Istanbul, Turkey 7-28-09

Istanbul is one of the greatest cities I've been to so far. I had no idea what to expect, but this city is full of life, tons of people, and is very modernized. The Turkish who live in Istanbul are only here for the tourism. Every shop sells little chachkas like postcards, maps, rugs, lamps, Turkish candy, and jewelry. But, this all makes sense because walking the streets, almost every person is carrying a camera and/or a backpack.

Our group of 3 decided to split up and the guys met up with a friend of theirs from back home and I checked into one of the best rated hostels in Istanbul. The Agora Hostel and Guesthouse is located in the center of town and is just a 5-10 minute walk from the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, grand bizarre, and the coast.

The Agora hostel had the highest rating on a couple hostel websites I checked, hosteworld.com and hostelbooker.com. The hostel was super clean, the staff was really nice, and all of the backpackers are constantly together touring the city, planning things to do at night, or just hanging out on the terrace upstairs.

As soon as I checked in I met a backpacker, John, who wanted to tour the city, so we met up with his friend and went to lunch,the Hagia Sophia, and then the grand bizarre. The Hagia Sophia was originally built in 532 AD, was burned down, and rebuilt in 5 years and opened again in 537 AD. The church was converted to a Mosque but now is a museum, with rich Christian and Muslim culture, for all to see. The Hagia Sophia is profound from the outside, but is a photographers dream from the inside. Huge ceilings, marble arches, stained glass windows, original paintings of Christian symbols, and huge metal Islamic disks fill the inside of this now museum. It's quite a site to see and I couldn't stop taking pictures.

After Hagia we walked to the Grand Bizarre where as far as the eye can see in every direction are vendors selling scarves, jewelry, lamps, candy, glass, souvenirs, fake designer sunglasses and bags, you name it. Each Turkish vendor paws for your attention and calls out to you as you pass by their shop. "hey lady, hey lady, beautiful, come look at this", "yes please, where are you from?"...etc. The fun part for me about this bizarre was that everything is negotiable and it's a game to get the price as low as you can. My greatest feat was scoring Ray Ban sunglasses for 10 Turkish Lira, which is about 6 US dollars. The price started at 30 Turkish Lira and after walking away on two separate occasions, I finally got the seller to agree to sell them for 10. The next day I realized what a great deal I got and went in to buy a second pair and they almost did not want to sell them for the same price, luckily one of the guys was there who remembered me as "the princess of America", so after a quick slide of hand action, the glasses were in my purse with no other potential buyer noticing.

Turkish delights are the most popular candy in turkey and a vendor insisted that I try one, but I was not allowed to touch, he fed it to me (okay...). I think they like Americans too much over here. Anyway, the delight was pretty good, it has pistachios and honey in it, and has the texture of a laffy taffy mixed with gum. So, its sticky and sweet and rolled in powdered sugar. Pretty good!

We walked back to our hostel and stopped along the way for Turkish gyros (of course). Back at the hostel I rested on my bunkbed cot in a room of 12 and took my nap. Later on I discovered how great it was to sleep here with a loud British snorer next to me, and a few people packing their bags at 3am, 5am, and 7am. Luckily I'm a pretty deep sleeper, so I would only wake up for a minute and then fall back asleep. As for the snorer, I pretended like each snore was a wave crashing along the shore (don't ask me how), but somehow I managed to fall asleep through it.

The next day I met up with another backpacker and we walked through the bizarre again, this time I bought some silver and turquoise jewelry, and then we walked through the city and to a park on the coast. The Turkish know what they're doing in terms of children's parks, instead of slides or swings, each toy is an type of exercise equipment (but without weights). So, stationary bikes, elliptical/gazelle type machines, oblique movements, it was fun to play and get a workout at the same time.

Back at the hostel I talked with everyone I could and we arranged a night out to a Cuban club in Taxim (don't ask me why, but apparently this Cuban place is Volkin's (the hostel manager) favorite place. Our group of 15 took 4 taxis and bar hopped to a couple places. Great night.

The following day I walked inside the Blue Mosque (very difficult to find a time to enter since there are 5 praying times during the day and the Mosque is closed for each of them), after the Mosque I walked with 2 girl friends to the fish market/port where we had fish sandwiches (something you can skip if you ever go since the fish is prepared on a frying board.. bones and all), and then walked through the spice market. A really different market to see, hundreds of spices at each little shop and Turkish delights of all varieties. I picked up some Turkish saffron for my mom and sister and some delights for my parents. On the way home we stopped for ice cream and each ate them in confusion for about 20 minutes. It's very difficult to explain, but if you can imagine the look and coldness of ice cream, but the texture of gummie bears, that's what this ice cream was like. So, you can't really lick it, more like bite your way through the ice cream. It was very odd. But sort of fun to eat since we couldn't really figure it out.

Around 5 o'clock the 2 girls and I decided to try a Turkish bath. Our hostel gave us two options, option 1 would be an expensive bath further from town and for about 70 lira we could spend the day there, or option two would be a very traditional Turkish bath close by that they recommended. Obviously we went with the latter (still wondering if we made the right decision). Well, we put on our bathing suits under our clothes and walked to the bath. No one inside spoke any English, so we tried to explain that we wanted a bath so the lady gestured for us to follow her. She brought us to a room and had us undress and put on towels and crocks (we could keep our bathing suits on) and then she led us through a sauna like hallway and into a marble room as hot as a sauna with steam. There were 3 sinks in the room and the only opening were these 5 little holes very high up on the ceiling. We didn't know what to do in there, so the lady walked over to a sink, dipped a bowl into water and started throwing the water on us (cold water which took my breath away- literally). She handed us the bowls and pointed to three different sinks, which we guessed meant for us to sit down and pour water on ourselves. We did this for a little while until the Turkish women came into our room and one-by-one had us follow them into separate rooms.

When it was my turn I felt like I was walking to my death.. I was very scared and didn't know what to expect. In Turkish she demanded that I lay on the table and basically forced me to take my bikini top off. Well, she was a harsh Turkish lady, what could I do? I laid on the table and she splashed buckets of hot water on me. Then took what felt like a luffa/scrubbing brush and washed, more like scraped, my body. As I was laying there I thought to myself- well, there goes my Greek isle tan. She scrubbed my arms and legs and chest and stomach and neck.. I felt very clean and raw. Then she took this huge pillow sack looking sheet and started waving in the air back and forth like a kite and then pinched the top opening of it together. It turned into a huge balloon of suds and she grazed that over me and I was completely covered in suds! A couple of those, some rubbing, some more buckets of water being thrown on me. And that was that. Complete. Thank you very much Turkish lady, next time I think I'll take a bath on my own.

We walked home talking about the experience and I felt a bit violated and felt like I still needed a shower. So, I took a proper one and then all of the backpackers met up on the rooftop terrace of Agora and drank our Efes beer and played cards for the rest of the night.

My last day in Istanbul I hung out with my new friends and made arrangements for Spain. I had a 3am shuttle to catch to the airport, so we all stayed up, talked, and played backgammon (huge game here) until 3. I'll miss my Agora crew.. but, luckily I'll be seeing a few of them again when I get to Australia!

pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2849862&id=2006596&l=e43506bf92