There are only a few places in Istanbul that I actually knew
anything about when I came here, and so far I have seen all but one of them: Topkapi Palace. Today I set out with three friends from Robert College and we went to go see it...only to discover it's closed on Tuesdays. Why Tuesdays? That's anyone's guess. Most of the major attractions here seem to pick a random day of the week on which they are not open. I knew this before, but didn't think Tuesdays were one of the days when they would close places. Oh, well. We decided to cross another of the major monuments off my "to do" list: The Blue Mosque. After snapping a few photos and wandering around the whole building
looking for the entrance they wanted us to use, my friend Melissa and I talked the guy into giving us clean head scarves and removed our shoes as we entered the quiet semidarkness of the mosque. Once inside we discovered that we were nearly the only ones actually using the borrowed headscarves to cover our hair; most of the tourists who were given them ended up needing them to cover their bare shoulders or legs, or simply disregarded them altogether. The mosque itself is beautiful, with layers of domed ceilings, Arabic script, and stained-glass windows.
After the mosque we followed our friend Phil (the men on the street kept jokingly congratulating him on having a mini-harem of three wives) to a beautiful cafe facing the water for a relaxing lunch, and then made our way into the famous Egyptian Spice Bazaar, which holds dozens of shops and hundreds of bins filled to overflowing with every kind of spice you can imagine. It smells heavenly there, a mix of curry and pepper and cinnamon that makes you instantly understand why so many explorers have spent so much of history trying to get to these flavorful
essences. The Spice Bazaar also has numerous small shops in it that sell everything from Turkish pottery to Anatolian tablecloths to evil eyes to flip flops. The shopkeepers are invariably willing to bargain with you at every turn, although they will usually wind up accusing you of being either Turkish or Jewish if you p
lay hardball too often.
anything about when I came here, and so far I have seen all but one of them: Topkapi Palace. Today I set out with three friends from Robert College and we went to go see it...only to discover it's closed on Tuesdays. Why Tuesdays? That's anyone's guess. Most of the major attractions here seem to pick a random day of the week on which they are not open. I knew this before, but didn't think Tuesdays were one of the days when they would close places. Oh, well. We decided to cross another of the major monuments off my "to do" list: The Blue Mosque. After snapping a few photos and wandering around the whole building 
looking for the entrance they wanted us to use, my friend Melissa and I talked the guy into giving us clean head scarves and removed our shoes as we entered the quiet semidarkness of the mosque. Once inside we discovered that we were nearly the only ones actually using the borrowed headscarves to cover our hair; most of the tourists who were given them ended up needing them to cover their bare shoulders or legs, or simply disregarded them altogether. The mosque itself is beautiful, with layers of domed ceilings, Arabic script, and stained-glass windows. 
After the mosque we followed our friend Phil (the men on the street kept jokingly congratulating him on having a mini-harem of three wives) to a beautiful cafe facing the water for a relaxing lunch, and then made our way into the famous Egyptian Spice Bazaar, which holds dozens of shops and hundreds of bins filled to overflowing with every kind of spice you can imagine. It smells heavenly there, a mix of curry and pepper and cinnamon that makes you instantly understand why so many explorers have spent so much of history trying to get to these flavorful 
essences. The Spice Bazaar also has numerous small shops in it that sell everything from Turkish pottery to Anatolian tablecloths to evil eyes to flip flops. The shopkeepers are invariably willing to bargain with you at every turn, although they will usually wind up accusing you of being either Turkish or Jewish if you p
lay hardball too often. 
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