I moved from my couchsurfing place with Paul in Ortakoy to the more artsy neighborhood of Cihangir closer into town. Cihangir is the perfect neighborhood for a tourist like me. It is residential, with a good mix of restaurants, cafe’s, bars and all kinds of interesting design shops. It is the kind of neighborhood I was looking for in Berlin but didn’t really find. So I bid adieu to Paul and thanked him for his incredible generosity and trotted out into the rain to meet Tolga and get the keys to the new place. Tolga gave me the scoop on Cihangir, a somewhat familiar story... in the 70’s and 80’s the neighborhood was riddled with drugs, prostitution and crime. So the artists moved in, as they could afford to be close to the center and do what they needed/ wanted to do. With their influx came the design shops and the culture. Now that the place is established and safe and interesting and convenient, the suits and the money have moved in, making it unaffordable for the people who made it what it is. My days all kind of went the same, I set out with some typical tourist goals: go and visit Hagia Sophia, take in a Turkish Bath, head up the Galata Tower... but typically I would find myself lost and wandering through the streets and alleys on the hill under the Galata Tower.

While wandering around I came across a great modern building along a small street. It was the first time in a long time that I’d seen a modern, very modern building, integrated into the existing fabric, which is tough to do in Istanbul. So I wandered into the lobby and talked to the folks there. They rent the apartments out, but were very friendly, letting me have a tour of the buildings, and the manager, Tuna, gave me all kinds of suggestions for bars and restaurants in the Cihangir neighborhood, as that is where she lived.

The next day, Tuesday 12/18, I was finally a tourist! I finally got into seeing some of the things I set out to see... despite getting distracted around every corner in the Cihangir and lower Galata neighborhoods. I walked over the Galata Bridge (for the umteeth time) stopping for an hour or so to do a sketch of the Yeni Mosque, adjacent to the Spice Market. Then I headed up the hill, past Hagia Sophia, and visited the Tombs of Sultan Selim, then marched across the Hippodrome to see, at the suggestion of my cousin Andrew, the Basilica Cistern. The Cistern was amazing! It is a huge reservoir hidden in plain site surrounded by Hagia Sophia, the Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace. It is 65m wide by 143m long, supported by 336 stout columns, assembled in an enormous 4m square grid. The sound of the water dripping in the space is acoustically wonderful, despite the hippy-dippy new age music being pumped through the caverns.

I emerged from the underground water system and walked across the street to finally visit the Hagia Sophia. It was probably about 2:00 at this point, leaving me a solid 2.5 hours in the grand mosque. I am not really sure what to say about it... it was just so grand, the space inside. I’d been reading about it and studying about it for so long, that perhaps I overhyped it for myself. Rather than being an inquisitive tourist, I found myself walking around as a museum weary tourist. The display of information was really interesting though. Emperor Justinian had the Christian Temple built in 537... 537! That is crazy! In 1453 the Ottoman Mehmet the Conquerer converted Hagia Sophia into a mosque, as it remained until Ataturk made it a museum in 1935. So all of the placards displaying information were either white, to present the Christian information, or green to present the Muslim information... Anyway, I returned outside and busied myself studying the structural system of the mosque/ temple, which was really interesting to me. Over time, large masonry buttresses were added in all direction to help stabilize the massive structure. And upon seeing the less than erect nature of the interior columns, the added structure was absolutely necessary!

I retired back to Cihangir for dinner and to recharge, after a lot of overstimulation today.... It had been a busy day, but a really good one, and my last day of decent weather for the rest of the trip.