Lisbon D2: In Which I Join the Tattooed World

Day 2 in Portugal might have been centered around me getting my first tattoo. For a while I’d been toying with the idea of getting a quarter rest tattooed in a visible place so I could remind myself to relax and rest when my life gets too hectic. I’m an overscheduler, and constantly busy. I’d discussed it with friends from back home and then in Greece with Ellie, who has nine tattoos of her own (all small, discreet and really cool. She has the numbers “394” tattooed on her left wrist in Harry Potter font because of the third movie when Snape goes: “Turn to page three-hundred-and-ninety-four.” And yep…you just read that in Alan Rickman’s voice). I’d always wanted it to be filled in with some kind of design and by Morocco decided I wanted it to be filled in with henna. When I asked the henna artist who did our henna in the medina, she drew a simple flower in one corner, and I designed the rest myself.

 

I sketched out several different versions, settling on one and hoping the tattoo artist would get my concept. I also included designs the henna artist had drawn on Courtney, Ellie, and Sarah’s arms. I wanted them to be a part of the tattoo because they were so vital to my positive Semester at Sea experience and were just wonderful people in general. I could point to the parts of the design that came from each of them. I also included a butterfly for my grandmother: an important person in my life and – while not the biggest proponent of tattoos – a big reason why I’m able to go on this trip (she’s probably reading this now and tearing up – hi Nana! See you soon!)

 

Courtney, Sarah, and I had come across a tattoo parlor while walking around Lisbon the day before. We took a taxi there only to find it closed. When Ellie peered around the metal slats, she thought she saw that they opened at 1:00. Not wanting to wait (and my anxiety slowly building), we got pastries at a local bakery (more pastel de nata! Ellie insisted I eat something before the tattoo – “less likely you’ll throw up that way!” …big vote of confidence) and took another taxi (also: taxis are DIRT CHEAP in Lisbon. I never paid more than 5 Euro for a ride) to “Lisboa Ink.”

 

When doing our research for tattoo parlors in Portugal, “Lisboa Ink” came up with three national awards for their work. Very encouraging. Christian and Larry greeted us. Both spoke English well, although Christian was much quieter. He took my little sketch and hunkered down behind the desk to draw it out more succinctly and to scale on paper that would become the stencil for the tattoo. Larry chatted us up, asking where we were from and talking with Ellie about her soon-to-be new tattoo (the words “Go; be free” on her foot).

 

Christian’s first example of my tattoo was beautiful…and also way bigger than I thought or wanted it to be. A good seven inches, it was way too big for me to be comfortable permanently putting it on my body. I asked for it smaller and although he complained about most of the good detail work having to be nixed, he redrew it. This time it was about 4 and a half inches and just as good. It was a little different from my sketch, but in a good way. As a tattoo artist, his drawing abilities were understandably way better than mine.

 

Ellie went first, as hers was going to be faster (and more painful) than mine. She banned me from the room, and although she had her eyes closed and teeth gritted the whole time, trying to put on a brave face for me, I knew she was having a rough time. She’d told me before that the foot was the worst place to get a tattoo because of all the nerve endings. She has another quote on the same foot and said it was the most painful one she’d gotten. When I got close to give her a smile of encouragement she shouted at me to go away (lovingly). She loved it when it was done though, and Christian wrapped it up in Saran wrap.

 

I was nervous the whole time waiting for my turn in the chair. And although I’m not sure Christian appreciated that Courtney, Ellie, AND Sarah were in the room with me, I sure appreciated it. They kept me talking literally the entire time (30 minutes – surprisingly quick) and took turns holding my hand. Sarah took pictures of the whole process.

 

And you know, it didn’t really hurt all that much. I’d heard mixed messages: near the ankle is pretty painful, it doesn’t hurt at all, etc. Sure, it hurt – especially during the longer lines that traveled up a nerve – but I’d had braces for seven years. There were days after I got those tightened that hurt worse, and for longer than my tattoo.

 

After he’d tattooed what was on the stencil, he apparently went in to do some freehand work. That was a little nerve-wracking to hear, but I guess getting a tattoo is really about trust, too.

 

Besides, when Christian was done, Sarah, Ellie, and Courtney were in awe of it. When I got my first peek I loved it too. I don’t know what kind of detail was supposedly lost when I wanted it smaller, because there is so much detail in there. I probably won’t get picture up until after I get back to the States, but you just have to know that I love it, and it has so much meaning for me now that I know I will love it years, even decades from now.

 

We got lunch together (Courtney and Ellie braved a plate of fresh prawns – eyes and whiskers and everything) and tried to track down a chocolate shop before we got tired and headed back to the ship. Later that night we went out for dinner and Wi-Fi and I was surprised at how few days I have left before being back home.

