Istanbul Sightseeing

Yesterday I started out with a trip to the Topkapi Palace, a gigantic residence for Ottoman sultans. The place is always packed to the brim, and it's pretty miserable trying to see most of the small rooms with objects on display (lots of jewel encrustation going on—those sultans were rich dudes). There are four enormous courtyards where state business and other activities were conducted, which are all generally pretty but nothing to lose your head about. The private quarters, however, are totally worth the extra admission fee. That's right, "private quarters."



If you must share your man with a bajillion other women, you might as well do it in style. And those ladies got to live in total luxury. The entire harem area was decorated with a blitz of colored tiles and painted ceilings. There was never a moment when I didn't have something interesting to look at. I had been feeling a bit ho-hum about Topkapi Palace until it was harem time.



After Topkapi, I headed over to the nearby Archaeological Museum, where I was treated to some of the best sarcophagi I have ever seen in my life. The sculptures were great, too, although it was tough to see them because I kept stumbling into members of a figure drawing class. On the plus side, they were pretty good!



Looking at sarcophagi can be a little disorienting, because the friezes are some of the liveliest things you will ever see. People are captured weeping or dining, horse riding or just laying an arm across a relative's shoulders. But then they show you some skeletons to remind you what all of that dramatic sculpture is made to conceal.



That didn't keep me from feeling excited about the sarcophagi, though. Here are the famous mourning women, who look like they might start moving at any moment:



After these morning adventures, I met up with Dan and we moseyed over to Istiklal, one of the most famous streets in Istanbul. An ancient street car still runs up and down between all of the European-style shops and eateries. Dan and I stopped at a dessert place called Mado, where we had some of the best kunaifa imaginable. The cheese was still all stretchy when we cut it apart, and it was topped with a dollop of smooth ice cream.



We also noticed that a local museum had an exhibit of orientalist paintings, which depict Istanbul as an exotic place, full of mystery. Even better, they have a Botero exhibit right now, so we were able to take in some great modern paintings too. If you don't know who Botero is off the top of your head, he is "the guy who paints fat people." More interesting however is that he's the guy who does lots of paintings about circus people and matadors, which I find lurid and intriguing. The painting that made me laugh, though, was "Vatican Bathroom." A masterpiece indeed!



The orientalist paintings were also amazing. Today's Istanbul is a mixture of the foreign and familiar, but those paintings were giving me a wild fairy tale land filled with turbans, litters and veiled ladies. Who knew I was visiting such a wild place?