Firenze 2006-2007: Turkey Field Trip

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Turkey Field Trip

Our educational field trip for this semester was to Ephesus and Istanbul, Turkey. So, on Tuesday morning last week we left the villa at 6:00am and got on a bus to Roma to catch our flight to Istanbul. After the flight, passing through customs and getting our visas taken care of we headed to our connecting to Izmir, South of Istanbul. We got there at about 8:00pm local time, after a long day of traveling. We all picked up our bags and were finally on a bus to our hotel. We made it to our hotel in Ephesus, or at least near there at about 9:00, and after setting our stuff down in the rooms we headed immediately to dinner. Dinner that night was great, we had some amazing soup, rice, and different kinds of meats. From there, at about 11, several of us decided to take a walk to see the beach that was about five minutes away. We made it to the shore of the Aegean and found a nice little dock to sit on for a while. We watched lightning strike several times off in the ocean before it started to pour on us so we ran back to the hotel and our warm beds.
The next day, Wednesday, we were out fo the hotel fairly early and on our way to the ancient city of Ephesus. We got there and met our tour guides and began the tour of the old city. The best description I can give of the city is that it is like a smaller, but better preserved version of Pompey. There were several main streets that we walked down, each of them complete with a sewer system underneath. We saw the place where the city was governed, the market, library, amphitheater, and long, shop lined road that led to the ancient port that was the center of the city. The whole tour was pretty interesting and like Corinth, it was weird to think about all the Bible related history that we were walking in the midst of. After touring the ancient city for several hours we headed back to the buses and went to the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the Ancient world. It was cool, the scenery around the single column remaining, but the “temple” itself wasn’t all that great anymore. We walked around there a bit before heading to the Basilica of St. John, the remains of a Christian Church that holds St. John the Evangelist’s Tomb. It was neat to see the tomb and walk around the ruins of the rest of the church, but it began to rain as we were walking around on our tour, so we were more than happy when it was time to go to lunch at a nearby hotel. Lunch was pretty good, once again we had rice and soup, and then we had lamb on skewers and chocolate pudding for dessert. After lunch, it was off to an archeological museum in Ephesus that held a lot of the statues and better preserved parts that had been excavated from the ruins of the old city. We saw their exhibits and then were back on the bus and went to see a Turkish Carpet company. We saw how the silk for the highest quality rugs was spun and collected, we saw the process of dying wool with all natural ingredients and then saw how the rugs were designed and actually made by hand. For the highest quality rugs with the most amounts of knots per square inch, a year or more of labor was required, and the cost was anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000+ euro for one of the carpets. We then saw an assortment of finished products, tried Turkish Apple tea, which was amazing, and were then on our way to a pottery company not far away. There we saw how the famous Turkish pottery products were made and decorated. We learned about what each of the decorations and symbols on the tiles mean, and saw the process of making them all. After that, it was back to the airport and our flight back to Istanbul, this time to stay for a few days. The flight to Istanbul was short but a lot of fun. We had some amazing food- a great sandwich and a dessert that was like a moon pie. We got to Istanbul about an hour later and after getting our bags, we were once again on a bus heading to our hotel. After a half hour ride through Istanbul’s traffic we were there, dropped our bags off in the rooms and were at dinner. Dinner there was pretty much what we had come to expect from Turkish food. It was rice, soup and a meat with vegetables and a creamy dessert. The best part of dinner was the fact that it was Valentine’s day. There was a guy playing Spanish guitar in the restaurant, so some people danced, and near the end of the evening, Drew, Myles, and I got up in front of the group and the restaurant and read our Valentine’s poem that we’d written earlier for the group and the occasion. The food was great and the hotel nice, but the best part was probably the view that the restaurant and our room had. Alex and I had a view of the Hagia Sophia, a former Christian Church converted to Mosque and now museum, and in the distance was the Blue Mosque, the main sight in Istanbul. We were five minutes walk from the center of the city and in a real nice place.
