The problem is that every one of these locations is on the Istanbul Tourist Bucket List. If you come here, you will visit these sites, so they are CROWDED. I think that feeling was exacerbated by the short trip. Cramming everything into five weeks made Turkey feel much more like a traditional tourist cadence than is comfortable for us.

Which is, of course, kind of laughable. I saw packaged tours that covered pretty much everything we did in Turkey in six days: Istanbul’s Old City, Cappadocia, Ephesus, and Pamukkale. If I told someone on one of those tours that we’d felt rushed covering that itinerary in five weeks they’d think we’d slipped a sprocket.

But that is legitimately how we felt. We’ve been talking about cadence a lot, and we think that three full months might be a little long in a lot of places. But five weeks is obviously way too short for how we like to travel. I think going forward we’ll consistently be in an 8-10 week cadence, depending on the location.

One of the weirder landmarks of the Old City is the Obelisk of Theodosius. It originally dates to roughly 1400 BC, and was actually the obelisk of Thutmose III. Constantine II moved it to Alexandria, to commemorate his awesomeness, in 357 AD. The loot was subsequently looted by Theodosius and moved to Constantinople in 390 AD.

It’s nice to know that colonialism, looting, and cultural appropriation have such a rich, deep history. Sometimes it seems like something the French just made up.

It’s also an objectively awesome thing. If I had the space I’d definitely appropriate it.

The Grand Bazaar

We’re going to start in our comfort place: shopping.

Of all the various Medinas and Old Cities we’ve visited, Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar stands out. Like everything else here, apparently, it’s old, with original construction having been completed in 1461 by the new Ottoman rulers of Constantinople. It’s big, with over 4,000 shops on 61 covered streets. And it’s crowded, with almost 3 million visitors/year, making it one of the top tourist attractions on the planet. It’s also very, very beautiful, more an orderly yet ornate indoor mall than a twisty ramshackle Medina.

The shops are as varied as you’d expect. Lots of jewelry, less textiles than you’d think, but enough to satisfy Dorothy. She found one shop that specialized in ikats from Uzbekistan, and she went back for a second round before we left. Uzbekistan has now vaulted to the top of the Where Next list.

The Cisterns of Mercy

Apparently there are 100s of cisterns ‘neath the streets of Istanbul, but the Basilica Cistern is the largest, and is fully open to the public. They’ve graciously kept the water level low, to keep visitors from drowning.

It’s an epic space, covering 100,000 square feet and holding 2.8 million cubic feet of water, with vaulted ceilings over 30 feet high. In its current incarnation as a tourist attraction it’s been artily lit, and it’s used for an evening concert series. Which seems dead on for ambience and acoustically just about the worst idea ever.

It’s a beautiful, peaceful space, and, if you’re willing to wait, it’s even possible to get pictures without hordes of people crowding the frame.

The Dolphins Of The Bosporus

I know I’m teasing. Topkapi! Hagia Sophia!! Blue Mosque!!! Patience, little one. We’ll get there.

But first, we were told by some folks that you could see dolphins sporting in the Bosporus on the stretch just below Topkapi and around the corner from the Golden Horn. So one morning, before enjoying the Old City’s sights, we made our way to the water.

Balat

We also visited Balat, a lovely old neighborhood in the Old City known for its colorful homes, steep streets, and beautiful views of the Golden Horn.

Ottomans: They’re More Than Just Footstools

I wasn’t truly sure what to expect of Topkapi Palace. It served as the residence of the Ottoman sultans and the seat of administrative power from the 1460s until a new palace was built in 1856, so it was sure to be a grand edifice. But just about everything I knew about it I learned from Topkapi, the 1964 movie starring Maximilian Schell and Melina Mercouri. For reasons only a forensic psychologist could fathom, it was one of my favorite movies as a child.

It had everything a young boy’s heart could desire: exotic locales, priceless jewels, a clockwork heist, and Melina Mercouri. Who knew I’d someday get to visit? Nary a hint of Melina Mercouri, by the way. I looked everywhere.

In Morocco and Tunisia most of the places that called themselves museums kind of weren’t. For the most part they were museums of themselves, showcasing the design and history of their structures. Topkapi is obviously that, but it’s also a real museum. In fact, an amazing museum, with the quality of the collection on par with the Met.

Unlike the Met, which means to tell the entire history of the world, Topkapi has a laser-like focus on one specific thing: the lives of the Ottoman sultans who lived in and ruled from Topkapi Palace. Where the Met has breadth Topkapi has depth. That deep dive, into a world of almost unfathomable power and luxury, is amazing. It was good to be sultan.

The collections were divided up by category: rooms for costumes, weapons, jewels… Like the Met, way too much to see in a single visit. But I think we got the highlights.

The Armory

The armory surprised me. I was expecting something like the Met’s armor collection which, to be fair, I find a little musty. I’m sure that’s a failure of imagination on my part, but no such failure was possible at Topkapi’s armory exhibit. I think it was the first hall we entered, and it very much set the stage for the rest of our visit. Anything and everything can be made into decadently luxurious art, no matter how mundane the underlying object.

