Sunday, November 21, 2010

Istanbul Chronicles: Topkapi Palace, meditation, service, blondes in Turkey

Day 3

I just love sitting down on the small fountain square between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, it gives me this feeling of uh… completeness. I even succeed at making my talkative friend shut up for a while and try to contemplate the beauty of things around us. :D

Today we also went to the Topkapi Palace to get an idea how sultans lived back in the day and turns out, those people were not much different from all the Russian tsars who enjoyed bling from gold, sapphires, rubies and the like. I’m not a big fan of looking at all this fancy stuff, so we mostly walked around and marveled at the architecture from the outside. Then we sat down at the most expensive café in Istanbul (according to our bill anyway) and enjoyed some staring into the Bosphorus, its boats and ships.

The cool thing about Istanbul is, it’s flooded with French, German, Italian, Bulgarian people, but not Russians. We met maybe 3 or 4 couples altogether during our entire stay. Also, most locals working in the tourism industry and around it speak very decent English, all waiters we met also possess sufficient knowledge of French, Italian and some for-fun Russian.

There was some pestering involved on our first day here (Turks do seem to like blondes), constant attempts at compliments and flattery, invitations to come in and buy some stuff, go out to dinner, etc., but all of it pretty harmless, or maybe it’s only so if you’re friendly and have a sense of humor about. By the end of our trip, it all felt natural and turned out to be part of the appeal of the city. Local vendors seem to be good-natured and like a good laugh, saying something harmless and yet hilarious as you pass by that makes you crack up.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi ,Topkapi palace is beautifully designed . Its interior will definitely make you numb . Thanks for sharing . Turkey Tours Packages

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