Yes, it has finally arrived, much like the latest blog post. Unfortunately the snow was a couple of hours too late to get me the day off work yesterday but it sure is a pretty way to ruin a weekend. As a Melbourne-ite I am completed bewildered by snow that doesn’t leave when I drive home and have no idea what to do with myself. Do people actually go out in this? I was also perhaps rather late on the wow-check-out-snowflakes bandwagon. They are really intricate! (Where do think they got the picture from? Jackson notes wrily). They are impressive! For anyone else who didn’t notice yet. (Though for all that, kind of... kitsch, don’t you think?) It is a lovely experience.
I have had some visitors of one form or another here for the last two weeks. It has been great to put aside some time to see quite a few of the ‘sites’ of İstanbul after four months here. I even bought a scarf and a lamp at the Grand Bazaar, a ‘traditional’ market filled with English speaking salesmen (‘you will see this lamp in your dreams tonight’ he calls to a sales-wearied Tara) and overpriced goods. Mostly lamps and scarves, actually. Oo and it is the only place where Turkish people have been really really impressed with my Turkish. Also nice.
On to Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque—you all have Wikipedia so I will stick with a fairly cursory personal assessment—both better from the outside than in. Although Hagia Sophia has impressive frescoes, if it’s reverence you’re after you’d better go back to Italy. Tour guides give speeches whilst straddling the monuments and there is rather a lot to buy considering it has been a church for thousands of years. But no more; Hagia Sophia, like most Christian churches in İstanbul, is a museum. The Blue Mosque has an inordinate amount of scaffolding and reams of red carpet, a la Morwell Gospel Chapel 1989 for those of you for whom that rings a bell. Considering this one is functioning as a place of worship, I had to agree with Jackson that it was no doubt better for the knees that way. As a footnote, I also feel obligated to pass on that thick black woolen tights do not constitute coverage for my ever-seductive legs, and so I had to wrap a velcro-ing blue sheet around me as well as donning a head-scarf. Elegant.
Better were the Chora Church and the Cisterns... quiet, beautiful and a freaky idea (cisterns, obviously). But those I will leave to the pictures, because it is time to have breakfast.... and I have to make it myself! Yes, scandal/shock/horror, all my guests have left and I will have to go back to cooking and generally acting like I live here. Christmas is over and Amy Winehouse is back on, a bit of melancholy backdrop for good measure. It was a good one!
I have had some visitors of one form or another here for the last two weeks. It has been great to put aside some time to see quite a few of the ‘sites’ of İstanbul after four months here. I even bought a scarf and a lamp at the Grand Bazaar, a ‘traditional’ market filled with English speaking salesmen (‘you will see this lamp in your dreams tonight’ he calls to a sales-wearied Tara) and overpriced goods. Mostly lamps and scarves, actually. Oo and it is the only place where Turkish people have been really really impressed with my Turkish. Also nice.
On to Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque—you all have Wikipedia so I will stick with a fairly cursory personal assessment—both better from the outside than in. Although Hagia Sophia has impressive frescoes, if it’s reverence you’re after you’d better go back to Italy. Tour guides give speeches whilst straddling the monuments and there is rather a lot to buy considering it has been a church for thousands of years. But no more; Hagia Sophia, like most Christian churches in İstanbul, is a museum. The Blue Mosque has an inordinate amount of scaffolding and reams of red carpet, a la Morwell Gospel Chapel 1989 for those of you for whom that rings a bell. Considering this one is functioning as a place of worship, I had to agree with Jackson that it was no doubt better for the knees that way. As a footnote, I also feel obligated to pass on that thick black woolen tights do not constitute coverage for my ever-seductive legs, and so I had to wrap a velcro-ing blue sheet around me as well as donning a head-scarf. Elegant.
Better were the Chora Church and the Cisterns... quiet, beautiful and a freaky idea (cisterns, obviously). But those I will leave to the pictures, because it is time to have breakfast.... and I have to make it myself! Yes, scandal/shock/horror, all my guests have left and I will have to go back to cooking and generally acting like I live here. Christmas is over and Amy Winehouse is back on, a bit of melancholy backdrop for good measure. It was a good one!
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