 

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t ready to go home. I really am. I miss food from home, people from home, my huge, comfy bed from home. But I love the people here too, and all the places I’ve been. I won’t be forgetting any of these experiences anytime soon.

Ellie’s tattoo! Grammatically correct, of course

Apparently I sat like this the whole time. Ellie and Courtney took turns holding my hands 🙂 Sarah C. took all these pictures

The stencil and part of my tattoo being inked

My finished tattoo and the sketches I started out with! The artist did so much better than I could ever do

My new tattoo

Yep, THAT’S A DOG WITH A BUCKET FOR CHANGE IN ITS MOUTH!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lisbon D1: In Which Lisbon and I Get Acquainted

Lisbon was originally the second to last stop, with Morocco being our last port. I’m glad it was switched. Lisbon felt more like Barcelona or Rome, even akin to San Francisco. It used the Euro as currency again, and felt like an easier transition from Europe back to America than Morocco would have.

 

Sarah, Courtney, and I had a Field Program to tour the city later in the afternoon, but before that we wanted to see what the city was about. We headed out with one goal: get the books Sarah and I have been collecting in every country (we hadn’t seen one bookstore in Morocco, so sadly our collections are lacking). So we started walking.

 

And walking.

 

And walking.

 

One of the reasons Lisbon is like San Francisco? There are an awful lot of hills. We climbed several of them, stopping in any bookstore we saw. There were lots of stores smelling of old pages with cracked leather bindings cluttering the walls, but even those were lacking Sarah’s Emily Bronte. I had doubts they kept Harry Potter with the Complete Works of Charles Dickens anyway.

 

Still trying to locate a metro stop that would take us deeper into the city, we ducked into a little bakery because we’d been told that Portugal loves their pastries.

 

We also had explicit instructions to try the “pastel de nata.” So we did. And it was fantastic. It’s puff pastry (God that’s good stuff – must use it more at home) filled with a creamy custard filling and toasted along the top. It’s basically just delicious. Courtney fell in love with it and mentioned it every day we were in Portugal. She’ll be so sad when she goes back to Virginia and they don’t have them…

 

Anyway, the Olympics were on the TV in the cafe and we stayed a while, watching rowing and shot put events (do you see the expressions on those people as they throw the weight? Really fun to watch). We finally got directions to a busier part of town and found ourselves in a large square full of some shops we recognized (H&M, Haagen Das, etc.). Following an address we’d scribbled, and the directions from a South African businessman in a rush, we made our way to the bottom floor of a mall and to a large store carrying books and music. They had both books and we left happy, hurrying back to the ship on tired feet so we could make our tour on time.

 

FUN FACT: Portugal is bananas about tiles. It’s a very big, popular art form here. It decorated the streets (very few sidewalks are concrete: they’re all tiles arranged in pretty designs), buildings, even walls you would ordinarily walk past without a second thought. On our tour we drove through the city, taking pictures of monuments and parks and stopping at a museum that held old royal furniture and tile work. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the museum (which broke Courtney’s little heart), but we did get to paint our own tiles after the tour. Most of us used stencils: I’d like to claim that pretty flower outline was all freehand but it wasn’t. All the painting is mine though!

 

After all that we got to tour several artisan’s studios. We paused in a furniture making shop, a bookbinder’s office, and a preservation studio. We saw how they did gold leafing, binding, and gluing all the tiny pieces of inlaid wood to make the pieces look so fantastic.

 

It was a long day and we even tried to go out that night to experience the nightlife. Alas: most places are closed on Mondays and we went back to the ship and collapsed on our beds.

This, my friends, is a pastel de nada. Puff pastry, creamy inside….heaven.

The cable cars that race around Lisbon

Some of the tilework that decorates Lisbon

Just a really cool building

Gorgeous garden and monument in Lisbon

The tile I painted! All black lines will disappear once it’s fired

The stamps in a bookbinding workshop – so cool!

Casablanca D4: In Which Casablanca Makes Up for It

Morocco and I weren’t the best of friends up to this point. Fes had been a rollercoaster of emotions and events (with highs like our wonderful hotel  experience and lows like being hassled and almost abducted in the medina), and Marrakech could have maybe made up for it had I had a full day or two there.

 

Casablanca seemed a great balance. Wanting to try just one more medina, Courtney, Ellie, Sarah, and I headed out again. This time we were on foot, not wanting to chance another taxi and having heard that the medina was really close anyway.

