After traveling through the Istanbul on the way to Varna, I was more than excited to get to Istanbul, Turkey. I was also really looking forward to seeing my cousin Kayla who lives and works as an English teacher in Istanbul. Christine and I had gotten up early to watch the sunrise as we sailed into Istanbul along with many other SASers who were up doing the same thing. Not as impressive as the night show, the sun rose over the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque and red Turkish flags flew high over every part of the city. Snapping some really cool pictures and having some early morning laughs due to drowsiness we headed to breakfast. It was one of the few times we were actually up early enough to eat so we took advantage of it before going back to sleep for a bit.
My first day in Istanbul was a little bit of a fail. My cousin and I had gotten our wires crossed a bit considering we could only communicate via email. I bucked up and bought a 20$ calling card and she was just so tired after being on vacation for a bit and taking a ridiculously long bus ride so we opted to just meet the next day. Granted, I could have gone out and done stuff on my own, but I chose to stay on the ship and get some papers done for my Anthro class which actually saved me because the 5 days between Turkey & Morocco were really lazy for me, but that’s another entry. It actually really nice being on the ship when no one else is around; you see people you haven’t seen before, and witness talents that don’t usually arise with crowds of people. I was lucky enough to be sitting in the piano lounge when a friend of mine, Paige was on the piano and singing. She was amazing. I would have never though that voice would come from her. Later on in the voyage when we were working on a play for theater she sang again. Made my day.
The next day, Kayla and I got an early start to the day. I was STOKED! To see her waiting outside the passenger terminal, I had seen her the summer before but come on, WE WERE IN TURKEY! We walked across the bridge full of fishermen and merchants selling anything and everything imaginable. We wondered towards Sultan Ahmet but opted to go to the Grand Bazaar this day. Talk about a mission. Since we got an early start there weren’t too many people. Granted, there were still A LOT however it wasn’t until later in the afternoon that we noticed we really lucked out with crowds in the morning. The bazaar full of over 3000 shops selling everything from fake genie lamps, rugs, beautifully colorful hanging lamps, hookahs of every shape and size to fake Prada, Gucci, and leather jackets. Anything you wanted you could find there if you took the time to. As you walk around don’t let any shop keeper catch you looking at something for too long cause they’ll strike up a conversation and go in for the sale. They’ll start off speaking to you in a language of the culture they think you’re from. I tended to get Latina a lot, occasionally I got Turkish as well. Kayla spoke a little bit of Turkish so people would then turn to me and try to speak and I just stood there dumbfounded and shook my head nervously. It’s a crazy experience though. These shop keepers spoke several different languages and it seemed the more you took the time to talk to them, the lower your price got. Haggling was a must. Pretty much everything was overpriced and more often than not you could get down to less than half of what they were asking. After walking around for so long and about a thousand bottles of water we got hungry. Leaving the bazaar was a task in itself. As it was later in the day flocks, and flocks of tourists and locals alike showed up and it then became difficult to move an inch in pretty much any direction without bumping into anymore. We wandered down side streets finally stopping and getting some really good, really cheap kebabs. I was getting really tired after walking around for so long, but we ventured back up to the bazaar first hitting the spice bazaar before going back to the grand bazaar. I loved it there; there were just so many different smells and colors and Turkish delight for days. There, I was on a mission to find my mom some saffron. I ended up getting reeled in by one shop owner who let us try different Turkish delights and teas and from him I bought some loose leaf “love tea”, saffron and some other miscellaneous spices. Heading back up to the grand bazaar, I was on a self-induced mission of finding a hookah. There were thousands that I looked at and I just couldn’t bring myself to decide. Until I found one that wasn’t like any others I had seen. The bottom of it looks vase like, it’s made of ceramic or something like that. Most other one’s I was looking at were made from glass and I just found this one to be uniquely Turkey and ended up buying it then. Though seeing as we weren’t allowed to bring hookahs back onto the ship because they’re “fire hazards” I took the bottom vase like part, and Kayla took the rest to bring back to Canada and take to my Aunty’s house for me to get later on.
