Synagogues, Mosques, Churches and Palaces

…and lots of walking!

Welcome back to Istanbul (not Constantinople) part 2! I’m back in the rocking chair on the balcony writing for the second evening running…

This morning began in the bustling breakfast room of the Hotel. There was pretty much anything and everything on display for perusal – not much fruit, but almost anything else you could imagine. I settled for a few slices of toast covered with honey I took from the honeycomb on the buffet (as you do)… a few pieces of traditional bread, and some Turkish Delight and nuts…. when in Turkey and all that!

There were no empty tables in the breakfast room so I ended up making friends with a very interesting Austrian lady who was here visiting “The bad parts of town”… she had family here, and she comes back regu larly… She also told me at the end of WW2, her father walked home to Austria from Poland once he escaped internment. She was not forthcoming with any more details so I did not push!

From Breakfast I wandered down to the Neve Shalom Synagogue and Jewish Museum. I learned all about how the Jews came to Istanbul following the Spanish expulsion – How they integrated, formed a unified community and how they have had a rich history here.

As someone who is incredibly Ashkenazi (Eastern European Jewish)… and by incredibly, I mean 99.7% according to my DNA test, many of the things about the Sephardi (Spanish) culture are interesting to me as they are similar, yet different.

While there are actually now both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Synagoges in Istanbul, a chance conversation showed me the similarities – I was in the foyer of the synagogue looking at the memorial to the two terrorist attacks that damaged the building and killed congregants and got talking to the people stood there.

One of the men, made Aliyah (Moved to Israel) when he was 14, but as a child this was his Synagogue. I don’t think he’d been back since he was a kid, (and was now in his late 50s) and was recalling stories to his family and friends (who also happened to be local Turkish jews)… he said that as a kid he used to go to Synagogue… sit with his dad, and then go upstairs to sit with his grandma to be shown off to all her friends and spoiled rotten with sweets…. We had the same story. <3

We also had an amazing conversation about the difference between being Jewish and practising and how special it was to be Jewish but it was mutually exclusive to being religious.

From Neve Shalom, I walked into a film set (literally) and ended up stumbling up the Camondo Stairs to get out the way – I didn’t get a photo in the panic!

From there I walked down to the Golden Horn, and walked accross the Galata Bridge again. This time, I wandered through the Egyptian Spice Market… I will be going back there tomorrow!

From the Spice market, I wandered over to the Topkapi Palace! (I had to look up how to write this, as in my head all day I’ve been saying Teppenyaki!!). Ordered to be built in 1459 by Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, and serving as the administrative center of the Ottoman Empire and the home to it’s sultans up until 1856, it’s a pretty impressive piece of work…

From the Palace, I walked through the gardens down to the Hagia Irene – a greek orthodox church, Technically the second largest in Istanbul, which is now a museum.

By Museum it’s pretty much just a shell… the photos of inside were pretty unenthralling as most of the center was covered by fencing for what looked like building work, and nets collecting bird poop!

From the Hagia Irene, I wandered out and over to the Blue Mosque… which was closed…

So I wandered back over the square to the Hagia Sophia…

I got there just in time for the afternoon prayers…. there was a rush, and where I could go was a little limited, but all the same, I popped my shoes off and went inside.

It was breathtakingly huge…. and impressive… and just an incredible feat of engineering and art… Now when I said Hagia Irene was techincally the second largest Church… that was because Hagia Sophia was originally a church, that was converted to a mosque in 1943.

From 1935 til 2020 Hagia Sophia was a museum however the current Turkish president changed the status back to mosque through a series of technicalities as a way to win over some of his more religious subjects…. This has resulted in some of the leftover church features being covered up…

While others are a little more difficult to hide…

I left Hagia Sophia, and headed back to the hotel. It was warm, I was warm, I wanted to chill out for a little bit before I headed out to dinner so thought I’d try the rooftop/balcony Jacuzzi.

This was not my finest hour. It transpires I was too long for the bath, so couldn’t find a comfy position whereby I was actually submerged in the water, and it also transpires the secluded rooftop balcony, was not as secluded as one might think when your neighbours appear on the actual roof of their building…

From a risqué bath, I headed out to dinner, via Taksim Square and yet another beautifully lit mosque

For dinner, I shlapped out to the only Kosher restaurant in Istanbul (that I could find)… I guess this is becoming a feature of this blog – “Eating in a questionable far flung Kosher Restaurant so you don’t have to”…

As it happens, good choices were made!

The guy in charge didn’t speak much English, I don’t speak any Turkish, so we settled on a combination of English and Hebrew… A good warmup for my next stop!

From Caffe Eden, I wandered down to get a view of the 15th of July Martyrs Bridge (Named after those who died in an attempted coup on the bridge)… and wow am I glad I did…

From the bridge, I took a wander back to the main road and just before hopping in a taxi, I accidentally stumbled upon another Synagogue to round the day off nicely!

I’m off to weigh my suitcase now to work out how much stuff I can buy at the Bazzar and spice market tomorrow… Early start – I’m off on a Cruise up the Bosphorus!