Next day we got up, had breakfast in the hotel which was amazing because they had oatmeal, something that I had not had in a long time. After eating we headed out to the Church of the Holy Savior of Chora to see the mosaics that decorated the walls of the Christian Church turned Mosque. They were some pretty cool and amazingly well preserved mosaics, but they were a bit repetitive in my opinion. After touring the place, we headed to the center of the city and the Hippodrome, the ancient racing circle for the Roman times. Today, it is a piazza with four monuments in it that show the history associated with the place. The first was the Fountain of Wilhelm II, marking the entrance to the race track, then an Egyptian obelisk, much like the one seen in the center of St. Peter’s square in Roma, then there was a spiral statue that seemed very much out of place, and the last monument was the Obelisk of Constantine. After looking around all that, we headed just to our left and went inside the Blue Mosque. The Mosque was a pretty strange, but neat place. We had to take our shoes off before entering, as the whole floor was covered in prayer carpets. We went inside and saw the huge candle chandeliers that lit the mosque in the old times, learned the history behind the prayers said five times a day, learned about the decorations of the mosque and looked around. The mosque was pretty big, not quite as big as the duomo in Florence I think, but near there. The decorations were blue tile for the most part, hence the name Blue Mosque, with other tiles all around the walls. After the Mosque, it was across a piazza to the museum of Hagia Sophia. This Christian church, turned Mosque is now a museum that tells some of the history of both religions in the city. It was about as big as the Blue Mosque, but not as well decorated. The interior was much more like a Catholic Cathedral than the Mosque, despite its outward appearance of being distinctly Muslim. The church was pretty neat inside, but nothing like the Blue Mosque, just another look at some Muslim decorations and the chance to learn more about their faith and practices. After that tour, we had an hour for lunch on our own, so we headed off on one of the main streets of that part of the city, got a Kebab for about a euro, and then headed to Starbucks. We got coffee and American desserts there before walking around a bit with the rest of our hour. When the whole group met back up, we went to the Topkapi palace, the place the Sultans lived for years. We toured their living quarters, including their pools, baths, etc. Saw the treasury, gardens, and grounds of the palace, which included some great views of the city before heading to the Grand Bazzar. The Bazzar was incredible. It was like a city of shops with roads and stores that stretched out as far as we could walk in the two hours we were there. We looked around, saw the high quality fakes that they sold, as Turkey apparently doesn’t have any laws forbidding it, looked at some of the typical Turkish products and bargained with some people before heading back to the bus to drop off our purchases and get ready for the Turkish baths. Going into the baths, we had no idea what to expect. When we got there we were given a locker room and towels to change into, so we all did and walked into the bath. The bath was an octagonal room that was probably about 95 degrees and steamy, like a big sauna. There were basins of hot water all over the place, several side rooms and in the middle there was a big marble table for lack of a better word that was heated, come to think of it all of the walls were heated. We sat down in on of the rooms and were called out to the marble table one by one to get a massage and be washed by the workers there. The massage was so nice, and the wash felt like the deepest one I’d ever had. Sweating that much, getting massaged and then being washed is supposed to be great for the skin and body, so after the massage we sat around for a while longer, enjoyed ourselves in the various warm rooms, and then got cold showers before changing back into our clothes and heading back to the hotel for dinner. Dinner that night wasn’t anything great in my opinion. But it didn’t really matter as we were all so relaxed and in such a good mood from the last few hours that it didn’t matter. It was a pretty early night and a good rest before the next, and last day of touring Turkey.
Next morning I had oatmeal once again was then we were off to see more of Istanbul. Our first stop for the day was to the Egyptian Spice Bazzar, like the Grand Bazzar, but smaller and focusing on food. We walked around the place, most people bought some spices or Turkish delight but for the most part, the Grand Bazzar was so much cooler that this one was just kinda so-so. After the bazzar, we headed off to one of the ports to catch a ferry ride on the Bosphorus, the straight the divides Istanbul into the European and Asian sides. We were on the ferry for about an hour and a half, part of the time outside and at the front of the boat enjoying the views and being outside on the water, but we all retreated inside once we got too cold. After the tour, it was onto a traditional Turkish seafood meal at a restaurant pretty far outside the city on the straight. The lunch was pretty good. I was one of the few people who were excited about eating the seafood, but I think that t turned out that most people liked the meal. For starters we had cous cous, some cucumber spread, anchovies, rice in mussel shells, beans, and a few other things. Then, our main course was some fish with won tons, potatoes and other sides that were all pretty good. Dessert was fruit. On the whole the meal was pretty good and some great seafood, something that we don’t get a ton of around Florence. After lunch, we got back on the buses and headed into the Asian part of the city and to another market, one that the locals go to. The best way I can describe this market is that it is the leather market in Florence, just with the Central Market outside alongside the rest of the shops. We wandered around there, ended up in another Starbucks for a while and were then on our way back into the main part of Istanbul. We then had some free time, some most people headed back to the Grand Bazzar for some more time to wander around the thousands of shops. After several more hours there we headed back to the hotel and then it was onto the Whirling Dervish Ceremony. It was in a room of the train station that was the end stop of the Oriental Express in the old days. The ceremony itself consisted of a band of about 8 members who played traditional Muslim music for a while, then the Whirlers came out. There were five of them, all dressed in white, and after going through some ceremonial procedures, they started their ceremony of whirling to the music. They spun for a good half hour or so and did various rituals during their spinning. It was a weird thing o be watching because I definitely felt like I didn’t belong there and it seemed almost as if I were intruding on someone else’s experience. Overall, I’m glad that I went but it was definitely not something that I would do many more times. After that it was another late dinner, this one, our last in Turkey was amazing. We had some sort of Mexican style crepe and egg rolls, all done in a Turkish fashion. After dinner about twenty of us went out to a bar near the hotel to dance, and we tried water pipes that Turkey is pretty famous for. We smoked flavored tobacco that was very mild and heavily flavored. It was a fun night out on our last night in Turkey.
Early the next morning we had breakfast and were then on our way to the airport to check in for our flight. We got on the plane at about 11 after going through customs and getting a snack, and several hours later we were in Roma. We got our bags and headed to the bus and the three and a half hour trip back to Florence. We slept most of the way back and got back at about 5, in time to shower before dinner. It was a great trip and definitely opened my eyes to a part of the world I’d never seen before and I got to visit a country I’d never really thought I’d make it to.