Topkapi Palace, or How I Learned What "Harem" Means

The Disgruntled Hermit spreads her wings!

Yep, after pretty much a solid month of Doctor Who and various poorly-written novels, two Sundays ago I finally made myself put on real pants and go out of the house for something other than work or grocery shopping (or a beer run).  I went into Sultanahmet to check off one of the big giant touristy must-sees that I hadn't hit yet -- Topkapi Palace.  Otherwise known as the Buckingham Palace of the Ottoman Turks.

The Gate of Salutation

The palace grounds are enormous, and my guidebooks all said to budget at least two hours at the site to allow yourself time to see it all.  They did not, however, mention that you also needed to budget an hour for standing in the sun, waiting to buy your goddamed ticket.  There were automated kiosks, but I wasn't sure if they took cash and I didn't want to lose my place in the line I was already in.

(Also the length of said line should have in no way taken an hour.  But I watched a group of three women as they stood at the ticket window for at least ten minutes.  I'm not being hyperbolic.  When I say ten minutes, I don't mean three minutes that felt like ten minutes.  I mean they stood there for at least ten fucking minutes, because it was ten minutes from when I noticed and started timing them with my watch.  What on earth were they doing up there for ten minutes??  Even if they were counting out their ticket costs in pennies, it shouldn't have taken ten minutes unless they kept forgetting which number came after six.  And they weren't the only ones taking forever.  I was so confused.  When I finally got my sweaty and irritated self up to the counter, it was "Bir billet lutfen, sarayi ve harem." [One ticket please, palace and harem.]  I handed over my money, received my tickets, and was on my way.  TWENTY-FIVE FUCKING SECONDS, PEOPLE.  Thus leaving nine minutes and thirty-five seconds of giant honking unsolved mystery.)

Ahem.

Most of you know by now that there is not much I'll stand in an hour-long line for.  But I was determined that after my long self-imposed exile from my temporary home city, that I was going to check something off the Istanbul Bucket List that day.  I practiced my breathing, and eventually my patience was rewarded and I got to stump on through the fairytale-like Gate of Salutation, above, and into the Second Courtyard of the Topkapi Palace Complex.

A Topkapi Palace ticket costs 25 lira.  Because the palace's harem is one of the most beautiful and popular spots on the grounds, they naturally make you pay and extra 15 lira to see it.  Which makes a visit to the Topkapi Palace a slight extravagance at 40 lira.  But the harem is worth it, and in for a penny, you know.

I swung by and went through the harem first.  It was pretty impressive.

Interesting bit of trivia:  "harem" in Arabic means "forbidden."  The harem, despite the sexy connotations the word has been given in Western culture, was nothing more than the private apartments for the Sultan and his (largish) family.  And, okay, a bunch of female slaves and eunuchs,  but according to Rick Steves, the Sultan was allowed a maximum of four wives and four girlfriends, who were largely selected for him by his mother and existing wives/girlfriends.  I mean, certainly the man still had no shortage of female company after a hard day's work, but the reality of the harem was still a very different place than the picture painted by Byron's Don Juan.

After the harem, I walked through the various buildings in the third and fourth courtyards.  It was pretty crowded, and the more popular buildings had yet more lines of tourists with varying degrees of sunburn, slowly shuffling forward an inch at a time, in order to get their fifteen seconds of fame with this famous diamond or that famous dagger.  I waited in what lines I had patience for, which wasn't much.  I mostly circled around the outside of the ring, trying to get glimpses of the priceless artifacts over hats and between elbows.  Unfortunately, most of the Very Famous buildings did not allow photos inside.

View of the Bosphorus from the Treasury.

The Third Courtyard

Unsurprisingly, what I enjoyed most was the (least crowded) Fourth Courtyard and the several small but beautiful kiosks there.  No famous daggers inside, but any of these would be a simply perfect place to lounge away a hot summer afternoon.  Preferably with some wine and a nargile, of course.

Tulip garden, slightly past its peak.

I think this last picture is the Baghdad Pavilion  built by extra-fearsome Sultan Murat IV so he could have a quiet getaway from his tough-guy image and read some poetry.  Gotta love it.

The guidebooks were right, and even though one of the main features ended up being closed (the kitchens, repurposed as galleries), it still took me about two and a half hours to do my full circuit.  This included all the time waiting in various lines (but not the ticket line outside) and also some quality moments resting on benches.  The guidebooks are also right about this being an absolute Istanbul Must-See.  I enjoyed the Topkapi Palace immensely, even with the giant stupid wait to get in and the thronging masses once I was finally inside.  Utterly beautiful, and a fascinating insight into a very different culture.  I took my time with my dog-eared guidebook tucked under my arm, and even if such meticulous sightseeing is not your thing, I recommend it for a place like this.  I got so much more out of my experience by reading about each part as I was seeing it -- like that little bit about Murat IV!

