Oof trying to play catch up after missing a day. If you thought that first post was a romp through the days activities in the style of “I did this and then I did that” you’d better hang onto your hats.
First up yesterday was a guided tour of the cisterna basilica. It’s so named because the people who found it after the Romans left thought it was so beautiful and elaborate it must be a church, or perhaps a palace. In fact, it was built by the Romans as a water storage place. The reasons the Muslims who found it later didn’t recognize it as such was because in Islam, standing water is considered impure. The Romans made it because there’s a lack of natural water sources nearby, making the palace at risk from being besieged. There was enough water there to last for several years. It’s gorgeous because the Romans repurposed a whole lot of stuff left behind by the ancient Greeks.
The water used to be a lot deeper than you see here. You could float around on a boat, and it had fish to prove the water was safe. The Romans used a couple of Medusa statues but put them sideways and upside down to show they didn’t believe in any of that pagan stuff.
It was forgotten several times in it’s history, it’s only become famous again relatively recently because James Bond used it to get into the Russian embassy in the “To Russia With Love” movie in the sixties.
In the afternoon, Rita and I went to a traditional bath house, one that was gifted to the city centuries ago by a Sultan’s mother. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. You get scrubbed down, then massaged with soap foam, and then massaged again with scented oils. They even wash your hair. The male and female areas are separated which I liked because you were completely on display apart from a pair of skimpy paper briefs. I felt great afterwards.
I tried to make conversation with my therapist Zelis (pronounced Zayleesh) but she spoke hardly any English. She was good at her job though – very thorough, and a bit firmer than I was expecting. I heard my back crack a few times but I can still walk so that was OK.
After the bathhouse it was over to the Asian side for dinner with out friend Hakan. He picked us up from the hotel, and we then took a ferry across the Bosphorus because it was going to be faster than either the tunnel or the bridge. The traffic here is really something to behold.
I was really impressed with the Asian side. It seemed much more cosmopolitan, and like any modern European city. There were far fewer women dressed in strict Muslim outfits, for example, and the roads were much less chaotic. I could easily imagine living there.
We had dinner at some fancy private club that Hakan’s friends belong to. The food was much the same as we’ve had anywhere to be honest but the location was fabulous – we were right on the water.