Case in point, the ludicrously overdecorated tools of war on display here, not one of which has ever seen, or was ever intended to see, battle.

The Costume Room

You will be unsurprised to learn that it was difficult to get Dorothy to leave this exhibit. “I’m hungry” was met with a grudging, “All right. We can come back after lunch.”

She had ample cause to be so engrossed. This was our favorite exhibit, even accounting for the famous Topkapi jewels. While the objects in the other exhibits were amazing, they were not, for the most part useful; they were decorative in intent and execution. Or rather, they may have been useful, like a clock, but that clock’s value as an object was derived from the beauty of its execution, not the accuracy of its timekeeping.

But these were their actual clothes, what they wore as they went about the daily business of being sultan, or a member of the sultan’s family or retinue. This was an intimate look into the lives of people whose lifestyle would otherwise render them unknowable.

The Sultan’s Rooms

Interestingly, Topkapi Palace seemed a little subdued after touring the palaces of sultans and beys in Morocco and Tunisia. Those folks decorated to the tune of, “If some is good, more is better.” You can practically hear the architect screaming, “Look, that spot is undecorated. Fix it, before someone notices. And beheads me”

Big swaths of Topkapi, on the other hand, seemed more functional than decorative. One unsurprising exception being the sultan’s residence, as one might expect. Pretty fucking swanky.

The Harem

After the sultan’s rooms, the harem was the other place that was extravagantly decorated tip to toe. That befits the importance of the harem to Ottoman rule. The harem, sniggering aside, was a critical part of the Ottoman governing structure, offering both upward mobility and access to power.

Much of this had to do with how the Ottoman sultans dealt with slavery. The sultan’s male slaves were educated in palace schools and often went on to positions of influence and power, from military leaders to regional governors to grand viziers. More than one grand vizier had been enslaved.

For enslaved women, potential power radiated out from the harem. If a concubine gave birth to a son, that son was an official heir. The mother was responsible for guiding her son’s education, training, and career, in order to best position him as the next sultan.

This was a distinctly non-trivial matter, as the newly installed sultan’s first act was almost always killing his brothers, to secure the throne from threat. Who made it to the top of that heap mattered. If you successfully maneuvered your son onto the throne, you became valide sultan, the Queen Mother, and held enormous sway over matters of state. Despite having started out as an enslaved, harem-dwelling concubine.

Commensurate with its role in governance, the harem was a massive complex, practically its own standalone city within Topkapi Palace. At its peak the harem boasted 300-400 rooms, nine bathhouses, two mosques, its own kitchen, dormitories, a school, a hospital, and a laundry.

The tile work rivaled anything we saw in Morocco and Tunisia, and warrants its own slideshow.

The Watch Room

Topkapi’s single most underwhelming display, conceptually. “Mom! Mom! Can we go to the Watch Room next?” You’d have your kids tested. But like everything else here, the contents of the Watch Room are executed at a level that neatly blurs the line between artistry and absurdity. Here are just a few choice examples from a surprisingly deep collection.

The Jewels

The Crown Jewels of Topkapi are… the jewels. More than any other exhibit, here is where the wealth and opulence of the Ottoman rulers really hits home. Honestly, some of this stuff is just ridiculous. But something can be both ridiculous and beautiful at the same time. I myself am living proof of that dictum.

Museum of Turkish & Islamic Art

Yet another ridiculously old structure, the building that houses the Museum of Turkish & Islamic Art was built in 1524 as the palace for one of Suleiman the Magnificent’s grand viziers. Which sounds like an outtake from 1001 Nights, but is an actual historical fact. It sits across Sultanahmet Square from the Blue Mosque, close to Topkapi Palace, part of a very small area thick with history.

It’s one of the largest museums in Turkey, and covers the full range of art forms across all of Turkey’s various ethnic groups. It’s a comprehensive overview of local beauty, and not to be missed on a trip to Istanbul, even though it’s less well known than its neighbors.

Diplomatic edicts from the Ottoman sultan took the form of beautifully illuminated and calligraphed documents called either Fermâns or Berâts. We saw examples throughout our museum visits in Turkey, but the standouts were here.

Istanbul Archaeology Museum

The Archaeology Museum was established in 1869 by Sultan Abdülaziz in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. The building that houses the museum was purpose built in 1891, unlike its repurposed neighbors, so it’s only ever fulfilled its designed use.

The Ottomans were late to the party in acknowledging the value of their cultural patrimony, but Abdülaziz had his eyes opened on a European tour in 1867 that included visits to archeological museums in London, Paris, and Vienna. 1869 saw not only the inauguration of the Archaeology Museum but the establishment of the first laws governing the management and ownership of antiquities.

They had plenty of material to work with, even with a late start. The collection covers all of Turkey’s history, as well as artifacts from across the extended Ottoman Empire. Which was a substantial chunk of the ancient world. Unsurprisingly, the collection is eye bleedingly dense and beautiful. If you wanted to understand the origins of Western civilization, you could do way worse than a visit to the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.

