Three Stans - Istanbul III
Another fabulous day with Eyüp and Ayşegül.... today with nice driver to the Archeology Museum, by far my favorite part of the Topkapi complex....and the only of the Istanbul museums built as a museum by the famous Hamdi Bey at the turn of the 19th-20th century...I just had to see my favorite pieces there, the stunningly simple statue of the young athlete, the two from life busts of Alexander the Great and his thrilling, utterly intact [and still retaining bits of color after being dug up in Sidon, North Syria by Himdi Bey] sarcophagus...an astounding and massive coffin with sculptures by the literal hundreds.... and now quite astonishingly displayed in its own vast room, quite phenomenally lighted in an otherwise dark mauve colored room.. It is I think the finest single bit of archeology to be found in this nation where the stump of every toe seems to turn up more. The Turkish land bridge of Anatolia WAS the main street of the ancient world...from the Hittites of almost pre history who left their massive basalt lions now framing the entry to the Istanbul Archeological to the Uartians, several waves of Greeks, the Romans, Seljuk Turks, Armenians and modern Turks....Every wave left something....something of dramatic importance, too. On he whole good taste which is certainly NOT a given was in richer bloom in days long gone by than in our worlds today.
We then drove to the Chora Church which was converted to a mosque with its pluperfect frescoes covered only to be revealed within the last 50 odd years with enormous help from the Ford Foundation. Sitting in a hilly, scruffy, oddly colorful part of Istanbul [itself largely forgotten by the city until well into the last century} the rather humpy looking building from the outside reveals itself on the interior as one of the truly astonishing interiors on the Continent of Europe...those frescoes with the piercing Byzantine eyes. eyes which follow a body somehow knowingly from any corner of the chapels and which lay covered by only a thin whitewash for 800 odd years only recently to be revealed as major icons still violently affecting after an equal number of years of sleep!
A Turkish tycoon has restored a nearby wooden mansion overlooking the Golden Horn through a lush garden of wisteria. peonies in riotous bloom roses and the last of the tulips and turned it into a discreet little hotel, the kind of place where a writer could retreat to write the novel, a dreamer could ponder the world, a couple could have an extraordinarily romantic tryst....We had a long lunch in the lovely club like restaurant, a kitchen famous in Turkey for recreating the Ottoman classical dishes....the cubed chicken with walnuts and pomegranates, a wonderful almond and grape soup; one of those peculiar dishes which sound too odd to be true, a sort of pinto bean with dill and wild mushrooms and garlic and celeric which is pureed and then turned into a
sort of baby brick...a taste combination and presentation of which İ had never seen nor heard and which was maybe the star of lunch.....we finished with a goblet of Turkish sparkling wine with the intense raspberry liqueur called Ahududu....a word from the land of Oz and an odd and quite beguiling dessert. Glory be!
Prices have risen here along with the strength of the Lire which has zoomed from 3 million to the Dollar to a worth today of circa 80 cents a pop. I paid for lunch for 3 and with a good tip it was
about 140 Dollars and worth every sou. To fill the office Mercedes today costs 150 Dollars [the Turkish key board has no dollar sign}...gas being almost 3 times the cost of the wicked prices at home. the Euro is king here...every fancy establishment quotes Euros for most things now.
Tomorrow Ayşegül and I fly along the Yellow Brick Road EAST...and I am psyched. A. has gotten a warning from a friend in the Turk diplomatic corps about bad times in the far North of
Afghanistan so we will see....
These days in Istanbul have been magical. the city is so clean, so much in the process of anthills of renovations mostly in GREAT taste....and I heard on the BBC that it was named one of the THREE safest cities for visitors in Europe along with Helsinki and Vienna. ZOUNDS.
We then drove to the Chora Church which was converted to a mosque with its pluperfect frescoes covered only to be revealed within the last 50 odd years with enormous help from the Ford Foundation. Sitting in a hilly, scruffy, oddly colorful part of Istanbul [itself largely forgotten by the city until well into the last century} the rather humpy looking building from the outside reveals itself on the interior as one of the truly astonishing interiors on the Continent of Europe...those frescoes with the piercing Byzantine eyes. eyes which follow a body somehow knowingly from any corner of the chapels and which lay covered by only a thin whitewash for 800 odd years only recently to be revealed as major icons still violently affecting after an equal number of years of sleep!
A Turkish tycoon has restored a nearby wooden mansion overlooking the Golden Horn through a lush garden of wisteria. peonies in riotous bloom roses and the last of the tulips and turned it into a discreet little hotel, the kind of place where a writer could retreat to write the novel, a dreamer could ponder the world, a couple could have an extraordinarily romantic tryst....We had a long lunch in the lovely club like restaurant, a kitchen famous in Turkey for recreating the Ottoman classical dishes....the cubed chicken with walnuts and pomegranates, a wonderful almond and grape soup; one of those peculiar dishes which sound too odd to be true, a sort of pinto bean with dill and wild mushrooms and garlic and celeric which is pureed and then turned into a
sort of baby brick...a taste combination and presentation of which İ had never seen nor heard and which was maybe the star of lunch.....we finished with a goblet of Turkish sparkling wine with the intense raspberry liqueur called Ahududu....a word from the land of Oz and an odd and quite beguiling dessert. Glory be!
Prices have risen here along with the strength of the Lire which has zoomed from 3 million to the Dollar to a worth today of circa 80 cents a pop. I paid for lunch for 3 and with a good tip it was
about 140 Dollars and worth every sou. To fill the office Mercedes today costs 150 Dollars [the Turkish key board has no dollar sign}...gas being almost 3 times the cost of the wicked prices at home. the Euro is king here...every fancy establishment quotes Euros for most things now.
Tomorrow Ayşegül and I fly along the Yellow Brick Road EAST...and I am psyched. A. has gotten a warning from a friend in the Turk diplomatic corps about bad times in the far North of
Afghanistan so we will see....
These days in Istanbul have been magical. the city is so clean, so much in the process of anthills of renovations mostly in GREAT taste....and I heard on the BBC that it was named one of the THREE safest cities for visitors in Europe along with Helsinki and Vienna. ZOUNDS.
posted by ultimatetraveler at 6:37 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home