Ok, I don’t know why, but a lot of places of interest in Istanbul are insanely expensive. For ex., Topkapi Palace is EUR 45 per person!!! It is absolutely egregious. None of the other palaces in the world, be it the fabulous Royal Palace of Madrid or the exquisite Palace of Versailles, costs as much! Especially in the backdrop of a very small price for locals. Felt like it was a very hostile practice preying on the wallets of foreigners. Skip.
- Ditto for Hagia Sophia $25 and a separate price to see Basilica Cistern (Yerebatan Sarnici) – decided not to go inside. The museum upstairs has icons from the time when Aya Sophia was a Christian church. Have seen a lot of these in our previous and current travel in Europe.
- Ended up taking 2.5 hr Bosphorus boat tour. Saw jelly fish inside the waters! At first I thought it was plastic bags and then we realized that these were super cool jelly fish. It was a bit chilly to be on the boat, and we couldn’t wait for the tour to finish 🙂 That said, we were going right in between the European and Asian continental boundaries. How cool is that?!
- Visited Suleymaniye Mosque at night – stunning building both inside and outside. I liked it better than the Blue mosque. There was an electronic stand insight that gave explanation to each part of the mosque – free education! The mosque itself is situated in the garden and consist of the whole complex of many buildings of which there is a tomb of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, his slavic wife Hurrem (Roxelana, from what is now current Ukrainian) and their favorite daughter Mihrimah. From the observation deck of the mosque we could see Istanbul at night, the Golden Horn and a bit of the Bosphorus. The mosque itself was built by the order of Sultan Suleiman for his wife Hurrem by architecture Mimara Sinana in 1557. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to come there again during the day!
- Went to Andijan Uzbek restaurant. Got tandir somsa and Napoleon cake.
- Read about La Rosso/Roxelana/Hurrem – incredible story, magnificent woman. Captured during a slave raid by Crimean tatars, she was ultimately sold into Sultan Suleyman’s harem. Her rise from a concubine to official consort to legal wife to a powerful political player is nothing less than a Shaherezada tale. She defied all rules and customs of that time: a slave concubine could not become a legal wife – not only she became a Haseki Sultan but she outsmarted all court’s opposition and intrigue, becoming Sultan’s most trusted confidant. Another rule was no more than one son was permitted from a concubine – she gave four sons and one daughter to Sultan before he married her (then another son later). And she never moved out of the palace after her sons did, as was the custom of the time. And the kind of love that she was able to invoke in the most powerful man of the time – read her letters to him and his poems to her! No wonder she became legendary. Listen to Hyden’s sonata #63 devoted to her.Â