Picking highlights from this museum was hard. The entire collection is highlights. Here’s our best shot.

Marble

As impressive as this collection was overall, I think the carved marble was the standout. From decorative friezes to statuary, the work was subtle, nuanced, and delicate. The statues were especially alive, looking at any moment like they might tap you on the shoulder and whisper in your ear.

Gods & Creatures

Archictectural Friezes

Gold

Terracotta

How on earth have terracotta artifacts made it until now? Everything here dates from the 6th to the 14th centuries BC. This shit be old.

Bronze

Not a lot, but what was there was choice.

The Blue Mosque

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque got its nickname from the profusion of blue tile work, mostly Iznik tiles from Anatolia. It didn’t seem all that blue to me, but what do I know. It was completed in 1617, and is still a functioning mosque. Which makes it a surprisingly quick visit, as most of the complex is off limits to heathens. Which, in turn, makes the parts that are accessible incredibly dense with tourists (that has to be the plural: a dense of tourists). Here’s the main hall.

The payoff comes from looking up. The central dome complex is stunning.

The rest of the interior Is just as eye catching. The Blue Mosque is one of the rare buildings we’ve seen on this tour whose primary cultural significance is its raw beauty. It wasn’t a seat of power, it wasn’t a sultan’s palace, it wasn’t the site of a meaningful conquest. It’s just one of the most beautiful structures man has ever created. That’s more than enough.

It’s not too shabby from the outside, either.

Hagia Sophia

First off, it’s not pronounced hay-gee-ah so-fee-ah. It’s pronounced hi-ya so-fee-ah. You’ll often see it anglicized as Aya Sofia, which I actually thought was a different place (“I want to see both!”). Because a passport doesn’t require an IQ test.

Like the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia is a working mosque, although its route has been decidedly more circuitous. The current structure was built by Justinian in 537 AD as the Christian cathedral in Constantinople, and was actually the third church built on the site. There has been a church there since 360. It was also the largest cathedral on the planet for literally 1,000 years, until the completion of the cathedral in Seville.

It was a Greek Orthodox church from 537 through 1453, except for a brief time out as a Latin Catholic Church during the Crusades in the 1200s. It became a mosque in 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, and stayed that way until 1935, when it was turned into a museum. In 2020, Erdoğan had it turned back into a mosque to curry favor with a certain strain of Muslim voter.

So it’s a mosque chock full of Greek Orthodox images and iconography. But to me, the strangest thing about it is its age. We’ve seen older buildings on this tour, but they were ruins. Hagia Sophia is, arguably, the same building that was erected in 537. It’s gone through multiple cycles where artwork has been painted over and restored, and it’s not like nothing has changed since construction. The Ottomans added a minaret, and some of the domes collapsed in the late 500s and had to be rebuilt, but the structure itself is largely original.

Which is, frankly, mind-blowing. The first thing I thought of when we were there was the Ship of Theseus paradox. As I’m sure would have occurred to you, as well. As the myth recounts it, Theseus’s ship was brought out annually for a pilgrimage over hundreds of years. The boat was regularly maintained and restored: one year a new keel, another year a new rudder, another year new planks. At some point every part of the boat had been replaced. Was it still Theseus’s ship? If you ever want to see philosophers fight, and who doesn’t, toss a pair the Ship of Theseus paradox and stand back. Now that’s how you poke a bear.

Because the Hagia Sophia was so old, it seemed inconceivable to me that I wasn’t touring the Ship of Theseus. It couldn’t possibly be the same exact structure that was built in 537. But while I have found ample evidence of art restoration and the repair of actual damage to the structure, I can’t find anything to support the notion that the brick and mortar structure itself has been systematically replaced over the last 1,500 years. However it got there, at least one source lists it as the 11th oldest building on the planet that’s still in use. Even if parts have been replaced, it’s no small thing to be inside a building that old.

The Angels

There are four angels, seraphim guarding God’s throne, in the pendants supporting the main dome. Two of the angels are original mosaic, while the other two were damaged and repainted as murals. When the Ottomans converted the church to a mosque they covered the angel’s faces due to the Islamic ban on representational images. Unlike the Byzantines, who literally defaced their own religion’s artifacts over sectarian disagreements, the Ottomans respectfully covered the angel’s faces with star-shaped metal caps. You can see one of the original angels, whose cap was removed during repairs in 2009.

There’s a Hagia Sophia History Museum off premises, but 90% of that is a weird “experience” where you walk from room to room while videos play and you listen on a language-specific headphone device. When that’s over there’s a small museum with, to be fair, some choice artifacts. Like most of the North African museums we visited, the Hagia Sophia is primarily a museum of itself, but it does have a few museum-y displays.

Other than the space itself and the soaring main hall, the draw here is the mosaics, both geometric and figurative. This era Christian church loved it some mosaics, and the Hagia Sophia is practically pavéd with them. And those golden colored mosaic tiles? Gold. Nothing’s too good for our Jesus.

