Day 7
Snow! :(
Still snowing here two full days after it should have stopped, and it's wearing out its welcome. Don't get me wrong, I love the weather, and it definitely makes the city look even more beautiful than usual. But when our main method of transportation is walking for hours around the city and through outdoor exhibits, the freezing cold and wet starts to get to you. There are palm trees here! Why is it snowing?
Regardless, the museums here continue to be more fascinating and enthralling then they have any right to be. Woke up late-ish on this Saturday -- that is, around five AM because I fail at surviving jet lag -- and headed out on our own for the long walk down to the Bosphorous Straight. Our first stop was the Naval Museum, which was similar to the Military Museum but with a few interesting differences. First of all, they had rooms full of kick-ass maps and ship models. My favorite was a map from 1461, because not only do I love looking over medieval maps, but this one was the original copy, made of leather and covered in beautiful Arabic calligraphy and little sketches like were common back in the day. You know, "here be dragons," except they'd have little churches or castles and so on. I love looking at maps of the Mediterranean Sea, or "Middle Earth Sea" as it was called in one early 17th century English map, because back then, that's really all that the world was. We're so global these days, but for Europe and the Middle East, the dominant powers back then, that's all that the world was. So they have fantastically detailed maps of the coastline of this one sea, with hazy guesses of semi-mythical lands of the Araby, the Orient, the Indies, and later, the New World. It's beautiful! As for the ship models, wow. I've never seen such fantastically detailed models of WWI-era ships before, where they basically had enormous wooden ships bristling with artillery guns. In a word, cool!
Second of all, since the Ottoman Navy didn't really exist before the late 19th century or so, a) they have cool steam-powered, iron-clad warships, and b) the exhibit focused more on World War I than any other I've seen -- which, by the way, was entirely England and Germany's fault, according to the exhibit. But did you know that the Allies got it handed to them by the Ottomans at the Battle of Gallipoli? Cause I didn't. Really, as far as I can tell, it's a shame that the Allies won the war, because it only gave them free reign to fuck up Germany and the Middle East when the two regions were doing kind of okay before that. Way to go, America.
Anyways, seeing interactions between America and the Ottoman Empire was also cool. Did you know that the Ottoman Navy won a number of awards for its innovative practices at the Chicago World Fair of 1893? Cause I didn't. But they had them up there, certificates in English complementing the "Ottoman Imperial Naval Ministry" or something like that. Why don't we ever learn this kind of stuff back in our old history classes? I don't even think I ever really learned who fought whom in World War I, and that was damn important stuff.
Following the first museum, we hiked on over to the Domabahce (sp?) Palace, which was another fantastic building. It's essentially the more modern and European-styled palace when compared to the Topkapi Palace. I mean, it has central heating and electric lighting for one thing, and for another, it was designed basically to impress the rest of Europe with how the Ottoman Empire was still doing okay, we swear, see? So we're talking rooms upon rooms filled with beautiful paintings, intricate rugs, and oh, the chandeliers. Aside from the actual treasure rooms of fancy porcelain and solid gold cutlery, the ambassador's rooms, the meeting rooms, the bedrooms (it had a harem, too) and, of course, the Sultan's main audience chambers were all filled with the very definition of royal splendor. Everything was red silk and velvet where it wasn't gold, and there were rooms literally covered with gold (I'm talking walls, ceilings, columns; apparently one big room used up 150 kg of gold leaf in doing so). There was imported Bohemian red crystal chandeliers, French crystal tables and balconies, Chinese porcelains, ivory pianos -- not to mention one gigantic four foot long elephant tusk intricately built into a standing lamp. I don't know how else to describe it other than the precise definition of royal European splendor. Maybe not the biggest and most awe-inspiring building so far, but certainly the richest and most extravagant.
My favorite room was like I mention before, the Sultan's main audience chamber. It was a huge room, maybe a third or a half the size of a football field, ringed with gold-covered pillars and balconies around one absurdly large and beautifully decorated rug. Dangling straight down from the central dome, one that looked like a scaled-down version of the Hagia Sophia and even more wonderfully decorated, was the most ridiculously huge chandelier I have ever seen. Keep in mind that this palace was filled with beautiful crystal chandeliers, but this one apparently weighed four and a half tons and had around eighty five lights, maybe more. We're talking a French crystal chandelier the size of my car, and an exquisitely carved one at that. It was hanging straight down from a hundred-foot high dome in the center of this massive hall only a few feet off of the ground, and with all the light and other grandiose decorations surrounding it, the effect was just breath taking. I could practically see the throngs of ambassadors, diplomats and officials all gathered around the edges of the room, silently waiting or maybe gossiping in dozens of different languages while the Sultan relaxed in his red-cushioned wooden throne at the far, far end of the chamber. Think about it! It was a splendid sight.
Also, my tour guide was awesome. It was the first guided tour I've been on the entire trip, and the guy spoke like four different languages and had recently traveled as far as India and Spain. I want to be a tour guide, now!
For now, stay awake until dinner, stuff face, then sleep and do it all over again. Looks like a boat cruise on the Bosphorus Strait before we head on over to Asia for the day. Ciao!
