I mean what Thanksgiving is complete without turkey? This year, for Canadian thanksgiving, we found ourselves in the country of Turkey, decidedly without the famous bird, but still feasting with friends and family…which is the whole point surely. We spent Thanksgiving weekend with Mike’s Turkish friends in Istanbul, Doen and Nasli and their beautiful little girl Alinda eating all the turkish delight (so much better than the Big Turk Candy Bar), So Boregi (Baked Noodles and Cheese), and Gozleme (Cheesy pita bread baked over a hot stone) that we could handle.
Our days in Istanbul were spent enjoying the sites of Hagia Sophia (which unfortunately was under an immense amount of construction, I will have to rely on my 2009 memory of the place), but the museum experience with Hagia Sophia was super interesting.
It was an interactive movie that took you from room to room telling the story of the former church, then Mosque, then museum, now mosque again, and the story of Hagia Sophia is really the story of Istanbul, formerly known as Constantinople, formerly known as Byzantium. For about 1000 years it was the largest dome in the world that no one could replicate, although many attempts were tried.
On the upper storey of the building, there are still some of the old Christian mosaics left of Christ with the leaders of Constantinople, Christ with Mary and St. John the Baptist, and various others. The caligraphic islamic pendants are another major draw to the building. The dome, alas, couldn’t be seen due to construction.
Istanbul has it’s fair share of astounding mosques from the ‘New Mosque’ (which is actually over 400 years old), the Blue Mosque, the Taxsim Square Mosque, basically led to a couple of days ‘Mosque Hopping”. Now your ‘mosque-hopping’ outfit depends entirely on your gender and not if you are muslim or not. Men are expected to wear pants and shirts that cover their shoulders, so no shorts and tank tops guys. Women are expected to be in a long skirt, covered shoulders, dial back any cleavage, and hair covered. I bucked the trend a bit and wore pants, but stricly speaking, that was not appropriate. Mosques usually have a stock of appropriate headscarfs and skirts you can put on yourself available, unless you are at Hagia Sophia where we had to pick up these flimsy bits of cloth for 2 euros each.
Laura and I enjoyed heading out on the town to try out perfume making with 100+ different scents for us to create our own custom blends with some other tourists. Laura also got a chance to flex her Spanish as some of the tourists were from Mexico. Apparently her Spanish is not bad at all, which was really comforting to hear as we have spent a ton of time trying to improve it.
We also noticed that just about everywhere we went in Istanbul, we would see young people with some sort of pretty major cosmetic surgery. So girlfriends would be out and about on the streets with post-surgical nose job bandaging. Men would be out and about with guy friends having recently completed hair plug surgery, the airport leaving the country had about 5 of these guys in our customs line.
Surgery here is just so affordable and Turkey has a glut of these medical professionals offering these services. Beauty is a real industry here. However, before I could consider getting something tucked, it was time to head off to Azerbaijan and start our silk road journey. I hadn’t been to Istanbul since world trip #1 and this time it felt much more touristy than when I came here before. I was looking forward to getting off the beaten path, and exploring things that were much more foreign to me. I was craving something new…but you know how the saying goes, be careful for what you wish for.
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