Oil Wrestling

Thirty countries were represented at Ethnosports, but Oil Wrestling is Turkey’s contribution to the art form. Folks have been oil wrestling for 4,500 years. Which is exactly what it looks like. It’s the sports version of a primordial forest.

Before the rasslin’ starts there’s a ritualized parade. Kind of like when moose stomp the ground to intimidate other moose.

YouTube makes me check a box on uploads declaring them “Safe for kids.” I checked yes, but I suppose it depends on how the kid in question feels about gladiator movies.

I was surprised by how slow it was. My only other experience with oil wrestling was in a strip club, and that was greased lightning by comparison. Although, to be fair, I don’t believe the emphasis there was on winning. I didn’t actually stay to the end of the match. While I’m sure the subtleties sing to devotees, it wasn’t exactly action packed.

Oodarysh

Also called Er Enish, it’s wrestling on horseback from Kyrgyzstan. I’m sorry it wasn’t horse wrestling. How much would you pay to watch horses wrestle? Cock fighting would be relegated to the ash heap of illicit sports history if anyone could figure out how to get horses to wrestle.

While this was also a little on the slow side, it did make me marvel at the logistics of putting on an event like this. You don’t Oodarysh on just any old horse. That horse is trained. So unlike, say track and field, where you’re packing your shoes, you have to pack your horse to attend this shindig. We’re having trouble figuring out how to ship a box from Istanbul to Chicago. Getting a horse from Kyrgyzstan to Istanbul? No thank you.

The funny thing about this is that we did watch it to the end, and it just appeared to stop. Perhaps there was some subtle rules violation that ended the match, but as far as we could tell the guy with hair just dismounted and they walked off. He appeared to be done.

Shalwar Wrestling

Another Turkish ethnosport, Shalwar Wrestling is named for the shorts, which are the only uniform. The participants are barefoot and otherwise exposed. The pace on these bouts was decidedly spritelier than the oil wrestling and the Oodarysh. It felt more like actual wrestling, while still looking plenty odd.

It started with the children’s division…

Moved on to teenagers…

And finished with adults.

According to Wikipedia, “Defeat is the belly that sees the sky.” Isn’t it just? I wish I’d understood that when we were watching, but I feel like I’ve always known.

Mounted Archery

Although it’s practiced all over the world, Mounted Archery is another Turkish sport. It originated in the Eurasian Steppe in the second millennium BC, although its current form was perfected by the Ottomans as a type of military training. It encompasses a variety of trick shots, most of which involve shooting arrows while riding a horse that’s running very fast.

The most famous of those is the Parthian Shot, which involves shooting at a target behind you while racing forward on your horse. They also shoot at tin plates atop long poles, maybe 20′ tall (you can see that on the still in the video below). We witnessed them using a sword to slice a watermelon while galloping at full speed. Unfortunately, I can imagine what that’s training for. One rider chased another and shot an arrow at the shield on the leader’s back. Successfully, in every attempt we witnessed, at least.

Kökbörü?

Honestly, I’m not 100% sure this is Kökbörü. Of the sports listed on the festival’s web site, this seemed closest. Yet another Turkish sport, Kökbörü is traditionally played with a dead goat as the ball, with horsemen chasing each other like hell and trying to get the goat into their opponent’s goal.

I think the chew toy the riders are fighting over in the clip below is a family friendly stand-in for a dead goat, and, since the field was used for multiple sports, the bales of hay stood in for the goals.

Or it could be something completely different. I’ve posted this to YouTube and tagged it as Kökbörü, so now I guess it’s a fact. It’s fitting that I’m not even sure what sport it is, as I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was going on while we watched.

Kökbörü, if that’s what it is, is pretty popular, played, if that’s the word, in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. Because lots and lots of spare goats.

Arts & Crafts

It wasn’t all ethnosports. There were tons of booths with amazing, crafts and each country had its own booth showing off their heritage or offering tasty snacks for free. There were even booths spread out over the grounds offering free water. We got sandwiches at one of the food kiosks for about $2 each. That and the free water may have been the craziest things there. Don’t they understand that gouging is the entire point of a festival? Maybe Live Nation could take over and run things properly.

Did Dorothy buy anything at the craft stalls? Oh, you.

Sadly, that was all of the ethnosports we could handle. There was plenty more we missed, but we were pretty cooked after four hours in the sun. And more than grateful for what we were able to see. We’ve seen videos of this kind of thing, but it was an amazing experience to witness it all firsthand.

My Moroccan and Tunisian experiences were spa-based, so this time I picked a more traditional trench: the Kılıç Ali Paşa Hamam. It was built in 1580 by famed architect Mimar Sinan, builder of many of Turkey’s iconic structures, including Istanbul’s Süleymaniye Mosque. The hammam was part of the Kılıç Ali Paşa Mosque compound built at the same time. Sadly, it hasn’t operated continuously, as it had fallen into ruinous disrepair. It was reopened in 2012, to spectacular effect, after a seven year renovation.

