A Buchan Odyssey

It was a long day of travelling to the Istanbul airport, a flight to Venice and then 3 hours in a bus to Ravenna. This hotel is very swish - even has a bidet, fridge, but safe is too small for my computer. But there is is great desk I am typing on. We called into Abbey Pomposa which was on the way. An 8-12th century abbey of Benedictine monks who did a lot of fresco work. As well apparently they created modern music, but I missed the details.  The interior of the chapel It was in ruins/ignored till the new Italian government in the 19th century decided to develop as a bit of tourist thing, but it was not very touristy - quite nice. The Abbots Guido (I think Guido is Italian for George because of sculpture see below) were into music, several were saints and there was this lovely relic of one. The doctors on the tour (there are five) debated which bone it was - femur looked too short to me. You decide. Abbot Guido's bone The monastery, and importantly, campanile (bell tower) date fro...

Late on the last night in Istanbul, drying some clothes wet after my swim in the pool, getting ready to fly to Venice. It was allegedly 5 degrees Celsius, but I think more like 22. It was a fairly relaxing day. It began at the Islamic Arts Museum where the focus was ancient Korans, nomadic and ottoman carpets (Lauren's father is an expert on these), and costumes. This was about a 10 minute walk from our hotel. Morning tea (at noon) being baklava and coffee provided by the tour impromptu.  We then went through an Orestes Bazaar where I bought a hand embroidered jacket which does need to be lined, followed by a shop selling high end fashion and carpets and jewelry. Sadly, but actually quite luckily, the jacket I really liked was just a bit too small and $650US. He would only come down to $550US, while Esra recommended I suggest $300 as my opening bid. Again it was repurposed hand embroidered silk, and I had already bought one (of much lower quality).  So no expensive outlay....

Lauren occasionally gives an hour talk before we set off. These are great because she has the theme of Istanbul-Venice gateways to East-West. She focuses on a person, places them in historical context but then describes how they differ from others, or changed the course of history. Lots of anecdotes from written accounts - for Istanbul it is often the commentary of Venetian ambassadors. She reminds us where we've been and if we'll see something in the future. I guess all tour leaders do this but she is very entertaining. Great slides, which we didn't have on the Scotland tour. Yesterday it was Suleiman the Magnificent, 10th Ottoman Emperor; a man fond of extravagant clothing. On arriving for a function one day, his unimpressed father, Selim the Grim, was said to have remarked "and what is your mother wearing?" He was also magnificent because he conquered a lot of places, but not quite Vienna. Many countries gave him magnificent gifts, especially noteworthy being t...

Selim was a Sultan of his time. Which was to say that he needed to kill his seven brothers once he became Sultan. Actually he did not have to kill them all because some died all by themselves. The tradition was that to keep the risk of civil war or disputes between rival factions for the feather (Sultans don't wear crowns, they wear elaborate feathers), a Sultan would kill his brothers and any other male claimant to the throne. It must be done elegantly, without spilling blood, because after all this was the precious blood of the Sultans. In fact they maintained an unbroken genetic chain of Sultans from Mehmet II, the Conqueror of Constantinople, to the exiled Sultan of the 1920s. He also ruled with a harsh hand, so he was known as 'the Grim'. Nevertheless, he had a mosque built for him by his son, Suleiman the Magnificent if I remember correctly, which was quite special. It is like a parish church, for the locals not the tourists. It is not so easy to get to on public tran...

 I was really looking forward to this one, to find that 2/3 of it were closed for restoration! Esra led us through the remaining ground floor galleries focused on sarcophagi and Roman statues. The most amazing of the sarcophagi was the Alexander Sarcophagi, so named because Alexander the Great is one of the images on the side. It is the sarcophagus (or burial chest) of one of his generals. This was quite an unusual find in Lebanon by a farmer, of course. There was an underground chamber or vault containing three sarcophagi - so like an underground cemetery. You judge how well they have been preserved, such that pigments are still visible. A quite unusual sarcophagus known as the Sad Women features 10 very sad women in different posses; the images around the top are probably a funeral procession. I did not accept one possible explanation being that the women were the professional mourners. They look far too internally sad. Horses, and charioteering horses, are a very popular Roman m...

It seems my readers are interested in tiles, and perhaps would like to see what so wearied me. I even failed to photograph the corridor long "Tile Gallery'. So I really can't give you any technical stuff. Here are some of my favourites, starting as appropriate, at Courtyard 2.  Entrance to the Eunuch's rooms Dowager mother's day room Just another room with tiles! Tiles making an image, of perhaps a map Random tiles, they were everywhere! The Sultan's prayer Room The Fruit Room The following tiles are unusual, given that they are a large oblong shape, rather than the traditional multiple small square tiles. This indicates they were from an early time. The blues and greens are also indicative of it being an early tile, as yellows and reds came much later. And to finish it off, the Sultan's toilet, and no tiles:

The Topaki Palace is the home of the Sultans since the mid 1400s but as well the administrative Centre of the empire.   We expect a palace in Western culture to be big, showy and built to impress. This Palace is built to conceal. Many buildings have been added over the reigns of different Sultans. Structured around four increasingly private and smaller courtyards it is of course now a museum of those times of the Sultanate. The Palace is next door to Hagia Sophia, so a 10 minute walk from our hotel. We began in the first courtyard, a wide open park bounded on one side by the earliest Christian church in Istanbul, the Hagia Irene. This version in stone was built in the mid 500s and was the original Parish church of the early Christians. It is huge by western standards, although much was closed off for restoration. Those damn earthquakes. On the other side of the park were kitchens with huge bulbous bottle shaped chimneys. These now house display of cooking, porcelain etc.  We t...

Made famous in the Dan Brown novel and movie 'Inferno' (I think) is the now empty cistern in the Old City of Istanbul. It is not far from the Hagia Sophia and therefore our hotel.  I am about to go out for Day 2's events, so will throw in some images from this very impressive structure, and come back to it tonight. Since Constantinople sits on a peninsula with no good fresh water supply, the emperors built cisterns for secure supply especially during times of siege. its construction began in 532. This particular cistern is dug underground into rock, but then bricked over. The roof is held up by 336 columns, often marble plundered from other sites of antiquity. When full, and it seemed higher than the stated 9m high, the people would cast a bucket through holes in the roof for their daily water.  It is 138m long x 65m wide, able to hold 80,000 cubic metres of water. The walls are 13 feet thick, coated with a water-proofing mortar. The water came from 19km away in a forest vi...