For one thing, I always find myself taking pictures of local cats. Even with our own cat now, my two feline lovers want to pose with the cats, pet them, and make comparisons like, “this one is about Zeki’s size!” More fun for me is that I have a dear friend who has a fear of big cats and it makes me laugh to find the fattest ones and text pictures of them to her.
For our first tourist stop of the day we went down into the cisterns. I only have my iphone with me on this trip so most of my pictures are pretty sorry in this low light. I love this one though — the entire place glows just like this. I’m just going to direct you here, CISTERNS, to see much better photos from our last trip.
The water is pretty shallow — Camille could stand in it, but there are fish that swim around and cluster under the lights. My understanding is that back in the day this ancient cistern was discovered when a scholar came to town and the locals told him they could get water and occasionally fish by lowering buckets into holes in there floors. He dug a little further and discovered this amazing place.
I was trying to get a photo of her and the only way that her face wasn’t completely shaded was to stick her neck out like this.
Otherwise all the photos end up like this
Again, the skeevy wet hole in the pillar where everyone sticks their thumb in and rubs it around for good luck. I passed on that.
Caleb was scared of it at first, but his big brother “helped” him
Something we discovered today that has changed our lives: If we rent the audio tour for a couple of the kids, they spend all their time listening and not asking us questions. Sharing the headsets and passing info back and forth to each other keeps them pretty well occupied and gives us a few minutes of blissful silence.
According to one of them, these carvings represent the tears of the all the slaves who died while building the cisterns. That’s rather dark.
Underground selfie
Messing around in front of the Medusa head. I’m laughing at how dark all these photos are.
Awkward family photo?
Since today was the day to hit all of our old favorite places, we stopped by a local art gallery that is right across the street from where we left the cisterns. Calvin is the one that first had the idea and I’m so glad he remembered how great this place is.
This is our friend, though I don’t know his name. He was here on our last trip and made a beautiful marbled “painting” for our wall with our family name and Turkish tulips representing each of us. The square pan holds oil and he drops water-based paints onto the oil and then uses instruments to create pictures and swirls in the floating paint drops. It’s a traditional Turkish art form. He remembered us and made this one especially for Camille.
Then he let the boys try it out
When the artwork is complete, he lays a piece of paper gently over the top and the paint adheres to the paper and the oil is left behind. I forgot to take a photo of their finished painting before it was rolled up into a tube to take home.
After the marbling fun, our friend (I think his name might be George), took us to the different workshops that are part of the art school that sells things at the gallery. I found some earrings and a pendant in the shop and then got to see where they hammer out the silver and learn the techniques to make the pieces.
Next stop: The Hagia Sophia (Aya Sophia)
God bless the audio tour. Seriously.
Beautiful place, right?
Not so much. It would have been nice to know that 1/2 of it was covered with scaffolding before paying 25 TL admission. And none of the lights were on either.
Boo.
This was my favorite tourist site last time, but this visit left me cold. Again, if you want to see some much better pictures of the Hagia Sophia before it went under construction, go here: AYA SOPHIA
I know you all want me to bring you back some “Air of Istanbul” as a souvenir, huh?
Our final trip of the day was to the Egyptian Spice Market to buy Carter some Apple Tea. (Good grief, this was a long day!) It’s a thing that they serve everywhere here and the kids love it.
I totally want to know what Al Pacino did to inspire this spice mix — it looks pretty fiery.
One of the highlights of the spice market trip (besides finding the tea) was finding the place where we shopped two years ago and having tea, nuts and Turkish Delight in their stall. People were wandering in and out and shopping, but they pulled up chairs and brought tea for us and kept pulling out different sweets for the kids to try. They are Egyptian and recognized Josh’s accent. Funny how we were there such a short time, but he still carries it with him.
We were pretty full of honey sesame pistachios, Turkish Delight, and tea, but we grabbed sandwiches on the way home for dinner.
It’s been another great day!
