My first night in Istanbul I spent in the Denis House Hotel, as the one with most of the others is full, given I arrived a day earlier than most. I can't believe I slept through the call to prayer blasted out from every mosque at about 4am. I am listening to it now at 5:10pm and it's lovely. Musical, each mosque has a different guy so the different voices run like threads through the air. But it is fairly loud. I am only on a 2 hour difference coming as I did from London UK, but still my sleep was unbroken.
Breakfast was on the roof terrace. I think every building has some sort of eating or partying place on the rooftop. From this one I could see the Sea of Marmara almost directly below and there were bright red and pink geraniums on the terrace, but I opted to eat indoors as it was already very hot.
If this is the sort of breakfast I have to look forward to them I am a happy girl. Yogurt with bowls of conserved cherries, raspberries and strawberries, thick honey, hard boiled eggs, cheeses (feta and edam), a meat like bologna) fresh tomatos and cucumbers, pickled vegetables, bread rolls, cake.....I poured me a glass of pomegranate juice and tucked in.
Well fueled I moved my bags temporarily into Eric's room (what will the staff think?), and we set out to the royal palace, which takes up a huge piece of headland. It was where all the sultans lived, built in 1450 or therabouts, after Contantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire. It's comprised of seveal buildings, "pavillions" as the Ottomen were originally nomadic, so having different buildings for different functions no doubt helped when staying in one place.
These pavilions were all decorated with painted domes, wide divans, cupboard doors inlaid with mother of pearl and tortoise shell, stanied glass, golden braziers, and lots and lots of blue and green tiling. The Harem was my favourite part as it was built on a more intimate scale. Yet it became more than just where the women and children and eunuchs lived, but where future govenors were groomed and the administrative functions of the palace were established. I spent the whole day there, moving slowly, resting often- at one point for a salad overlooking the busy Bosphorous, freighters moving in one after another, ferries dashing across side to side, tiny fishing boats bobbing in the white-capped current, the odd sale boat moving here and there, and the most ginormous cruise ship I've ever seen. At least 10 storeys of accomodation above its hull.
Actually, the nicest time was just leaving, hearing the wind in the Plane trees, watching the red roses be planted fully open, walking slowly over the bits of old marble and brick and colomns and cistern, and cobble - all taken from elsewhere and now here to rest for at least the next little while.
That's one thing gained by seeing these grand palaces that were built in one empire after having destroyed another, and anotehr before that: time is not the friend of emipres. Rulers die, others rule, maybe not as well or as wisely, bad decisions are made, and before you know it, it's bye-bye empire. So I take my steps slowly knowing how soon the pressure they make will be short-lived and irrelevant to the landscape.
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