Still snowing here two full days after it should have stopped, and it's wearing out its welcome. Don't get me wrong, I love the weather, and it definitely makes the city look even more beautiful than usual. But when our main method of transportation is walking for hours around the city and through outdoor exhibits, the freezing cold and wet starts to get to you. There are palm trees here! Why is it snowing?
Regardless, the museums here continue to be more fascinating and enthralling then they have any right to be. Woke up late-ish on this Saturday -- that is, around five AM because I fail at surviving jet lag -- and headed out on our own for the long walk down to the Bosphorous Straight. Our first stop was the Naval Museum, which was similar to the Military Museum but with a few interesting differences. First of all, they had rooms full of kick-ass maps and ship models. My favorite was a map from 1461, because not only do I love looking over medieval maps, but this one was the original copy, made of leather and covered in beautiful Arabic calligraphy and little sketches like were common back in the day. You know, "here be dragons," except they'd have little churches or castles and so on. I love looking at maps of the Mediterranean Sea, or "Middle Earth Sea" as it was called in one early 17th century English map, because back then, that's really all that the world was. We're so global these days, but for Europe and the Middle East, the dominant powers back then, that's all that the world was. So they have fantastically detailed maps of the coastline of this one sea, with hazy guesses of semi-mythical lands of the Araby, the Orient, the Indies, and later, the New World. It's beautiful! As for the ship models, wow. I've never seen such fantastically detailed models of WWI-era ships before, where they basically had enormous wooden ships bristling with artillery guns. In a word, cool!
Second of all, since the Ottoman Navy didn't really exist before the late 19th century or so, a) they have cool steam-powered, iron-clad warships, and b) the exhibit focused more on World War I than any other I've seen -- which, by the way, was entirely England and Germany's fault, according to the exhibit. But did you know that the Allies got it handed to them by the Ottomans at the Battle of Gallipoli? Cause I didn't. Really, as far as I can tell, it's a shame that the Allies won the war, because it only gave them free reign to fuck up Germany and the Middle East when the two regions were doing kind of okay before that. Way to go, America.
Anyways, seeing interactions between America and the Ottoman Empire was also cool. Did you know that the Ottoman Navy won a number of awards for its innovative practices at the Chicago World Fair of 1893? Cause I didn't. But they had them up there, certificates in English complementing the "Ottoman Imperial Naval Ministry" or something like that. Why don't we ever learn this kind of stuff back in our old history classes? I don't even think I ever really learned who fought whom in World War I, and that was damn important stuff.
Following the first museum, we hiked on over to the Domabahce (sp?) Palace, which was another fantastic building. It's essentially the more modern and European-styled palace when compared to the Topkapi Palace. I mean, it has central heating and electric lighting for one thing, and for another, it was designed basically to impress the rest of Europe with how the Ottoman Empire was still doing okay, we swear, see? So we're talking rooms upon rooms filled with beautiful paintings, intricate rugs, and oh, the chandeliers. Aside from the actual treasure rooms of fancy porcelain and solid gold cutlery, the ambassador's rooms, the meeting rooms, the bedrooms (it had a harem, too) and, of course, the Sultan's main audience chambers were all filled with the very definition of royal splendor. Everything was red silk and velvet where it wasn't gold, and there were rooms literally covered with gold (I'm talking walls, ceilings, columns; apparently one big room used up 150 kg of gold leaf in doing so). There was imported Bohemian red crystal chandeliers, French crystal tables and balconies, Chinese porcelains, ivory pianos -- not to mention one gigantic four foot long elephant tusk intricately built into a standing lamp. I don't know how else to describe it other than the precise definition of royal European splendor. Maybe not the biggest and most awe-inspiring building so far, but certainly the richest and most extravagant.
My favorite room was like I mention before, the Sultan's main audience chamber. It was a huge room, maybe a third or a half the size of a football field, ringed with gold-covered pillars and balconies around one absurdly large and beautifully decorated rug. Dangling straight down from the central dome, one that looked like a scaled-down version of the Hagia Sophia and even more wonderfully decorated, was the most ridiculously huge chandelier I have ever seen. Keep in mind that this palace was filled with beautiful crystal chandeliers, but this one apparently weighed four and a half tons and had around eighty five lights, maybe more. We're talking a French crystal chandelier the size of my car, and an exquisitely carved one at that. It was hanging straight down from a hundred-foot high dome in the center of this massive hall only a few feet off of the ground, and with all the light and other grandiose decorations surrounding it, the effect was just breath taking. I could practically see the throngs of ambassadors, diplomats and officials all gathered around the edges of the room, silently waiting or maybe gossiping in dozens of different languages while the Sultan relaxed in his red-cushioned wooden throne at the far, far end of the chamber. Think about it! It was a splendid sight.
Also, my tour guide was awesome. It was the first guided tour I've been on the entire trip, and the guy spoke like four different languages and had recently traveled as far as India and Spain. I want to be a tour guide, now!
For now, stay awake until dinner, stuff face, then sleep and do it all over again. Looks like a boat cruise on the Bosphorus Strait before we head on over to Asia for the day. Ciao!