Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul

Aya Sofia from the Blue Mosque

Istanbul is the ancient Greek City of Byzantion, Romanized to Byzantium, renamed Constantinople as the head of the Byzantine Empire and then Ottoman Caliphate, again renamed Istanbul in the 1930s with the establishment of modern secular Turkey. It is also currently an intriguing interface and melting pot between Western and Middle-Eastern Muslim culture, having stood at the gateway between the continents ever since human culture emerged.

We have already described finding our pension in Istanbul right under the walls of the Topkapi Palace. The next day was entertaining and reasonably relaxing. In the morning we visited the Aya Sofia the famous Byzantine church pioneering the dome architecture converted into a mosque and since the 1930's a museum with a stiff entrance fee of 20 Turkish lira each.

This is a reversal of the Mesquita at Cordoba where a mosque has been turned into a church with hybrid architecture unifying the two into one architectural composition. The Aya or Haggia Sofia was founded in AD 360 and is famous for its large dome which is said to have changed the history of architecture. Historically it is dedicated to the Logos, the second person of the Holy Trinity, but its reference to Sophia haunts the structure with four winged angelic figures, one on each column of the central dome, only one of which has a real face, as if the other three have been intentionally obliterated. There is also a Byzantine Orthodox Christian mosaic remaining in the entrance way.

Vertical panorama inside

This feathered Sophia in the central dome is the only one of the four with a face

A Byzantine mosaic remains in the entrance

Two Byzantine relics: Hadrian's obelisk and the Hippodrome

After that we walked up to the Topkapi palace whose outer walls our little backpacker penthouse room lay directly beside. In the event I went through and photographed everything including some sweeping panoramas of the Bosphorus. There was also a profligate indulgent collection of extreme crown jewels which no one was allowed to photograph including the fabulous Topkapi diamond, which I have included a small selection of internet images of including the famous diamond.

Inner gate to the Topkapi Palace

Palace gardens and buildings

Inner gateway

The floor is warn from centuries of use

Panorama of the Bosphorus from the Palace

Ceremonial cape in the throne room

Three of the items in the treasury, including the Topkapi diamond

Ornamentation and tile work in a reception room

Three dancers

Later we both went to the Blue Mosque, which is a more open and cosmopolitan affair than many of the Muslim shrines from the Dome of the Rock to many of those in Middle Eastern countries, but however still emits the contradicti0ns of sexual separation that haunt Islam, with the women segregated in the rear and balcony of the mosque.

Blue Mosque from the gardens in front of the Aya Sofia

Vertical panorama of the interior

Women worshiping in a separate enclosure

Taps provided for the men to wash their feet outside

Conservative Muslims walking towards the Blue mosque

Later I wandered some of the neighbourhoods nearby, filming some of the derelict houses, and other Byzantine relics from the Hippodrome, which was the centre of Byzantium's life for 1200 years and Ottoman life for another 400, to Hadrian's pillar and obelisk.

A shrine and below a derelict house in Kadirga-Kumapi

Scenes from our neighbourhood: An ice cream maker at the entrance to the Palace walls

Turkish miniatures of dancing girls

A pita maker working hard all day in a restaurant

Sweet meats

Expensive carpet and porcelain shops

Night scenes at the entrance to our street

One thing I found interesting was the women's hijab fashions. Istanbul meets East and West in a very complex and relatively tolerant mix, with some women scantily clad and a few others covered in Burqas, but currently in Turkey and especially in the district we were in, where people are going out dressed to kill, quite a few fashionable women in the street are currently following a trend of wearing hijabs. One can see this has deeper roots than the current pro-Islamic government and the struggle with the secular view of Turkey founded by Ataturk.

In Turkey the hijab is a kind of expression of the complete woman but, rather than drab repression, they do it covered in shining colours mixed up with very daring dresses and tops that say two conflicting things. 1. I am asserting my own creative independence in full colour. 2: I am a "good" girl who knows how keep my man to myself. This is the best female investment strategy under these cultural circumstances although its a profound conflict of values!

Forms of hijab fashion. Some others I missed were really provocative

A Muslim graveyard in a secluded garden over the road

Next morning I also toured the Grand Bazaar a few stops back on the smooth city tram lines, before we both took off for the airport on foot to the tram, then changing smoothly to the fast rail connection to the airport.