 

The streets of the medina were quiet but open. The shopkeepers were much more laid back (probably because it wasn’t midday and therefore no one was grumpy yet) and when you said you weren’t interested, they let you leave. Strangely refreshing.

 

We had plans to meet up with my roommate and some of her friends at Rick’s Cafe (the cafe from the movie Casablanca – got to get around to watching that one of these days) at noon, but first we found a henna artist near one of the medina’s exits.

 

We’d heard some horror stories: someone had an extreme allergic reaction to the black henna ink and broke out in a painful rash all over her arm. Other people merely got swindled, paying sometimes around 600 dirham for one of their arms to get henna-d.

 

We were quoted a cheap price: 20 dirham (about $2.33) for each “side.” So if you wanted the back of your hand and your palm to be done, it would be 40 dirham. Sarah, Courtney, and Ellie all got henna on one arm and I got a stripe of it down my leg. The woman was quick and did it completely freehand. I wish I had the Wi-Fi to post the video I took of her doing Sarah’s henna. It’s impressive. It burned strangely for a few minutes (making us worry that maybe we too could be allergic to it), but the sensation soon ebbed and the designs remained on our skin.

 

We got a little turned around while we were trying to locate Rick’s Cafe. But when we did find it we were impressed. It was beautiful, decorated in a simple yet elegant way, and the food was amazing. It was all very American-ized food: hamburgers with french fries and chicken breast with beans, etc. I had some spaghetti and received a bowl about the size of my face. There was no way I could finish it, but even though I was stuffed by the time we got the dessert menu I OF COURSE had room for dessert. I’d heard dessert made the whole thing worth it…as long as you got the chocolate lava cake (not on the menu FYI).

 

The cake I got was small, maybe teacup-sized. It came with a side of coffee ice cream but the cake itself was enough to satisfy my sweet tooth.  It came out hot and the melted chocolate inside was really rich (and REALLY delicious). It makes me miss baking!

 

We all returned to the medina to get some last souvenirs. It is illegal to bring dirham out of Morocco so oh darn, we had to spend all our money! It was easy to do and we came back to the ship laden with shopping bags.

 

While Morocco certainly wasn’t my favorite port, it was certainly the most interesting and eye-opening. Here is a place so vastly different from Hillsboro or Eugene. A lot of people on the ship said their favorite port was Morocco. I suspect it’s because they traveled either with Semester at Sea-sponsored (and supervised) trips, or with men. When you are a group of girls, you’re treated differently. Scratch that: you’re treated worse. As long as there is just one guy in your group, and shopkeepers or locals can see him and associate him with you, you’re fine. It might seem shocking or even horrible by American standards, but it’s normal for Moroccans. It’s normal to go the entire, blistering day without water or food, and be expected to run a business and make money and deal with ignorant tourists. It’s normal for women to be subservient. It’s normal to de-brain cows in a side alley. It’s normal to pile pounds and pounds of goods and supplies on a donkey and make him carry them over the hilly streets for you. Before I dismiss Morocco as a horribly, scary place I have to see it as something else: as something different that what I’m used to.

Ellie and Courtney’s henna

Sarah getting henna-d

Rick’s Cafe (from the movie Casablanca!)

More of Rick’s

The Medina in Casablanca

My henna! After the first layer faded

Casablanca/Marrakech D3: In Which Five Hours is Not Enough Time to See Marrakech

The next day I had a Field Program to Marrakech…another 3 hours from Casablanca.

 

The air-conditioned bus was a relief though, and I slept or read the whole way, occasionally waking up to see plains of desert sand out my side window.

 

Our first stop was the Majorelle Gardens, a lush area with cactus and bamboo and photo opportunities galore. I wish I could have walked through the Berber Museum there as well, but our 30 minute deadline was pretty firm.

 

We traveled further into the city, where we then toured two palaces. One was a series of empty rooms, devoid of royal furniture and tiled within an inch of their lives. The other had been converted into a museum. We walked through both without much fanfare.

 

Walking through Marrakech’s medina was the highlight. This is what I had been expecting of Fes. Long aisles that exploded in color. Spice shops next to pashmina scarf shops, touristy keychains sold next to a stall selling Moroccan dresses. Everything was busy and loud, yet I felt a whole lot safer than I did in Fes.

 

But we walked straight through it and into a medicinal herb shop instead, where we were closed in a room and heard a sales pitch on how argon oil is good for hair and skin and black tea can clear out your sinuses. I was itching to get back out into the city and the medina, but lunch came first.