And so passed the Sunday where I officially ended my Istanbul Hermitage and re-entered the grotty touristy backpackery world.  Five days later I would be off to weird and alien Cappadocia!

The present is stationary, but the future is in motion!

Hello internets.

First, something very important.  It's May 1.  This means it's the official two-year anniversary of my new life. Two years ago today, I landed in Tbilisi airport in the dead of night and had absolutely not the foggiest inkling of how wonderful, crazy, frustrating, scary, and all around in-fucking-credible my life was about to become.

But snapping back to the present, it's been pretty quiet on this old page recently.  This time, my reasons for silence are pretty simple.  I have not been doing anything, not one single thing, that is worth blogging about.

This is tragic, for so many reasons.  For one thing, it's completely unlike me.  The last time I was this lethargic, I had a mystery illness that was sapping both my energy and my appetite, and made it hurt to breathe.  I have no such excuses this time.  To make matters worse, I recently had a five-day weekend, and what did I do with it?  Nothing.   Not one single, solitary thing.  I don't think I even finished a novel.  Five whole, free days, and not only did I not travel, I barely even left the house.

I had wanted to go to Cappadocia, but I put off booking or even researching until the very last minute, and then got myself totally overwhelmed by both the cost and the planning required.  Yeah, Cappadocia is a whole region.  It's large, it's incredibly remote, and guess what? -- people there know they're sitting on a tourism goldmine, and they charge you for it.  I did not end up going to Cappadocia.

However, the small bit of good that has come out of this weird ennui is that I promised myself it was going to be the very last time five free days wasted away like that.  So this time I started my planning properly, weeks ahead.  I have a 4-day weekend coming up May 10.  And guess what?  As of this afternoon, I have both a plane ticket AND a reserved dorm bed at Shoestring Cave House.  W00t Woot.

I'm pretty excited, and I really hope that both the anticipation and the energy shot of actually seeing something amazing will kick the last of this lethargy away from me.

But, believe it or not, Cappadocia is NOT the most exciting thing on my horizon!  While researching flights, I also decided to look into my ticket home.  I had a vague idea of stopping off somewhere in Western Europe for a few days before humping it all the way across the Atlantic.  I considered places all over.  Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Dublin, Vienna, Berlin, Munich... the only real requirements were that it be a new passport stamp and not too terrifically budget-busting, which is why I did not consider Switzerland.

Then I had a little lightning-strike epiphany, and decided to see how much it would cost to fly to Cairo.

So, um... yeah.  Guess where I'm going in June???

This time, excited does not even cover it.

I've visited a lot of places these past two years and there have been a fair few I've introduced with some version of "I've wanted to go here my whole life."  Of course, that was almost never literally true.  I didn't know about these places for my whole life.  It's impossible to want to a go to a place if you have no idea it exists.  But when it comes to Egypt, "I've wanted to go there for my whole entire life" is about the most truth that statement is ever going to see.

Again, not my whole life.  Not the diaper era, natch.  But pretty much right around the time I started realizing that my desires to visit Thundera and Eternia were very likely never going to happen, we studied Ancient Egypt for the first time in school.  I was instantly, completely, hooked.

And yes, I realize that this might not be the very best moment in all-time everness to visit Egypt.  I'm fairly positive my Mom wants to smack me about the head until I fall unconscious and she can tie me up until I miss my flight.  But I cleverly avoid her machinations by being in another country!

All I can say is that I'll be careful.  I'll do my research.  I'll plan.  I'll know where the American Embassy is.  I'll keep my head down and dress modestly.  I'll go on guided tours.  I won't crash any Egyptian frat parties and challenge them to Beer Pong with Death Cup.

This is without doubt one of the crazier things I've decided to do.  And I can't wait.

Then, after one amazing week of staring, totally star-struck, at the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx, I will fly home to Virginia.  And I will be there for a glorious day and a half before getting on another plane (one-way ticket again!) to Pensacola, Florida.  I will have a brand-new baby nephew to start spoiling.

Oh yeah, and then at some point after that, I'm getting myself up to Maine somehow, because my parents just closed on a cabin by a lake.

My life does not suck.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, I have to figure out where I am going next.