My experiences in Turkey were absolutely amazing! It is unlike any place I have ever visited in my life, and I seriously loved every minute of it. We had the opportunity to be there during the beginning of Ramadan, a special month of fasting through out the day for Muslim countries. People are not allowed to eat or drink anything during the day, not even water! Our ship was docked in a perfect location right next to the tram and all the main stops of Istanbul, so it was only a short walk to the Spice Market and Grand Baazar. Our first day in Istanbul we explored the many shopping options (Cassidy was in heaven). The spice market was awesome! It has all these spices, apple tea, chili, and a whole bunch of Turkish delight! Turkish delight is a yummy chewy treat that is made out of nuts and covered in powdered sugar. I didnt actually buy any of it but we loved going around to all the different shops asking what it was and can we taste it?. Literally all the stalls you walk by try to find some way to get you to stop at theirs. We had a countless number of people ask us if we were Australian. So me and my mates often said that were on holiday from Sydney. We also heard some funny pick up lines like excuse me are you from paradise?. While we were wandering through the spice market we experienced our first call to prayer. Over loud speakers a traditional Muslim prayer started playing and most of the shops closed up. As we walked around we got to see a group of Muslims kneeling in one street on their mats praying. Next, we bought our selves a kebab (my favorite part of Europe) or a sandwich from a huge slab of meat. We ate literally a million of these in Turkey and my favorite thing to do was to throw a bunch of the chili spice powder on the sandwich
so nom. I was also happy to locate the American Embassy (McDonalds) very close to our ship. We then ventured to the Grand Baazar! This is a very famous and humungous market place with over 3,000 shops. As much as I love shopping it was completely overwhelming at first. The first hour I didnt buy anything I just looked around, once we all went and got a diet coke we were ready to shop! They had such amazing scarves, awesome multicolored lamps with floral designs, rugs, intricate jewelry, purses, gorgeous hand painted plates bowls, and mugs, and pretty much anything cool you would imagine being sold in Turkey. It was so awesome to see everything that was offered and to bargain a bit. After shopping for a couple hours we had to make it back for a field trip we had, which was called Whirling Dirvishes. In Turkey there is a movement called the Brotherhood of Dirvishes. They strive for direct communication with God or Allah. The way they achieve this is through spinning or whirling, basically entranced as a band plays music and sings. It was so interesting to witness. They would spin in their white prayer dresses for up to ten minutes at a time
. Without falling! I attempted later to spin but got to dizzy
The next day a group of about 20 of us woke up with a casual plan to meander over to Asia and get lunch. Not kidding. We just casually took a 1$ ferry across the Bosphorus strait to the Asian side of Turkey. It was my first time visiting Asia and I loved every minute of it! After we got back from Asia, we went to the Turkish baths. Ive heard that the Turkish baths are a must do, while visiting Turkey
and they were not kidding! We definitely splurged on a nicer one but soooo worth it! It is separated by gender and once you get there you get a locker to put all your stuff and your clothes away. Me, Cass, Rene, and Allie all went into the actual bathing room in the black bottoms that they gave us, a miniature scarf/towel thing covering us up top, with no idea what to expect. We walked in the room and all just paused and went
OH. It was a huge domed room with a big round marble slab in the middle. On the edges of the room there were showers. We had just walked into a room with about 25 half naked women. The Turkish women who were doing the bathing were definitely characters. But basically how it works is they scrub your whole body down really well in a soap bubble bath type thing, then they shower you and wash your hair, then its off to a hot oil massage. This was the best part. The massage was absolutely amazing. After the whole ordeal I couldnt help but feel extremely relaxed and blessed. Just living the life in Turkey. Needless to say, its hard to explain how awesome the Turkish baths are
. So you just need to go see for yourself. That night a bunch of us went and hung out at a café for a while underneath a bridge, with a view of the Istanbul skyline. A bunch of the boys we went with actually go to Texas Tech so that was fun. The next day a whole bunch of us, about 20 again, all ventured out to go see the sights of Istanbul. We started first with the Hagia Sophia. It was built by Justinian and was originally a Christian church but was converted into a mosque. There were actually some really cool mosaics of Jesus in there. But honestly it was breathtaking as soon as you walked into the main room. There was all these amazing candelabras strung from the very top of the ceiling very low, and illuminated. We had to walk up a curving stone ramp to get to the second level to see the mosaics and to be able to look down onto the first floor. It was so interesting! We next visited the Blue Mosque which was somewhat similar, but this one is still a working mosque. We had to take our shoes off, cover our hair and shoulders and stay quite. It was definitely an experience I wont forget. Next we all decided to go get lunch at a little place I like to call El Toritos! This in fact was a legit El Toritos with you guessed it