 

Lunch came on big platters. Chicken flavored with lemon, tinged yellow with spice and lemon juice, helpings of bread and various vegetable dips, and couscous for the vegetarians. Dessert was amazing. It looked like a bird’s nest. There were layers and layers of flaky puff pastry that fell apart and tried desperately to fall off the plate when touched with a fork. It was topped and stuck together with a cold cream and drizzled with honey. Whatever it was…it was great.

 

However, lunch took an hour and a half. Leaving about twenty minutes of “free time” to stick just my pinky toe into the ocean that was the medina. I didn’t even get into the busiest, most exciting portion before I had to head back to the bus.

 

On the way back, me and a couple other people on my tour had to pass through a huge open square where actual snake charmers and monkey trainers set up shop. “Shop” is a loose term. Little umbrellas shielded their faces from the sun. You had to pay a dirham to take a picture of the charmer and his snake and after that you had to walk very quickly and keep up with the group. Otherwise the charmers would place the snakes on your head or the monkey trainers would put a monkey on either shoulder (and then expect you to pay 200-300 dirham for the pictures you took).

 

We had to get on the bus again after that. I’ve been liking my SAS so far, but some of the programs that require 3+ hours to get there have so far been a little lackluster. There is too much to do in these cities (Montenegro, Marrakech) to just squeeze into a handful of hours!!

 

Also: on the bus ride back it rained. Made me think of Oregon!

Part of the Majorelle Gardens

Majorelle Gardens again

Majorelle Gardens again!

A palace we walked through

A different palace!

The Medina in Marrakech

Our dessert – I still don’t know what it was, but it was delicious

Casablanca/Fes D2: In Which Fes Becomes Terrifying

Moroccan cities boast of their “medinas,” open-air markets where haggling is (AGAIN) basically required. Fes’ medina was supposed to be better than Casablanca’s, and we were excited to experience it.

 

And experience it we did.

 

Before wishing us goodnight, the daughter (I feel bad – I never wrote down her name so now I can’t remember it!) suggested we hire a guide for the medina, and that it opened at 11 so we shouldn’t plan to leave before then. We brushed off the idea of a guide – the best way to explore the medina was to explore it! After a wonderful breakfast of pancakes (made with a different kind of batter than the stuff you find at IHOP) and bread filled with figs with orange marmalade to spread over it all, we left around 10:45. We had to turn around a couple times until we were sure we were in the medina itself. Some shops were just opening up, cranking shades down, setting out racks of leather purses, etc. As we walked past, several shopkeepers called out greetings in Arabic, French, and English. I, unfortunately, answered one of them. He said a nice “Welcome to Morocco” as we continued walking, and I thought that was it.

 

Nope. He hollered out an “excuse me!” and proceeded to tell us about a terrace where we could see all of Fes below. His father, he said, would take us there. Having had such good luck the first time we followed a stranger, we did so again (I know: we sound like idiots. But really, it didn’t seem that plausible that we could be attacked…yet).

 

This walk was longer. And the alleys got progressively narrower, dirtier, and darker. At one point the man said something to two other men on the side of the road and they fell into line behind us, following us for a while before disappearing again. The man stopped, said something to a shopkeeper sitting in a chair, then told us “deux minutes” (“2 minutes”) – he had to go get permission for something.

 

We all looked at each other, assessing what our instincts were saying. All of those instincts pointed to getting the hell out of there.

 

So we did. We speed-walked away, the shopkeeper yelling after us: “Wait! He be right back!”

 

We walked as fast as we could without actually running, all the way to the leather district, panting and wanting water (but not being able to drink any!). Thinking ourselves lucky and safe now, we took our time wandering past the leather purses and mini camels made of scraps. At a fork in the road, Courtney suggested we go left.

 

We shouldn’t have gone left. If you go left at that fork, you are taken to the meat district (anybody else thinking Hunger Games right now?). In the meat district, there are all sorts of horrors: stalls with shelves of live chickens pecking grain, a man plucking one of their brothers in full view, huge cow skulls being cracked open to get to the brains, skinny stray cats chewing on entrails on the ground, and a smell that made me regret the wonderful breakfast we had that morning. We basically ran through that place as well.

 

It spit us out back at the beginning of the leather district. We walked through again, gave the left fork a wide berth, and found the actual medina: dusty and crowded, selling everything from plastic swords to Moroccan-embroidered prayer shawls.

 

At this point, a young boy pointed us in the direction of the tanneries (a place on our checklist of things to see), then decided he’d lead us there himself.

 

Again with the leading. So we followed Mohammed (his name) to a high-ceilinged leather shop, with gorgeous leather jackets and purses. One of the owners or employees offered to show us up to the terrace above the shop (AGAIN WITH THE TERRACES!). We were understandably suspicious, but he gave us all mint leaves to get the smell of tanneries out of our noses once we were up there, encouraged us to drink water, and was overall much nicer than anyone who had led us before.

