Travels with Kathryn

Over the last couple of days, I have spent a lot of time planning the next stage(s) of my trip. I intentionally (repressing my NEED to organise tendencies) had not planned post Istanbul, this was because: (i) I have never been away for longer than 6 weeks so I did have some concerns that I would have had enough travelling by now (this has not happened!); (ii) I wanted to learn what worked for me on the trip so far e.g. was I better relying on tours, how many days do I realistically need in places, how many weeks can I go without needing a washing machine etc; and (iii) I wanted flexibility given the state of the world right now and to not get locked down too soon. However, as you will see from my updated homepage, I am now planned and mostly booked until Christmas – whoop! If anyone fancies joining me along the way, please let me know.

Anyway, back to the present: yesterday, I headed back to Sultanahmet to visit the Turkish and Islamic Art Museum. This is just off the Hippodrome and the first thing I would note is that one should not attempt to visit the Blue Mosque at 10.30am on a weekend – the queue was all around the Hippodrome (we walked in on a weekday at 9.30am, just saying). The museum is in the Ibrahim Pasha Palace, which dates back to the 16th century and is only royal palace in Istanbul still standing from this time.

The museum is not overly large and contains a rather eclectic mix of exhibits in chronological order showing the range Islamic art produced between the 8th and 20th centuries:

There was a rather interesting selection of Holy Relics, including a room with various receptacles holding hairs (apparently) from the Prophet Mohammed’s beard. No comment.

One of my favourite things was the commentary with the door below. These are the doors of the Cizre Ulu Mosque, and you will see that one of the door knobs is missing. Well, this was”removed and stolen” in December 1969 and it is now in the David Collection at Copenhagen – Denmark, but they are refusing to return it/allow the museum to purchase it because of “the strict policies of the David Samling Private Museum’s authorities”. One gets the impression that this museum is rather irritated by this as a number of other exhibits have delightful explanations of this or that museum giving stolen artefacts back. I blame the Danish.

They did have a museum shop and excitingly they did stock the earrings which Mum brought in the Dolmabache Palace which are faulty, but unfortunately they would not let me exchange them and said I had to return to where I brought them (which I cannot do without paying the entrance fee – I tried later that day). Sorry, Mum, I have let myself down.

I walked back via the Grand Baazar and into the (much) more touristy Spice Baazar. It is nice to look at, but other than a small bag of lokum/turkish delight (a little travel snack), I felt able to resist all of it…

Today, I have been doing the last of the laundry, and I decided to fit in one last trip to a haman. My nearest haman is Cukurcuma Hamani, which was built in 1831 by the Valide Sultan (mother of Sultan Abdulhamid I), who decided a haman was needed in this area (sensible lady). It was renovated between 2007 and 2018, so it is still very shiny and new. It is also mixed sex (so swimsuits on), and I had stated no preference as to whether I had a male or female therapist and bless them, they gave me an incredibly attractive man (like really attractive in a silver fox way). So, although it was not as thorough scrub, wash/massage, and sluice as my previous haman, it was an utterly delightful experience. The only slightly odd moment was when he decided to soap up to his foreams to do a really thorough massage which gave me a certain feeling of being a heifer giving birth!

After this, I am all clean and ready for my overnight train to Sofia tomorrow (I am officially leaving any whiff of Central Asia and firmly entering the Balkans).

Reflecting back on Istanbul, it remains one of my favourite cities, and I also enjoyed visiting some of the classic tourist locations with my (still apparently) broken old people. I just feel that it is such a great place to visit as you really do get that East meets West feeling and although it is a mega city, the tourist area is pretty compact and the public transport is easy to navigate (other than by some very confused geriatrics obviously just off a curise ship whom I had to assist in their trying to purchase a travel card with euros – sigh). My advice would be though if you can, to not come on a Friday (as it makes it near impossible to visit any of the mosques) or weekend (as tourist numbers are exponentially higher than weekdays). You also do not need to book the multitude of skip the line tours as they do not work for the mosques anyway where the longest queues are, and you can then time your own entry properly to minimise queueing.

I am excited about my overnight train tomorrow, but I am less excited about the border crossings in the middle of the night, so keep your fingers crossed for me!