chips and salsa and fajitas! We had been dying for Mexican food so we were all so excited. They even gave us free Turkish apple tea which was amazing. El Toritos will always remind me of my time in Turkey and the wonderful people I experienced it with. Our next stop was the Basilica Cistern. Which is basically an underground worship space with huge columns, and water with pathways over it. It was super interesting down there. That night we went to Taxim square. There was a huge square and a big walk way illuminated with pretty twinkling lights. During the day this is a shopping street but at night people just meander around there. The amount of people that were there walking around was mind bottling (you know when your thoughts get all trapped in a bottle?) just kidding. But it was seriously mind blowing. There were thousands of people out and about strolling around! The next day was probably my favorite day. Rather than being on a strict schedule a couple of us slept in, and visited Golata tower. A tour right next to our ship that had 360 degrees views of all of Istanbul and the Bosphorus it was insane. Istanbul is a humungous city! We then wandered to a park in between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia and had a kebab picnic there. I absolutely loved relaxing in the grass, and hanging with friends. We laid around for a while then went to visit the Topkapi Palace. It was a gorgeous palace, but a little expensive to actually go inside. So while Johnny ran inside the rest of us laid in a field of grass underneath beautiful trees in a big courtyard. Once again I loved just sitting there and being still and happy. On our way home we found another park, called Ottopark and wandered through that. It actually wasnt a park for cars although it might sound that way. It was so hot there, so it was fun to walk through the shade and look at all the trees. That night was sadly our last night in Turkey, but it was also the first night of Ramadan or Razmadan in Turkish. We decided to visit the Ramadan festival next to the Blue Mosque and get the full cultural experience. It was legit! There were little shops, yummy food, a crazy amount of people and they had a band playing. When we went to watch the band for a while they had a group of Whirling Dirvishes come out. The cool thing about this time is that a couple of them were little boys. One preciously chubby little boy was everyones favorite because he couldnt quite get the spinning part yet, and he kept looking around and moving when they were supposed to be still. Honestly you could see a clip of him end up on Turkish funniest home videos, I wouldnt be surprised. He was so precious! After the festival we decided to meander back towards the ship. All 25 of us took our time walking down towards the MV Explorer. Once we got to Golata bridge, the bridge separating us from our ship, we hung out there for a while not really ready to go back yet. We decided to stop underneath the bridge to hang out for a while and get a few drinks. We hung out for a while laughing and talking then we decided we should go pay, because we were the last customers on the bridge, all the other restaurants had closed up. We paid and began walking up the stairs to walk to the top of the bridge when we stopped in shock. THE BRIDGE WAS OPENING! At first we were all excited! IT was awesome to see the bridge open from the middle right next to where we were! How often does that happen? Then someone came to their senses. Our ship is on the other side
. We cant get home now! Panic mode set in. We all ran to the top of the stairs to go ask the workers. Even though we were stressed about getting home we were dying laughing and blaming it on cassidys bad luck (annproblems). The workers told us that it would be 2 hours before the bridge would return back to normal. At this point it was about 3 in the morning and 10 of us were stuck in Istanbul on the wrong side of the bridge, with no where to go, and two hours to kill
. What to do? We ended up going back to the restaurant we had been hanging out at and told him our situation. It turns out he had just become a co-owner of this place and would be there all night on security detail. He let us back into his restaurant turned on flashing lights, let us use his stereo system to play music, and got us a bottle of wine. We all just hung out and danced and laughed for two hours waiting for the bridge to open. It was seriously, hands down, the best night of semester at sea. I couldnt have asked to have been stranded with better people, and I definitely couldnt have had more fun. It was absolutely so much fun! Once we got back to the ship dawn was approaching, we only had about an hour until the sunrise so we all got cup of noodles, got our pajamas on, and lounged on the deck chairs until the sun rise. Although I was tired the next day, it was definitely worth pulling an all-nighter. The sunrise over the Bosphorus was absolutely amazing! Our last day in Turkey, was spent trekking back to the Grand Baazar one last time. Although we were all exhausted it was fun going back there and seeing every thing one more time, getting one more kebab before we headed back to the ship. Im sorry its been so long since Ive blogged but life at sea has been absolutely crazy. I only had a couple of days between Turkey and Morocco and about a million tests and papers to fit in. I got through them though, because God is good! Be looking out for a blog about Morocco soon! So thankful for my experiences in Turkey, hope you enjoyed this taste of Turkish delight!