 

So we climbed yet again more stairs and looked out over the tanneries: big honeycombed vats of dye and solution to strip the skin of hair and soften it for working. We took pictures and listened to the man’s explanation of the process and story of the tanneries.

 

Afterward he pressured us to buy leather jackets and footstools and bags (oh my), but none of us relented.

 

AND THEN. When we stepped out of the shop to meet Mohammed (he’d agreed to show us the city gates, then a place where we could find a taxi), who was there but the shopkeeper whose father we’d ditched because we feared getting mugged.

 

His first words to us were: “Remember me?”

 

Worst opening line ever. The man began to get aggressive, trying to edge Mohammed out of the way, yelling at him, trying to lead us somewhere down different alleys, etc. By then we were all joined by the hand in a line, frantically begging Mohammed to take us to a taxi. When the shopkeeper finally left, Mohammed turned to us and said: “Don’t talk to that man. He is a bad man.”

 

When Mohammed says it, it must be true. He did take us to a taxi, then pressured us to pay his “friend,” who had tagged along the whole time, more money. Our taxi drivers (we had to take two petit taxis again) shooed him away and took us careening through the streets again to the train station.

 

We were hassled up to the door of the train station by a man following us and telling us to give him our camera so we could get a “souvenir picture,” and commenting on our various skin tones.

 

Train tickets in hand for an hour from then, snacks and huge water bottles in hand from a snack store, we breathed a sigh of relief and waited, humoring ourselves with crepes ordered from a restaurant in the station, laughing and congratulating ourselves on still being alive.

 

The train ride back was easier. Seeing Fes slip away in the background was almost a relief. While it was an incredibly….atmospheric city, and our experience there incredibly memorable, it’s not one I wish to repeat.

The alleys of Fes

Entering the Medina

The sad donkey that made friends with us

Medina again

Part of the tanneries – where they strip the hide of hair, dye it, then make it into bags and coats and things

Casablanca/Fes D1: In Which I Spend the Night in Fes

By Morocco, a lot of SASers had spent the night in country. On a whim the night before, my friends and I decided that Morocco, specifically Fes, was the place to try it out. So we got ready the night before, rolling and packing (with Tetris-like precision) clothes and the necessary toiletries to spend the night wherever. We had a list of names, prices, and addresses of several cheap hotels and hostels so we could hopefully just point to one and a taxi driver could get us there.

 

The morning was a long one. Moroccan officials threw SAS a curveball when they announced early in the morning that they needed to stamp and check passports face to face with each and every student onboard. So on the one hand I got to sleep in, but I also didn’t step into Morocco until about 1 PM. And it was a four hour train ride to Fes…

 

Here’s the thing about us being in Morocco at the beginning of August: it’s in the heat of Ramadan. Morocco being 97% Muslim, no one is eating or drinking during the day. By 1 PM and onward, people get really grumpy really fast. Our first attempts at finding a taxi to take us to the train station sparked several verbal shouting matches between competing cabs. During our pre-port meeting, we had been cautioned against “grande” taxis: the big white ones. “Petit” taxis were much safer: the small red cars. Problem is: there were four of us and petit taxis only took 3 people maximum. Would have been nice to know that.

 

We ended up splitting our group into two petit taxis and holding on for dear life as the taxi drivers came this close to hitting passerby (my driver actually clipped an old man in the arm. Curse words followed us down the rest of the block). If petit taxis were “safer,” I shudder to think how bad grande taxi drivers were.

 

We bought tickets, boarded our train, scrambled for seats (a very helpful Moroccan man ensured that we all got a seat within about fifteen minutes of the train departing the station), and settled in, napping or reading as the hours drifted past.

 

Arriving in Fes, we decided our first priority was getting a place to stay before it got dark. This time a petit taxi agreed to take all four of us, and drove us to the first address on our list. A man outside (I’m assuming not affiliated with the cab driver or company) took a look at the name of the hotel we’d written down and dismissed it, calling it “too dirty.” He told us he’d lead us to a cheaper place with the promise of hot showers and air conditioning.

 

He started leading us through alley after alley. It was starting to get weird, and I found out later the other girls were feeling the same thing (Ellie said, “he looked small. The four of us could have taken him.”)

 

He stopped at a plain wood door, knocked, pressed a button, then knocked again. He led us up a narrow, winding staircase, at which point I again feared being assaulted once we got to the top.

