This palace was where the head of the Ottoman empire was located. It was really impressive. On of the main highlights was the crown-jewels. There was an 86 carrot diamond!!! It was the size of my palm. And also a crest with a ruby and two emeralds, each about 5cm in diameter. Soooo much wealth in there, if anyone knows any good thieves, that’s where they should be hunting.
The other highlight was the harem. This place has very nice designs on all the walls and some magnificent bedrooms. It also had a lot of boards with text explaining the whole thing. The sultan had a band of eunuchs (guys with their nuts chopped off) protecting his harem (bunch of chicks who “serviced” the sultan). From the harem, the sultan had 4-8 “favourites” whom he shared his bed, and 1 Queen Mother (main wife). The Queen Mother had the power to choose who the sultan could and couldn’t have, and also had lots of political power, sounds like a fair system.
Anyway, after 4 hours wandering around the palace, we were toured out. So we went somewhere for a traditional Turkish lunch… kebabs :-P
Ok, this was actually traditional. They give you the meat and all the veggies, and a plate of flat Turkish bread, then you make your own. It was really yummy, and quite cheap.
After lunch we all went our separate ways to do stuff. I went to the Grand Bazaar again to get a couple more things. After the Grand Bazaar, I was very sick of people harassing me to buy stuff… and people using their favourite phrase “My friend… where do you come from?”
Another thing that was very strange about Turkey was the traffic. It was so chaotic and pedestrians had no right to cross when they had a green walk symbol. You risked your life everytime you were near a road! Oh and they so desperately want to be part of the EU, they even have the EU number plate design, with the EU stars missing :-P
So I got back to the hostel: touristed out, shopped out and sick of crowds. I decided I wanted a simple evening, so found one of the three bars in Istanbul that was playing the NZ rugby game. It was good fun to watch (especially coz NZ kicked Scotland’s ass), and met a random Kiwi living in Denmark (Sam), and a German girl living in Munich (Bea). Ended up talking with them for a couple of hours after the game.
I got back to the hostel around 10pm and caught up with Sheena an Ollie again. We ended up heading down stairs to have a few drinks with the people in the hostel, including the bar-tender. It was so funny, we would ask for a drink and he would make jokes like “can’t you see me working hard here?” (while he was sitting at our table drinking beer with us).
It was a fun way to end the night, as at mid-night I got picked up by the shuttle. I slept all the way to the airport (1 hour). Then got through customs et al, and started chatting with a couple of random girls who I met in line waiting for customs. One was Polish and the other Latvian… both living/studying in Zurich. It was a good way to kill some time, then got on the plane and had a couple more hours sleep.
Train ride back to Stuttgart was interesting, the train broke down in the middle of the track for about an hour. I didn’t mind, I just dozed while they fixed it.
So got to work at 10am… nice and “fresh” with a few hours sleep.
Good weekend though. It was so different to everywhere I’ve been so far. Well, kind of a mix of China meets Europe, with a friendliness that is hard to describe.
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