A series of images of the Grand Bazaar and its stalls

The old city wall heading west in the tram

Two views of western neighbourhoods. Many were bristling with satellite TV bowls.

Crete to Turkey: A Tale of Two Pensions

The journey east from Irakliou begins with clammy tourist towns

This is the story of a tale of two really extraordinary pensions. A pension is a kind of European hotel, often family run and sometimes very quaint and special in its way. We already experienced this in a previous blog in Patras with Pension Nikos, but our experience of way out pensions took an extravagant turn in the last 24 hours.

We set off from Heraclion for Sitia not having any idea of where we were going to end up and somewhat fearsome that all the accommodation in Sitia where we had to finish to take our Aegean flight out to Istanbul from Crete was utterly expensive.

So we took the bus in the morning in blazing heat. Unlike the through buses on the mainland this bus was a long running local that literally stopped at every bus shelter along the way, winding at first through traffic choked tourist towns, sporting those seedy beaches with masses of fixed umbrellas that make one wonder why humans have this obsession with mindless sun burn as if the aquatic ape theory were true after all and we are all seeking some deep evolutionary relationship with our dolphin cousins.

More of those hideous battery hen beaches

However as the road heads further east, the land begins to take on a wilder look with craggy arid headlands cutting into deeply azure bays all feeling like we are witnessing some sort of radiation disaster because everything is just to bright and intense.

The road goes up a wild rocky gorge

The the road winds sharply inland over rocky hill country, only to wind back later into craggy bays. The series of images gives a rough running commentary with the exception of the major town of Agios Nikolaos, after which it winds up into steep headlands, and passes through a string of little hill towns a couple of which I managed to snap as the bus lurched from precipice to valley.

Images of the road heading east towards Sitia

This inscrutable headland marked the end of civilization

The road climbed to wind through small hill towns

Power to the church!

Eventually we arrived at Sitia, which was a charming isolated sleepy Cretan town relatively immune from the package tour and English beach holiday resort madness.

Sitia street with the "Commothion"

Panorama of Sitia harbour and waterfront (click to enlarge)

After a hot walk in from the bus station dragging our stuff and a few attempts to find a hotel at a tolerable price, we arrived at one of the classic Greek "rooms to let" - Pension Venus a multi-storey family home completely covered in Bouganvilia which has a string of little self-contained apartments on the upper floors which you have to approach passing right through the living room of the owners, and the kitchen at the back if they happen to be there when you arrive.

Vertical panorama of Pension Venus

The entrance way is literally the owners living room

To cap the love next image, each bedroom had a little red night-light, although from the serious but friendly demeanor of the grandmother, you wouldn't imagine they had any notion of a bordello in mind when they named their pension.

Anyway Venus was heaven for us. It cost only 30 euros for the night complete with a huge complementary bowl of grapes, as well as having a fully equipped kitchen and bathroom on each floor containing two neat but small rooms to rent with private balconies.

Panorama of Sitia from the airport on our departure

This morning was another of those nightmare days where we have to get somewhere for a really early departure - in this case a 7.20 departure from the airport. We got going at 5.53 am and by 6.15 were out in the street waiting for the taxi I had cunningly ordered on our global roaming cell phone, but all to no avail because it never turned up, forcing me to stump down to the wharves and flag one, from the taxi rank in the centre of town.

From there is was a relatively straightforward flight in a small four engined Avro jet to Athens and after a few hours a second flight into Istanbul, which proved to be a great city to struggle through with a highly efficient metro connecting to a central modern tram line both of which had glide on glide off positioning making it a dream to use a luggage trolley. This left us standing right outside the walls of the Topkapi palace, where we eventually came upon our latest marvel of a pension - the family run Coskun Pansiyon, which I had reserved by e-mail.

Topkapi palace panorama with the pension alley in the background

Pension alley on the left

Left: The alley up to the pension, Right: view out our window

We had a lot of trouble finding it even though we knew it was within 100 metres of the tram stop because it proved to be up an incredibly steep little cobble-stoned street which Christine literally couldn't pull the two heavy bags up, so I had to stump up to find it and then was blown away when I had to climb four sets of teetering stairs to find that we had cunningly reserved a unique funky little air-c0nditioned backpackers "matchwood" penthouse literally nestled right against the walls of the palace.

"Norwegian wood" tacked onto the roof of the building below.

Our funky penthouse poking out above the main house roof with the palace walls above
by the TV bowl antenna (see previous image from the window)