Impressions of Istanbul 3: from shopping to sights

On our first day we lunched at one of the many restaurants on the lower level of the Galata bridge, then crossed over to the other side where we found a street full of shops selling boat stuff. Here we made our first observation of two features peculiar to shops in Istanbul: extreme specialisation and clustering. Shops here sold just rope, or just paint, or just nuts and bolts. No equivalent of a chandlery selling everything, yet every shop in the street sold something related to boats. Later we found ourselves in other equally specialised areas: a street in which all the shops sold some kind of fasteners: several shops selling nothing but buttons, several more selling eyelets, one selling zips. A jewellery street with more than one shop selling nothing but gold bangles, not a ring, not a necklace. As our hotel room contained the world's smallest cupboard with but a single wire coathanger, we were on the hunt for some plastic hangers. We enquired in a couple of shops that sold plastic items, but without success. I told Peter that sooner or later we would find the shop that just sold coathangers, and we did, although it was a street stall rather than a shop. The ultimate in specialisation and clustering is the Spice Bazaar, which contains hundreds of shops that sell one of three things: spices, tea, or Turkish sweets and dried fruits. The smell is just wonderful. The other major shopping experience in Istanbul is the Grand Bazaar, with about 4000 shops selling Turkish ceramics, pashminas and scarves, leather goods, jewellery, and the ubiquitous Turkish carpets. Stunning to walk through and look at, but nothing we wanted to burden ourselves with for the remaining eleven weeks of our holiday. Our big purchase that day, apart from the coathangers, was a Turkish made cotton nightie for about $9. Last of the big spenders, me.

We may not have done the tourist thing by buying something at the Grand Bazaar, but we did go there and to pretty much all the Sights with a capital S: Haghia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi Palace, etc. Most memorable and favourites include:
"Little Haghia Sophia", aka the church of SS Sergius and Bacchus. This little gem is contemporary with its big sister, but in better condition. Its beautiful proportions are slightly marred by the off-centre mihrab and correspondingly slanted prayer lines put in when it was converted into a mosque, which give it a slightly cockeyed look.
The library at Topkapi Palace, a small stand alone building with comfortable couch-lined recesses on three sides, entrance on the fourth side, with cupboards to hold the books in between. Like everything else from the Ottoman period the interior is clad in beautiful blue tiles. Despite the absence of books, it had that lovely restful feeling that good libraries have.
The Blue Mosque which wins the prize for biggest and best blue tile display. After it and the Harem at Topkapi even Peter who really likes blue as a colour for interior decoration felt that he had had enough, was perhaps "beyond blue".
Roman civil engineering of waterworks, notably the aqueduct of Valens, quite a bit of which still stands, including a section spanning the multi-lane Ataturk Boulevard, and the aqueduct's destination, the Basilica Cistern, a vast underwater cavern with supporting columns throughout, one of many city reservoirs. Down there it is cool, slightly drippy, with floodlights at the foot of each column bathing the whole place in an eerie glow. The water is quite shallow, but there are fish swimming about in it. We also saw men in waders wielding huge brooms to move the fine silt collecting on the floor of the basin.
The city walls, built by the Byzantine emperor Theodosius. These stretch from the Bosphorus to the Golden Horn. Big chunks have been reconstructed, but quite a bit is still original. We found a place where you could climb up on to the wall, and from thence to one of the watchtowers via three flights of stairs. All three flights were scary, but the middle flight was straight up, about as steep as Nahani's companionway, but with no rail of any kind and with some of the stone steps broken away. But we made it with due care, and the view from the top of the tower was spectacular. Coming down the middle flight of steps was even hairier than going up, definitely requiring one to go down backwards, clinging to the steps with your hands, feeling for the broken steps with your feet before transferring weight, rather like rock climbing. We were very relieved when we were both safely down.
We spent a whole day at the Archeological Museum, which has an enormous and fascinating collection of antiquities from various archeological excavations in Turkey. In addition to the amazing content, it also has the attraction of not being on the standard tourist bus and cruise liner itinerary, so no queuing to get in and it was comparatively empty. It was also cheap, a mere 10TL compared to 25TL for the palace and Haghia Sophia. We didn't even mind having to pay the entrance fee twice as there is no functioning museum cafe so we had to go out for lunch and come in again. The story of the key player in the establishment of the collection is as interesting as the heritage he has left. He was a pub serv who found himself in charge of the old museum when it was a "messy pile". He seems to have then single-handedly organised the existing collection properly, got new buildings built, organised excavations to add to the collection, and had a law passed forbidding the removal of historic items found in Turkey, stopping the wholesale pillaging of historic sites that had preceded this.
Our last treat was a visit to the Pera Palace Hotel. Built especially for the travellers on the Orient Express, it still contains the sedan chair used to carry passengers from the station, and one of the first lifts installed in a hotel. After enjoying tea, coffee and a delicious muffin served in fine bone china with real silver in the patisserie, we used a trip to the loos to look into the lounge, dining room, bar and the appropriately named Agatha's restaurant, and soak up more of the 1920s atmosphere.
All in all we loved Istanbul, even if our feet and knees suffered from all the walking and stair climbing (four flights every day in our hotel).