5.28.06 Istanbul, Turkey

Early in the morning, Serdal, Linda, Michael, Anne, and I were driven from Urfa to Gaziantep. We passed many, many groves of pistachio trees and some fields of (ugh) chickpeas (I’m allergic to them), came within less than 10 miles of the Syrian border, and crossed the Euphrates River. It was another minor benefit of having gotten ill that we were able to see the Euphrates. The rest of the group took this route at night.

We got to Gaziantep in good time and casually went through security at the airport, thinking the flight for Istanbul was departing at 10, still an hour off. We went into the deserted gate area and sat down. I was about to take my laptop out. Then one of the people working at the gate came over to ask if we could hurry, because all the other passengers were aboard and they were waiting for us to take off. Obviously we had the wrong time for the flight.

Suphan, Serdal’s wife, met us at the Ataturk Airport and we went lunch at Ziya Sark Sofrasi, a restaurant with authentic Eastern Turkish kebops (kebobs), where we again had the icli kofte meatball in crust that we had had with the first night’s dinner, followed by a mixed tray of kepobs: lamb, beef, chicken, peppers, etc. We all took to Suphan immediately. She is delightful.

As we were getting our taxis, I saw assign on the front of a bus advertising The Da Vinci Code movie in Turkish.

Suphan had picked out a few places for us to visit that the group would not be going to on Monday and Tuesday. The first was Kariye Müzesi, in the fifth century Church of the Holy Savior in Chara. The mosaics and frescoes in this building are among the best examples of Byzantine art. They had been plastered over in the Ottoman years. Now most are exposed, but some remain partly under plaster, so as to preserve the history of what happened to them. Among the more striking works are a depiction of Jesus pulling Adam and Eve up from the dead and one of Jesus holding a baby. Dan Brown must not have known about this piece of art. If he did, he presumably would have used it as evidence to support his “argument.” This church/museum is a treasure that is often overlooked by visitors, and we are grateful to Suphan for taking us there.

Then we went to the Süleyman Mosque, built Sinan for Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent in the sixteenth century. It is the largest of the imperial mosques and is stunningly beautiful. Michael had a street-corner shoe repair man fix his shoe. We walked down a narrow street with peddlers hawking their wares on both sides. I saw several selling used shoes and joked to Serdal that they probably stole them from outside mosques. He replied that it’s no joke; most of the shoes and clothing on sale there are stolen.

We finished the day at a Catholic church in the area on the other side of the Golden Horn, Galata, which had been controlled by Genoa for along period of time and remains the banking, commercial, and diplomatic center of Istanbul. Mass was in Turkish and we left early. I saw a sign outside the church denouncing The Da Vinci Code.

Back to the hotel for pizza with Linda and Michael. The sum of the day didn’t quite add up to Ephesus, which we were missing today, but it was a very good day nonetheless.

- RSM