 

We needn’t have worried. At the top, a Moroccan woman and her English-speaking daughter greeted us in a big sitting room, couches lining the walls, sweet-smelling incense burning, and big, carved wooden doors on either side. The daughter showed us both rooms. Both were narrow, with a double bed and two other places for people to sleep alone. We picked the room with the single bed (as opposed to the other room, which had two stiff couches to sleep on). We guzzled water (another side effect of Ramadan: it’s considered incredibly rude to drink water in public) and were offered dinner to be cooked by the Moroccan woman – Fatima. We ordered two dishes that the daughter recommended and about an hour later were treated to mint tea and biscuits, a kind of bean soup (really good), and sesame bread.

 

The main dishes came out: a chicken flavored with lemon and onions and pastilla. Pastilla sounds as weird as it tastes: it’s a kind of chicken meatloaf covered in a layer of powdered sugar, then cinnamon. And it’s strangely delicious. Ellie said it was the strangest thing she’s ever eaten and I’m inclined to agree.

 

Spending the night, having two main dishes for dinner, and agreeing to breakfast the next morning put us out 250 dirham each. That’s about $30….talk about cheap/affordable.

 

As it was dark and we didn’t want to chance any strange encounters at night in the city, we stayed in, reading and turning up the air conditioning.

Our first steps in Fes, Morocco!

Kittens…playing in the gutter…all sad and stuff

Finally unwinding after a day of travel

Our sitting room

The sitting room of our hotel – gorgeous upper floor & silver detail

Courtney in front of the door to our hotel room

The first course of our Moroccan dinner!

Istanbul D4: In Which I Get Scrubbed and Get Cultured

So. Turkish baths….kind of intimidating at first. But they’re world famous and also something I did a presentation on in the School of Architecture so I had to try it out.

 

Ellie, Courtney, and I had done our research and just happened to pick a bathhouse that I had done said presentation on and that just happened to be directly across from a Metro exit. Seriously. We left the train and there it was.

 

We each selected the “Traditional” experience, were show into an inner room where we were given a towel, a pair of underwear, and a scrubbing mitt, and told to go to the lockers upstairs and strip down.

 

Now, I’d known Courtney and Ellie for about a month. We were good friends and all, but getting naked in front of new friends is not a typical thing I do. I don’t know about you, but it’s not my go-to activity.

 

But when in Turkey…

 

We entered a sauna-hot room (that looked just like the pictures I’d Googled when researching the baths!) surrounding a central heated platform and ringed by smaller rooms with spigots and tin basins that we were to wash ourselves down with. Already sweating, we obliged.

 

Not having any other instructions, we walked into the next room which was dominated by a jacuzzi and a longer, cooler pool. We slipped into both, relaxing, swimming around some before exiting and again wondering what to do.

 

Apparently we weren’t supposed to do the Jacuzzi: we found out later that that part came last. We followed the lead of two other women already there, laying on their towels on the heated pedestal, waiting for their turn for the bubble bath.

 

This bubble bath…was pretty great. A Turkish woman comes over, tells you to lie still on your stomach, prepares a big tub of soapy water and a hollow pillow-like thing, dunks the pillow in the soapy water, then wicks out the whole thing onto your back. Then she scrubs. Hard. With a thing called a kese, which is basically a dishscrubber on a mitt. When she smacks your leg (her signal to tell you to turn over, or to sit up), you’ll notice all the gross, dead skin coming off of you in layers. It is equal parts good (yay! This scrub thing is working!) and disgusting (how do I have THAT MUCH dead skin?!). Without warning, she’ll dump a lukewarm bucket of water on your head to rinse you off. You’ll splutter and look like an idiot. Then you get a scalp massage when she washes your hair and a neck massage that will put you into a (good) stupor throughout your second dip in the Jacuzzi and back into the locker room. You and your friends will sit in said locker room for another 15 minutes, guzzling water to replace the stuff that has leaked out of your pores, sitting with a glazed look in your eyes.

 

So that’s a Turkish bath. And you don’t want to put on your clothes on after that, because you feel so clean and pants just don’t sound awesome anymore. We got lunch at a local kebob place. One of those with the meat roasting in the window and the chicken wrap comes to you still hot.

 

The Istanbul Archaeological Museum is actually in a courtyard with two other museums. The main building has massive amounts of sarcophagi and ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Turkish artifacts. Oodles of pictures there. The second best was the Painted Tile Museum, with old mosaics and tiles with beautiful Arab script.

 

We got back to the ship in time for dinner and went out again for Wi-Fi later that night. And I might have bought a box of chocolate baklava to tide me over between ports.

The Turkish bathhouse! I did a presentation on this exact place for Architecture studio my freshman year!

