Our travel chapter is about to end. We're in Turkey for one final night, with great sighs of delight, looking backwards and forwards. This entry has been hurriedly done -- sorry if it's disjointed.
We'll be in NYC for a week, then the Chicago area (and MSP and Evansville) before heading back to NYC for Gen's mid-September nuptials, then off to Portland to find "home"; it is great to be thinking about long-term lodging for a change, to be settling down after this gypsy life.
Turkey has been fascinating, lovely, delicious. I'm hoping we can get around to more on Turkey --it richly deserves it, but time's getting weird and short. The ruins, the cities, the Aegean sail - it's an amazing country in our limited travels here, and great fun. As always, picture books on Turkey would do the real Turkish sights far better justice than we could.
Because a couple of you have asked, yes -- Taksim Square was slightly dangerous and exciting, clearly lots still going on there. More on that another time.
Here are other kinds of Turkish delights:
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| This is Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of current Turkey, a much revered guy whose image appears everywhere. |
Mosques are fascinating and quite similar. Our entire time in Turkey has been during Ramadan, which is a very different undertaking during the hot, hot summer than in the winter. Anyone can go into the mosques when prayers aren't ongoing, but all leave their shoes outside, women must be covered head to toe (and they'll make sure and help you with that), men can't be in shorts, there are places as a woman, as an infidel, to be and not to be. As I write, there's a call to prayer going on, happens 5 times a day from a minaret over the loudspeaker. Ramadan adds a call that it's time to eat (sunset, finally), and the excitement of a drummer coming around town at about 3AM, drumming observant Muslims awake to be sure they eat before sunrise. Loud, sometimes almost New Orleans-y beat, highly effective awakener.
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| This is how the shoes of the faithful appear outside the mosques. |
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These are domes in Istanbul's Blue Mosque. Tiles, painted ceilings. Low-hung lights are typical.
There are lots of cats in Turkey. Lots! Dogs, too, but the cats are everywhere, wandering, hanging out, sleeping, cats in churches and mosques, cats in restaurants, the trams have cats, hotels have cats, they're everywhere. They're the gamut from indifferent to friendly to reserved to frightened.
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| Family in a park. The babies are almost as big as the mum. |
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| This one lives in a tram station. |
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| Very typical Turkish Van cat coloring. |
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The Basilica Cistern in Istanbul. It was a Byzantine water storage area (held 80K cubic meters of water), and lay forgotten for over 10 centuries. An absolute delight on a beastly hot summer day.
Can't believe it's not been used as a movie set. |
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Typical turkish dinner food -- clockwise: chicken shishkebab with potatoes, spicy beans, veges in olive oil, kebab with potatoes and peppers. Below, street food of the gods: fried dough soaked in diluted honey, pistachio
shavings on top. Served warm. Better than Krispy Kremes -- divine.
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| Stained glass window in a mausoleum, unbelievable brilliance from beveled glass pieces, typical in Istanbul. |
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| Istanbul water hydrants resemble whirling dervishes. |
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| We saw these brooms in much of western Turkey - highly functional and lovely. |
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| The standard Turkish toilet has a built in bottom washer (the dark spot in back). It sprays water, so that clean up is just patting dry. Nice. It's definitely more fully functional and easier to use than the standard bidet, but somewhat less luxurious than a fancy Japanese toilet. |
We had a little excitement on our trip to Izmir -- our train struck a truck on the tracks. Neither fared well from the incident. All passengers were evacuated, and the train went to the hospital, as did the truck and a field worker.
These photos are bad -- the afternoon light was a problem -- but I loved seeing the high fashion offerings replete with modest head coverings. These were busy stores.
Circumcision (male) is an event in Turkey. It, and military service, are two big passages into manhood. It is usually done when a boy is 5-11, and includes a big party -- it's a big deal, and a joyous occasion. The boy anticipating the experience wears a traditional circumcision suit -- see the photos below. There are whole shops devoted to outfitting young boys in these special feathered, crowned, caped outfits.
Read more about it here, if you're interested.
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| In an extra fancy shop we even saw feathered boots. |
So . . . this travel chapter is over. We may continue to post occasionally as we reminisce and process, and if you're interested, you're probably better off signing up for email delivery (top right of the blog) because it will likely be fallow for long periods of time. Thanks for being with us for this journey.