The main floor is a lounge, for waiting with a chilled pomegranate juice while they prepare for you, as well as relaxing post-hammam. The vibe of this space was spa chill, but it obviously didn’t feel like a spa. It felt pasha luxurious, not spa luxurious. It was built for a pasha, after all.

This was the only place I could take pictures. Even if they were permitted inside, which they are thankfully not, that’s a lot of hot and wet for an iPhone.

The changing rooms are upstairs, and that’s where the traditional starts to kick in. They provide you with slippers for the marble floors and what they refer to as a loincloth. That loincloth is actually called a peshtemal and dates back to Roman times, the Roman baths having been the inspiration for the Ottoman hammams. One source I found claims that the peshtemal is the oldest textile product still in use.

They’re woven from fine Turkish cotton and are thinner than regular towels, so they dry quicker. They’re also big, like serapes. I was expecting something more like the ridiculous disposable spa panties I’d been provided in Morocco and Tunisia (and yes, I have a picture, and no, you don’t get to see it – you’re welcome), but instead I got a length of fabric I had to negotiate. You can imagine how that went. But don’t.

I returned to the waiting area clutching my poorly secured peshtemal and was ushered into the holy of holies, a white marble sanctum full of hot air and mostly naked Turks. And here’s where the whole experience required a leap of faith. Turkish hammams are strictly segregated by gender. I only found one coed hammam in Istanbul, in the sense that men and women could be serviced at the same time, although in different facilities.

The Kılıç Ali Paşa took the more usual approach, with daytime hours for women and evening hours for men. In all of the pictures I’d seen, the hammamers, called tellaks, were fat old men. I don’t think this makes me a pig, but I think the correct answer to the question, “Would you rather get a bath from a fat old man or a pretty young woman?” is pretty young woman. Cancel me. It would be a relief.

I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d feel about being bathed by a fat old man, but my tellak, an affable young man named Engin, put me at ease. By being, at a minimum, neither fat nor old. I discovered later that Engin means vast or wide. What a shitty thing to do to a baby.

The room was dominated by a massive hexagonal marble plinth sitting under a backlit dome.

As I obviously couldn’t take photos inside, I scraped the interior photos from here. I’m sure they stole them first.

Engin placed a folded up towel to use as a head rest and guided me to lie down on the plinth, which turned out to be heated. If you’ve read my posts on Moroccan and Tunisian hammams, you’ll know that I don’t really like saunas. Sweating is one of my least favorite activities, especially given that we’re in Istanbul in June and spend most of the day sweating. But I like a wet sauna even less than a dry sauna, which is one of the reasons I didn’t much care for the Tunisian hammam experience, so I was at least slightly mollified by the fact that I was lying down in a dry sauna.

Well, if I was expected to lay down and sweat my toxins out, I was going to lean into that experience. It’s like taking acid. Once that tab dissolves under your tongue you are on the trip, my friend, and it’s better to relax and let it sweep you along. Struggling is counterproductive.

I’m guessing that I was on that plinth for about 15 minutes, although time was, to be fair, a little elastic. At one point I opened my eyes to see that a glass of ice water had magically appeared by my head. It’s good to be pasha.

I was summoned from my moist fugue and taken to a heated marble bench. Engin decorously rearranged my hideously malformed peshtemal so that I could actually be bathed. He was very kind.

He also started with a scalp massage, which was a particularly devious way to get in my good graces.

A marble basin sat to my left. Engin mixed the water, and the metal bowl was used as a bucket to sluice water over me. He started out with pretty hot water, and after rinsing me down he applied soap by hand. There were several cycles of soap and rinse.

Each soap cycle involved really working the soap into my skin. They offer an actual massage as an add-on, but I can’t imagine needing it. I felt plenty massaged.

In between one of the soap/rinse cycles an exfoliating glove, called a kese, was introduced. It fell well short of the birch branch flensing I’d anticipated, and was nearly gentle. Engin and I were fast becoming friends. I wasn’t even offended when he grabbed my belly and playfully suggested “şiş kebap.” Of course, the correct answer was “kek.” To be fair, if a pretty young woman had grabbed my belly, looked me in the eye, and announced “şiş kebap” I’d probably have been mortified. So there’s that.

Although Dorothy swears I’d just interpret it as a come on, and disagreeing with Dorothy is pointless.

After washing my hair, Engon performed a magic trick. It involved an object called a torba, which is basically a pillow case. It’s dipped in soapy water and then swooshed to fill it with air. Through some black art, the bag fills with rich, dense foam which is poured over you. Repeatedly. I looked like a soapy Michelin man, nothing but a head and feet.

After a final rinse with cool water (which felt wonderful), Engin stood me up and swapped in a dry peshtemal. He also cinched it like a professional. So thoroughly that when it came time to change I have trouble unwrapping it. Properly adorned, at last, he led me to the final room, the soğukluk, what the Romans called the frigidarium.

He dried my hair and wrapped it in a turban. He also wrapped a towel around my shoulders, flapping it repeatedly so it blew cool air over me. On balance, I found Engin extremely likable.