Alexander the Great’s sarcophagus

An underground tomb, with me in the reflection. I was rather impressed with my picture-taking abilities.

Me in the Painted Tile Museum – I match!

I think Arabic is such a beautiful language – the English alphabet doesn’t look like this!!

My new favorite things here in Turkey: chocolate baklava from the best baklava place in Turkey, and apple tea 🙂

Istanbul D3: In Which I Set Foot in Asia

Just a quick FYI: Turkey is the only country spanning two continents, and you don’t even need a passport to set foot onto the Asian side. Just cross a bridge and you’re there.

 

Which is what I did today 🙂

 

It took a few hours by bus to travel up and down the Asian side, but it was worth it: I got a giddy little thrill when we crossed the bridge and through the tiniest tunnel our bus could have possibly fit through to emerge on another continent.

 

We stopped at a small beach first, with low-slung umbrellas and a huge pile of beanbag seat cushions before the sand. The waves were violent, crashing and making some girls flee for drier ground. But I had to say I dipped a toe in the Black Sea so I braved it, getting soaked up to my knees (thank God for shorts) in the process.

 

We had several more stops on the way and while we were in Asia. We ate boxed lunches or ate fresh fish on the “Asian side,” and took plenty of pictures (including the one with a friend’s “I’M IN ASIA” signs – no one said we weren’t cheesy.

 

It was a long but lazy day. And then I had baklava before Wi-Fi.

 

It just so happened (in the best coincidence in the world) that the best, most famous baklava shop was right across from the terminal, just  a few yards from our ship.

 

I had chocolate baklava, and I think my world was changed. A little like a honeyed, sweeter brownie, that stuff is delicious. The pistachio and walnut baklava were pretty phenomenal too, but man…I could eat that chocolate baklava forever.

 

I Wi-Fi-ed, updated this humble little blog, and Skyped my entire family (seriously. My mom, brother, grandmother, and grandfather were canning marionberry jam – how awesome can you be? I was so jealous. YOU BETTER NOT EAT ALL THAT JAM BEFORE I GET HOME, GUYS!)

A beach on the coast of the Black Sea – the European side

(One of) the bridge(s) leading from Europe to Asia!

Hey, the sign says it all

The Bosporus Strait

Istanbul D2: In Which I Visit Places Only Read About in Textbooks

My first year in Architecture school, I think I had at least two lectures on the Hagia Sophia. I know I had at least one short answer question on the final exam about it. And on my second day in Turkey, I took about 200 photos of it.

 

The inside of the place is incredible. I don’t even think I can describe it accurately or fairly. The low-hanging chandeliers just kind of float above the floor, and everyone has their necks craned to look up: at the huge Arabic medallions, at the frescos and mosaics of angels (covered up when the place was converted to a mosque) and Mary and Jesus, the big marble columns (some of them older than the building itself), and the interesting, complex structures cluttering the front (some for visiting royalty, others for priests and men of the church). It was weird. I’d seen this picture on a lecture slide back in Oregon, and here I was, framing up the same picture. I had no idea how big the place was, how small it made you feel.

 

We walked, took pictures, and explored everywhere. We wandered the whole upper gallery, said a prayer for the “weeping column” (similar to the wishing column in the Underground Cistern), and exhausted our poor cameras.

 

And we still had a mosque and museum to go.

 

The Topkapi Palace and museum was a tad expensive – the Grand Bazaar and entrance fee to the Hagia Sophia had already sort of exhausted our funds. But we walked through the beautiful park that led there, past the smaller Hagia Irene and the entrance to the Archaeological Museum (we had plans to see this the fourth day).

 

We had time to kill before visiting the Blue Mosque, right across the street from Hagia Sophia. Five times a day mosques were closed to visitors for prayer. But the coolest part of this was the call to prayer that echoed from loudspeakers in the mosques themselves. While perusing a craft market, the warbling cry to prayer rang out as it would every few hours that day and every day we weren’t there; another reminder that there were things and ideas bigger than ourselves.

 

Entering a mosque is a process. As a women, you have to wait in a line of visitors, then take off your shoes and put them in a bag, wrap your hair up and cover your shoulders and knees. Men merely remove their shoes and enter.

 

The Blue Mosque is painted and mosaic-ed all in blue and white and red. It reminded me of classic fine china patterns, and the walls were covered up to the ceiling in it. A service was going on, the Arabic a steady stream while we shuffled around, taking pictures.

 

The Metro back was crowded and sweaty. I heard stories of several girls on the ship getting groped by strangers in the crush of people while on the train. It was a relief to leave, to get out into the hot but fresh air and walk onto our chilly, air-conditioned ship.