The next day, Kayla and I got an early start to the day. I was STOKED! To see her waiting outside the passenger terminal, I had seen her the summer before but come on, WE WERE IN TURKEY! We walked across the bridge full of fishermen and merchants selling anything and everything imaginable. We wondered towards Sultan Ahmet but opted to go to the Grand Bazaar this day. Talk about a mission. Since we got an early start there weren’t too many people. Granted, there were still A LOT however it wasn’t until later in the afternoon that we noticed we really lucked out with crowds in the morning. The bazaar full of over 3000 shops selling everything from fake genie lamps, rugs, beautifully colorful hanging lamps, hookahs of every shape and size to fake Prada, Gucci, and leather jackets. Anything you wanted you could find there if you took the time to. As you walk around don’t let any shop keeper catch you looking at something for too long cause they’ll strike up a conversation and go in for the sale. They’ll start off speaking to you in a language of the culture they think you’re from. I tended to get Latina a lot, occasionally I got Turkish as well. Kayla spoke a little bit of Turkish so people would then turn to me and try to speak and I just stood there dumbfounded and shook my head nervously. It’s a crazy experience though. These shop keepers spoke several different languages and it seemed the more you took the time to talk to them, the lower your price got. Haggling was a must. Pretty much everything was overpriced and more often than not you could get down to less than half of what they were asking. After walking around for so long and about a thousand bottles of water we got hungry. Leaving the bazaar was a task in itself. As it was later in the day flocks, and flocks of tourists and locals alike showed up and it then became difficult to move an inch in pretty much any direction without bumping into anymore. We wandered down side streets finally stopping and getting some really good, really cheap kebabs. I was getting really tired after walking around for so long, but we ventured back up to the bazaar first hitting the spice bazaar before going back to the grand bazaar. I loved it there; there were just so many different smells and colors and Turkish delight for days. There, I was on a mission to find my mom some saffron. I ended up getting reeled in by one shop owner who let us try different Turkish delights and teas and from him I bought some loose leaf “love tea”, saffron and some other miscellaneous spices. Heading back up to the grand bazaar, I was on a self-induced mission of finding a hookah. There were thousands that I looked at and I just couldn’t bring myself to decide. Until I found one that wasn’t like any others I had seen. The bottom of it looks vase like, it’s made of ceramic or something like that. Most other one’s I was looking at were made from glass and I just found this one to be uniquely Turkey and ended up buying it then. Though seeing as we weren’t allowed to bring hookahs back onto the ship because they’re “fire hazards” I took the bottom vase like part, and Kayla took the rest to bring back to Canada and take to my Aunty’s house for me to get later on.
Later that night - Christine, Sylvie, Denise & I decided we’d go out and go to a hookah place where we were supposed to meet up with Mia and Kat. Apparently they went to the right of the ship, and we went to the left so we ended up missing each other completely. We still had a lot of fun though just hanging out on the Bhosphorous with the lights of the Hagia Sophia & the Blue Mosque in the back drop. It was a beautiful night. I invited them to come with me and Kayla the next day to see the mosques and go to Taksim square since they hadn’t gone yet either. We met the next day at 9:30 and off we went.
The Hagia Sophia no longer a working mosque is still incredibly gorgeous; with ridiculously high ceilings and beautifully and carefully pieced together mosaics. I was in absolute awe of these mosaics I could have stood there for hours just baffled at the sheer enormity of these pieces and the detail in their constructs. We walked around the marble floors with a quiet respect for the place. On leaving, we discovered the “sweating/wishing stone”. As whack as it sounds (it was actually kinda gnarly) you stuck your thumb in this hole in a marble collum and twisted it in a circular motion, if you did it and made a wish your wish was supposed to come true. From the Hagia Sophia we wondered slowly over towards the Blue Mosque which is still a working mosque. You had to be covered when entering including your hair. There were people there handing out scarf things for those who didn’t have any with them when wanting to see inside. Women, of course had to enter from an entirely different part of the mosque and it was interesting to see the differences in both men and women’s attitudes in the mosque and having tourists in the mosque. After leaving we made our way to Taksim. A very modern part of Istanbul where you find people shopping for over-priced items as well as souvenirs shirts like we did! Walking along we stopped and got some Turkish delight to which I fell completely in love. Chocolate pistachio – nothing better. Kayla then took us down some seemingly sketchy side street where she knew a restaurant owner and we were able to get some really good, really cheap food. We invited Kayla to come with us the next day to visit a hammam (Turkish bath) which….. *whew…. Was a RIDICULOUS experience.
