Istanbul (October 29th - November 4th)(continued)
Sunday October 31st started out exactly how Halloween days should start, in a very strange way. I am staying at a hostel that sleeps 6 and one guy is a bit of an oddity to say the least, you always seem to get one. He woke up at 4:30 to go to the bathroom which does not have a functioning light (so everyone else uses the one in the hallway). He turned the light on in the entire room while he spent about 10 minutes in the bathroom, then he left and didn't flush the toilet. A few hours later, while most are still sound asleep, I watched as he went through his morning ritual. The rooms here are co-ed so we have 4 guys and 2 girls and the guy gets up with absolutely no clothes on and does a series of calisthenics in the middle of the room. I am not sure if he is even aware that it is co-ed but even discounting that, it was one of the strangest things I have ever seen. I then got up and decided to walk to the Blue Mosque to beat the crowds. You could walk into the inner courtyard but not enter the building due to the prayers in progress. On my way into the courtyard, I heard a scuffle off to the side and a young lady (early 30's) was running away from a few Turkish guards wearing nothing but a blanket wrapped from chest to knees. She managed to get away and ran through the neighbouring park but I have no idea how she came to be at a Mosque in the middle of Istanbul, with no clothes. One of the guards had his jacket off and was trying to get her to put it on but she apparently wanted nothing to do with them. I think the full moon must have been out in Istanbul.
On Monday a friend from the hostel, Eng-Shien and I decided to go on the Bosphorus River cruise to get a water view of Istanbul. The ride on a ferry was about 4 hours long and allowed for a stop at one end for lunch. On the way we met Netty Leistra from the Netherlands who is in Istanbul for a week on her own so she joined us for the day. Eng-Shien is a computer engineer from San Francisco and Netty is a Royalty Journalist from the north of Holland and at the last stop we hiked up a fairly steep hill to an old castle and were rewarded with great views of the Bosphorus entering the Black Sea. We stopped for lunch and as a side note, if you are ever in Istanbul and decide to eat fish, remember it is priced per pound, we found that out with an expensive lesson.
The toilet on the ferry was nothing to write home about.
Close to both the Mosque and Museum are the Basilica Cisterns. This underground forest of pillars support the subterranean water reserve built in the 6th Century A.D. The Cisterns cover an area the size of two football fields and were originally the water source for part of Istanbul but far more importantly, is the spot where the boat scene from the James Bond movie - To Russia with Love was filmed.