The final stop was back to the lounge, to unwind for as long as I’d like and enjoy every glass of ice water they brought me. The whole experience was like getting a bath in a mosque. Both in the setting itself and in the sense of spiritual contentment that followed. It was as close to a religious experience as I’m permitted.

I never did the traditional hammam in Morocco, so I can’t truly say whether the difference between the two situations was Morocco vs. Turkey or Spa vs. Traditional. But as much as I truly loved the Moroccan experience, I’ll take the Turkish version any day of the week. Preferably all of them. If I could afford it. My Turkish bath was over three times the cost in Morocco and Tunisia. But you get what you pay for, and I got an unforgettable adventure into a distant past made deliciously present.

If my goal was traditional, mission accomplished.

Let me take you out on a video the hammam itself put together. You really get a feel for the space.

Sure, sure, it’s Istanbul not Constantinople, but before that it was fucking Byzantium. Which was founded in 657 BC. OK, I’m cheating that timeline a little, since Carthage was founded by the Phoenicians in 800 BC. But even if Carthage is technically older than Istanbul, it’s a matter of inches from this remove. What’s undeniable is that somehow we’ve managed to create a cradle-of-civilization tour. We swear, it wasn’t on purpose. Nothing we’re doing is on purpose.

Once again, we’re dealing with a metric buttload of old. Besides ourselves. The Old City of Istanbul houses a Grand Bazaar that dates to 1455. Topkapi was built in 1460. The Blue Mosque was completed in 1617. The Hagia Sophia was originally built in 537. Jesus, there’s a hammam in the Old City that was built in 1584.

To say nothing of the various ruins scattered about the country. Inspired by our epic Saharan trip, we’re planning a tour to take in some of the amazing things outside Istanbul, including a trip to the Greek era city of Ephesus, which Dorothy recalls reading about in her childhood bible study classes.

But how did we even wind up in Istanbul? Weren’t we supposed to head to Chicago after Tunisia? Yes we were, and thank you for asking.

We haven’t tired of traveling, but we have tired of being homeless, so we were headed to Chicago to set up the apartment we purchased from my sister, which is currently occupied by my niece and her husband. They took on a huge gut renovation, turning an abandoned synagogue in Chicago into an arts center and residence. To no one’s surprise, or at least not ours, that project ran over. They figured they’d need another two weeks past our planned return date to actually be out of our apartment.

What to do? We could come back as planned and spend those couple of weeks somewhere in the US. Or we could stay in Tunisia longer, stretching our visa out. Or we could go somewhere else completely.

One of the interesting things about what we’re doing is the illusion of freedom. Freedom is just a machine into which we sluice data and await the result. When we’re planning our next stop, we could go anywhere. But then we factor in the weather. And the cost of transit. And the cost of housing. And the ease of entry. And the local safety and political outlook. And the EFF (Estimated Fun Factor).

By the time we’re done, the machine usually spits out a single answer. So much for freedom.

As it turns out, going back to the US and Airbnbing for those two weeks was the costliest option. Housing in the US is expensive. This whole journey is pretty much built on housing arbitrage. Staying longer in Tunisia was the cheapest option, but the lowest EFF. It didn’t feel like adding two more weeks would squeeze a lot more out of Tunisia after our three months there.

Istanbul? Cheap transit, cheap housing, and exceptional EFF. Thank you, Machine-That-Makes-Our-Decisions-For-Us! But two weeks in Istanbul seemed stupid, so we upped it to five weeks, to make it worth our while. Maybe the machine doesn’t make all of our decisions.

Turkey is also of a piece with what’s turning into a Muslim World Tour. Turkey is about as Muslim as it gets, with some estimates tallying 99% of the population. What’s shocking is how deep the commitment to secularism runs here, despite the fact that it’s pretty much all Muslim, all the time. Yes, Erdoğan has been eroding that bit by bit, but he hasn’t made truly significant inroads. Plus, he just took a spanking at the polls, although that’s probably related more to his strongman dreams than his Muslim nationalism.

But you can feel that secularism on the street. Sure, there’s the call to prayer, and there are niqabs and head scarves, but not as many as you’d expect. The booze situation is incredibly normal. Unlike Morocco and Tunisia, the grocery stores have it behind the registers, not locked away in a separate room, and all the restaurants sell booze, which was practically unheard of in our previous Muslim stops. I’m sure it’s different out in the country, but in the big city modest dressing doesn’t seem to be a thing. The women could be from any European capital and the men wear Western dress almost exclusively.

Honestly, if I didn’t know anything about the place and I’d just landed I’d have said Istanbul had a conspicuous Muslim minority. That’s how it feels. Ataturk’s reforms are a bedrock part of Turkish society, and even Erdoğan hasn’t been able to put a noticeable dent in Turkey’s secular culture.

Our Apartment

We’re not staying in the neighborhood we preferred, but that’s what we get for pivoting at the last possible minute. We booked our Airbnb four days before arrival and there just weren’t a lot of affordable options (note to self: next time maybe a less affordable option is a good idea). We’re in Beyoğlu in the New City, and there’s nothing wrong with the location. It’s just heavily focused on hotels and over-priced restaurants. This is not a neighborhood anyone lives in, so there’s a paucity of goods and services that aren’t tourist focused. Lots of convenience stores and travel agents, not a housewares or hardware store in sight.