The following day, Denise and I were supposed to do an FDP for our theater class, but she opted out and gave her ticket to Sylvie so I didn’t go alone. It was a workshop on the Theater of the Oppressed put on by a very small community theater (Theater of the Painted Peacock) in Istanbul. There were about 40 of us crammed into this tiny room where we learned about the art of expression though different oppressions. It was an interesting event because we were forced to face our own oppressions from being female, those who were African American, even to things as seemingly miniscule as being short. We all have things that we feel hold us back to which we were all able to discover can be a hidden strength. After the workshop, Sylvie went wish some people to Taksim to get some stuff, and I hopped in a cab with some girls to get back to the ship ASAP cause we were all supposed to meet to go to the hammam. Here’s where a bunch of our wires got crossed. Christine & Denise hadn’t gotten back from the bazaar yet so I left them a note saying we’ll wait an extra x-amount of minutes for you hopefully you meet us there, apparently I left literally 2 minutes before they got back. So we waited for them but they ended upgoing to the hammam first. After waiting we gave up and walked to the hammam, from where they walked to our meeting spot so once again we just missed each other.
Kayla, Sylvie and I ended up going to the hammam together, and getting to know each other real personally. We stripped down and were then instructed to go into this large room made of mostly marble. The floors exuded steam as did the marble slabs we laid on. Feeling incredibly awkward stark-naked in a room of women we sucked it up and just went with it. After about 25 minutes of sweating and silence several older women came to us and instructed us on where to sit or lay and proceeded to scrub us down, lather us up and massage. It was very strange at first, but it felt amazing to be incredibly clean. HAHA! There were a few other Turkish natives who had no problem with us as tourists being there and sat in all their glory enjoying themselves. We then had our hair washed and braided (for those who had hair long enough) as this older Turkish woman sang a song. As we were getting ready to leave Christine & Denise walked in and we explained the whole miscommunication. They went in and had their deal done as we left and met up with them for dinner later. On the way back down to the ship Sylvie and I discussed the awkwardness of it all but came to the conclusion that we then became “women” however we also felt like our grandmother had just given us a bath. It was crazy to experience that with someone you’ve only known for 6ish weeks. We laughed about it but knew we had created an extraordinarily memorable moment there in Istanbul we even documented it by making a video on the tramway back. I can still remember our shocked faces as we first discussed the experience. And the newer shocked faces that emerged as we all met up for dinner and asked each other about it. Childish giggles of a fun and really clean afternoon filled the 6th floor dining hall as people ventured out to enjoy our last night in Istanbul as our on ship time was at 1800.
I met Kayla that final afternoon the next day. We walked along the docks talking for a bit and was sadden by the fact that I was unable to meet her boyfriend, but it sure gives me a good reason to find my way back to Turkey for another visit. We spent the rest of the afternoon in a hookah bar near the dock and just talked. It was such an incredible time in Turkey and I was glad I was able to spend at least part of it with family. She walked me back to the port and we said our final goodbye. Luckily she was on her way to Canada to visit my Aunt & her dad in a couple days so she got the excitement of knowing as soon as I’m gone she was a day closer to being home.
The end of the say people slowly but surely filed their way back onto the ship as we shoved off from Turkey in lieu of our second to last destination; Casablanca, Morocco. We did however, have 5 sailing days between countries to which there was the talent show and the silent and live auction that all proved to be amazing evenings. Hopefully I find a burst of energy to reminisce on those events so I can finally get my blog back up to date! Better to be late than never to complete it.
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