The Hagia Sophia – a place I’d only heard about in college lectures

Hagia Sophia’s chandeliers

The nave

Probably the most well-known picture of the Hagia Sophia, right up to the front of it, framed by Arabic medallions spelling “Allah” and “Muhammad”

Sarah, Courtney, and I – proof that we were there!

Hagia Sophia from the outside

The Blue Mosque

The interior of the Blue Mosque – everything looks like a china pattern!

The Blue Mosque

Istanbul D1: In Which I Succumb to Sensory Overload

And I thought Italian men were forward. The shopkeepers and owners in the Grand Bazaar are aggressive; they shout out to you, calling you “sweetheart” and “gorgeous” and commenting on your skin or your outfit. You are never to buy an item for the first price they tell you; you are basically required to haggle, which can become uncomfortable if the shopkeeper tries for sympathy or begins to get angry.

 

For Turkey in general we were warned against a million things. Don’t cross your arms in public. Don’t cross your legs if you’re sitting across from someone. Don’t travel without a man if you’re a woman. Don’t enter a mosque with your shoes on or your knees or shoulders uncovered or your hair unwrapped. Don’t gesture with your hands; there are a lot of gestures in America that are incredibly offensive to Turkish people (including the high-five, or thanking someone by showing them your palm for a quick second). And my favorite: don’t blow your nose in public.

 

So it was intimidating walking into Istanbul for the first time. I was worried about offending a culture I knew next to nothing about. I cross my legs and talk with my hands all the time! And it’s true: Istanbul is more conservative than other cultures and cities. But it’s also calmer, more relaxed. If you shout, you are stared at. If you laugh loud enough in a restaurant you draw attention. And people are generally nice and helpful if you ask for something.

 

Unless they own a shop nearby. In which case they will lure you in for giving you directions, sometimes even closing the door and standing outside of it, practically forcing you to buy something (which happened to us in a scarf shop after asking directions to the Spice Bazaar. However, we were not fazed and didn’t buy a scarf). People are so desperate for you to buy something from their shop, they are flexible on the price. Sometimes they are willing to bend the price a lot. My friend Sarah got halfway down a long aisle and around a corner before a shopkeeper chased her down to give her a cheaper price on a lamp.

 

It’s certainly overwhelming. You are shouted at, catcalled, tricked into shops. You feel as if you can’t step foot in any shop unless you want to buy something – you might be trapped! We did meet an informative, kind ceramic shopkeeper who, after talking with us for a good half an hour or so ordered us all apple tea from a nearby shop (another thing we were told: if offered food or a gift, you must accept and you must consume or use it yourself; no sharing). Not being a tea person, I was surprised that I liked it. It tasted a lot like warm apple cider.

 

And when I thought it couldn’t get any busier, we went to the Spice Bazaar. With only two main walkways, the place is clogged 24/7. People jostling for souvenirs and cheap spices elbow you, brush past you and almost knock you over, and in general pretend you aren’t there. I had to press up against a display of tea in order to avoid being pushed.

 

I did manage to buy some tea for friends back home – loose-leaf, sealed in vacuum bags and now jammed in my cramped cabin closet – before we left in a hurry, eager for fresh air and to get away from the employees yelling “Spice Girls!” after us.

 

A few of us peeled off to return to the ship, sufficiently wiped from the overstimulation of the morning, but three of us pressed on to visit the Underground Cistern. A huge underground reservoir for water, it was built in the 6th century and repaired and opened for the public in the 1980s. It is dark, cool (temperature-wise), and each one of its 336 columns are backlit by lights reflected in the water. It is quiet there, like most of Istanbul, and as you watch the huge fish swimming around in the water below, you feel like it could be just the most relaxing (almost ominously so) place you’ve ever been.

 

There’s a wishing column where you twist your thumb all the way around to get your wish and two giant stone Medusa heads in the back brought up from Roman ruins. We did it all and headed back to the ship for the night, shopped out and exhausted.

Istanbul is so nice – it welcomed us!

The Grand Bazaar – stalls selling ONLY SCARVES!! Heaven.

A lantern stall

Drinking apple tea with a really nice ceramic stall-owner.

Turkish delight in the Spice Bazaar! Mountains of them are EVERYWHERE in Turkey. You can’t walk ten feet without finding them in some store.

Tea at the Spice Bazaar! Fun fact: “chai” means “tea” in Turkish, so if you ask for “chai tea”….you’re going to get nowhere 😛

The Underground Cistern – so ominous and beautiful

A Medusa head, found in a cistern. Super creepy. Can be found in the darkest, dampest corner of the cistern.