On the other hand, we’re hard by Taksim Square, and are ridiculously well positioned for transit. We may not be in a hanging-out neighborhood, but we have ready access to the entire city. Public transit puts us minutes from the old city and just as close to a smorgasbord of walking neighborhoods. It’s not a bad tradeoff.

That transit system may be the best we’ve seen so far. It’s plentiful, cheap (50¢/fare), modern, and efficient. Honestly, the transit system here smells like money.

It also encompasses just about every form of public transit known to man. The Metro is a dense, sophisticated subway system, but there’s also a surface Tramway that operates on tracks like a trolley, avoiding the congested street traffic. There’s even a special class of bus that zips though traffic in dedicated lanes. There are buses, funiculars, the Teleferikler (aerial tram), and ferries, all part of the same system, and all accessible using the same pass, the Istanbulkart. Which is even good for entering public restrooms. Istanbul is one of the most livable big cities we’ve encountered.

I should note, by the way, that we’re in Europe, a short walk to the Bosporus. We can see Asia from our neighborhood. There’s a walking bridge, and you can literally walk from Europe to Asia, but we haven’t done that yet. And probably won’t. The Bosporus isn’t exactly narrow.

The apartment itself is fine. We’ve become inured to the insults of the Airbnb lifestyle. It’s a little spartan, but it’s clean, there’s regular hot water and adequate water pressure, and the kitchen is… functional. The bed is comfortable. That’s not nothing. The living room is gracious, with enough seating and the apartment’s highlight, a wall of exceptionally wacky oil paintings. There’s even a little balcony with enough room for a small table. We eat out there and enjoy the post-Soviet splendor. It is a fourth floor walkup, which we don’t love, but we’re only here five weeks.

Speaking of those crows, we’ve been adopted. They’re Hooded Crows, and Dorothy read up on them enough to be able to entice them with little dishes of food and water. There are a pair who stop by regularly, and they like nuts, fruit, and, especially, French fries. They’re quite fastidious, and rinse their food in the water before eating. At this point, they’ve taken to bringing food for later and leaving it in the food dish along with our offerings. When they’re ready to eat they come back, rinse, and dine. We could watch Crow TV for hours. And we do.

Shopping

As mentioned, there’s really nothing in our neighborhood but convenience stores. There are grocery stores nearby, but there are day-of-the-week markets scattered about the city. That’s the way to shop here.

This is the Saturday market in Beşiktaş. It occupies a two-story car park, but it pales in comparison to…

Fındıkzade Cuma Pazari, an absolutely massive Friday market in the Old City featuring everything from cheap clothes to cheap housewares. And balloon animals. This is a classic street market (no permanent structures) that takes up what feels like an entire neighborhood. I’m sure if I lived there I’d hate it. But I don’t.

While the array of goods is impressive, Fındıkzade Cuma Pazari is the best food market we’ve seen anywhere so far. In overall size it’s smaller than the Abastos in either Oaxaca or Mexico City, but it trumps both in the breadth and depth of the offerings, and the sheer density of the experience.

We also went to a Tuesday market, the Kadkikoy Sali Pazari, which is across the Bosporus in Asia. Pazari means market, by the way, which comes from the same Persian root as bazaar.

We’d attempted to go to a couple of day markets the day before, and put on six miles without ever locating them, but we were confident we’d find this market. Which we did, only to discover that it was a flea market, not a produce market. A very, very large flea market, with every manner of things. But mostly clothes.

We finally wound up in a neighborhood with quality produce stores. We referred to them as Produce Palaces, for obvious reasons.

Of course, not all the shopping was produce. While most of our artifact looting occurred in the Old City or on our road trips, Istanbul offered up this lovely little shop specializing in repurposed antique silk velvets.

Streetscape

Istanbul is big. It’s the world’s fifteenth largest city, with over 15 million residents. It’s not the capital (that’s Ankara), but it’s the beating heart of Turkey’s culture and economy. So far on this trip it has most in common with Mexico City. It’s dense and vibrant, but it doesn’t feel quite as sardine-packed as parts of Mexico City, or even the Medina in Marrakech.

Some of that is that we’ve been judicious about partaking of the Old City. There’s a cruise ship port there, so the trick to seeing the high volume sites (Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Topkapi) is timing. We’ll do our best to hit them on days when there’s no ships in port, but even then we should be fine if we do only one a day and get there for opening, before the midday crowds clot up. We’ve been through the Old City to go other places, and the crowds at the major locations are frightening.

In the meantime, there’s plenty of street to enjoy here.

Turkish: It’s More Than Just A Delight

Turkish is by far the most rational language we’ve tried to learn so far. If we were here longer than five weeks I think we could pick up a fair bit. Spanish wasn’t bad and French was a fail. Arabic is acknowledged as one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn, and we were dealing with two completely different dialects (Darija in Morocco and Tunsi in Tunisia). We never stood a chance.

