum conversions, it was more disappointing when compared to the Hagia Sophia. A little bit earlier (and the reason it's impressive is that it was fourth-century, which is apparently Very Early for still-extant churches), but much smaller. More mosaics, and much discussion outside of how the flying buttresses worked

Also, a visit to the Grand Bazaar. The salesmen managed to hit the right mixture for me between salesy and nice - they weren't annoying, just charming. But I really don't need too many more scarves (Post-trip note: hah hah ha!) and I was unwilling to ask how much the puzzle rings were because then we'd be in a relationship.