Archeological Museum

Here is a guy who is telling fortunes with rabbits and a chicken.

You pick which animal you want, and for one YTL you it will pick your fortune. Doreen did this when we were at Ortokay. It said that she would meet the man of her dreams, and her life would be perfect.

And it all came true!


Not for poor Marcellus, though. He was being flayed alive for challenging Zeus (or was it Apollo?) to a musical contest. I think he won, and so, he lost.

Pick your battles wisely.


All those boxes contain pot shards. This is like that last scene in the first Indiana Jones movie, where you see all the boxes stored in a government warehouse.


They are all waiting for grad students to put them back together.

Beyoglu

We didn't buy anything in the Spice Market. We didn't really buy too much of anything in Istanbul at all, but we took a lot of photos.

This is a self-portrait of us as we came out of the Spice Market.

Our old camera had a flip around monitor that let us see the image before we snapped it. The new camera (which we love except for two features - this and there is no viewfinder) does not let us see the image when we snap it. So sometimes I may look sort of serious as we are trying to figure out what, exactly is in the image. It usually turns out.

We walked over the Golden Horn on the Galata Bridge. It was an interesting walk, and we ended up just near a small "Tunnel" transport that took us up to Beyoglu.

Beyoglu is a part 0f town where all the embassies used to be when Istanbul was the capitol. Now, there are shops and bars. They have their own little streetcar that runs the few blocks of the area. We did not ride on it.

There are many cats in Turkey. They are indulged and allowed the run of almost every store and restaurant.

Here is one helping sell LPs


After a nice lunch at a Kebap stand (we had a donner kabap and some other, spicy kebap) we walked back over the Galata bridge.

I forgot to mention that people are always fishing off this bridge.

And there are restaurants down below. It was funny to see all the fishing lines. We even saw one or two folks catch fish. They were tiny fish - no more than 5" long. I don't know if they ate them or not.

A walk to the Spice Market

After we left that little church/mosque, we walked up past the old Hippodrome that was right alongside the Blue Mosque. There is very little left of the Hippodrome. Just a couple of columns. One is this Egyptian Obelisk. It makes you wonder if there are any Obelisks left in Egypt at all.



The walk to the Spice Market was nice, as was most of the walking in Istanbul. It is an extremely crowded city, though. If you have a choice to walk to to take a taxi, it is almost always better to walk. You get there faster.

The Spice Market is just what you would have expected. Lots of spices, food, and even...



Fezzes!

Doreen wouldn't let me buy one, though. She said that since Ataturk had banned them in 1923 that I could not buy one here. If I wanted to buy one, I would have to wait until we go to Fez, Morocco.

SS Surgus and Bachus

The next morning we decided to do a little more exploring in Istanbul. We started near the hotel, and walked down to the Saints Surgus and Bachus church.


It is a small church (now a mosque, of course) that was built in the 6th or 7th century.


It is mostly round, and has pleasing proportions


There is Greek lettering around the molding on top

and on one of the walls, the plaster has been pulled away to show brickwork and stone work. There are nails pounded in a regular intervals. I am not sure why. I'll bet my nephew, the Stonemason, would know

Down the Bosporus

Doreen eating a Kafka World ice cream cone


SP on the boat


That is the castle we walked to earlier. It wasn't really that bad a walk. It took about 20 minutes


This is the new castle. It compares poorly with the old one.

Then we got back into town. The view of the Golden Horn was the same as earlier (in any case, you can click on the "photos" link to the right and see many more pictures.

An old castle, and more

That is the old castle in the background.


You could see all the way to the Black Sea. It wasn't black, but it sure was cold! The winds were whipping all the way in from Russia.

I mentioned on an earlier post how people fought to get a seat top-side. By the time we got here, everyone was pushing to get inside the cabin! Doreen chose wisely.


This is an interesting element in the castle. It is a Greek Cross with lettering on it. Most crosses were destroyed when Mehmet II took over. This castle had several stones like this with the crosses still surviving.


Dogs are well liked, and well treated everywhere in Turkey that I have seen. These two are using phone booths to nap. But they would be napping everywhere you look.

Many of them have tags in their ears. I am not sure if they designate ownership (doubtful, as dogs are "unclean" to Muslims) or the fact that they have had their shots.

Many of the dogs were very good looking.

A trip up the Bosporus

There were a lot of interesting little villages on the shore - mostly on the European shore. (As you all know, the Bosporus separates Asia from Europe) Whenever we would pass something like this:

everyone would move to that side of the boat. I was always worried it would tip over. You always read about those ferries capsizing.

But we didn't. Here we are, getting off the boat in Andalu Kavagi:

And we wandered around the town for a while.

This was the best thing we saw, and we came back later:

and then we walked up to an acient castle on the hill. They call it "The Genoese Castle" but I could find no proof of that provenance.


It was quite a place.