The reason that Turkish is so comparatively rational is that it was forcibly modernized as part of Ataturk’s grand reforms on taking power post-WWI. Turkish had been written using a Perso-Arabic script for a thousand years, but that alphabet had trouble properly expressing Turkish phonemes. Ataturk set up a language commission that created an entirely new Latin-based alphabet optimized for Turkish, which was delivered in 1928. A law was passed mandating its adoption, and the government set up the training programs to teach the new alphabet and drive literacy.

Ataturk just made up a new alphabet and demanded its use. Amazing. Other than Chinese, I can’t think of another language that’s been forcibly rationalized, rather than evolving organically. English could certainly benefit from a little thoughtful pruning. OK, a complete rethink. One thing traveling the world has done is make me understand the impetus behind Esperanto.

A number of features of the Turkish alphabet contribute to its simplicity. First, each letter makes a unique sound. That means there are no diphthongs, so there’s none of that feat/feet nonsense. Neither are there consonant digraphs, so you never have to parse whether ch is for cheese or chute. And because each letter makes a unique sound, each sound is associated with a unique letter. There’s no duplication, like f and ph. And there’s nothing like the bullshit C in English, which can make the S sound or the K sound, and is both redundant and annoying. Seriously. The C should just die. It adds nothing.

The one exception to the unique sound rule is the R, which has a different sound depending on whether it’s at the beginning, the end, or the middle of a word. But even there, that sound is fixed. As far as I can tell, each of those three R sounds is firm and unyielding, not dashing to and fro as they would in English.

In addition, with one exception, every letter is voiced – there are no silent letters. So if you see a letter, you say it. And because each letter makes a unique sound, there’s a startling lack of ambiguity in how to pronounce Turkish. As opposed to, and I’m just throwing this out there, French. Which has baked in ambiguity in pronunciation specifically so you can be scorned for getting it wrong.

That one exception, by the way, is the Ğ, which serves as a transition between consecutive vowels. But unlike, say, the E in English, which can be voiced or silent, I don’t know, randomly, the Ğ is always silent. Still zero ambiguity.

You can see this in a word like kuaför. English can only make the KW sound by combining letters, like in quick or backwards. But if you voice all the letters in kuaför, you get that sound naturally. K-oo-ah-f-ew-r. Say it quickly and you get the kw sound.

The third factor making Turkish comparatively easy is unrelated to the alphabet, but absolutely related to kuaför. And that’s the shocking number of cognates in Turkish. I found one fellow on the interwebs who had compiled a list of over 3,000 English/Turkish cognates. Amatör. Spekülasyon. Üniversite (remember, that final e is voiced).

More to the point, you can’t hardly read a sign in Turkey without running windswept through a welcoming field of cognates.

What I can’t quite figure out is why. I suspect that the wealth of cognates weren’t part of the 1928 modernization, but occurred over time as loanwords made their way into the vocabulary. Honestly, some of them, like kuaför, seem less like cognates and more like transliterations.

But it’s not like English and Turkish, or French and Turkish, share any linguistic roots. They come from completely different branches. These truly are loanwords, but I don’t get why Turkish needed so many. For technology that didn’t exist when the language was formed, sure. Elektronik. Knock yourself out. But I’m pretty sure there had to be a Turkish word for sex before they borrowed seks. If anyone has some insight into this mystery, I’m all ears.

I am, of course, completely glossing over the true complexity of Turkish to an English speaker, which is syntax. Unlike English’s fairly straightforward subject-verb-object construction, Turkish features the verb at the end and a slippery relationship between subject and object. Unlike the alphabet, this is the place where Turkish is happy to wallow in arbitrary ambiguity.

But I’ve glossed over it because for our purposes it doesn’t really matter. If we get the vocabulary right, mangled syntax isn’t a massive impediment to being understood. We’re not having deep conversations about politics and ethics. We’re reading signs, shopping, and ordering in restaurants, all of which can survive toddler syntax. Thank goodness.

But I will say that I think the single most grinding thing about our adventures is being places where we don’t speak the language. It just makes everything extra hard, and not in a fun way. Our paltry language skills neatly straddle the line separating bravery from arrogance, and I honestly don’t know which it is. It feels brave, but I fear it reads arrogant. We’ve never gotten any blowback suggesting a negative reaction, and we’re careful to learn enough of whatever the local language is to at least say please and thank you. We’re not animals. But communicating with others is definitely the most fatiguing element of our journey.

And having gotten that off my chest, it warrants adding that we’ve been met with a surprising amount of English here. While French is the second language in Morocco and Tunisia, English is the second language in Turkey. Train announcements, for example, are in Turkish and English.

We’re in Istanbul and our interactions are shopping related, so that exposes us to the highest level of English we’ll find here. But it’s been surprisingly easy to get around with just English. Even when we’ve been stumped, there’s consistently been a local nearby who’s jumped in to help. Or good ol’ Google Translate.

We’ll see how far relying on English gets us when we hit Uzbekistan.