Istanbul not Constantinople

So last week I was in Istanbul with my Sociology class learning about politics and social capital in Turkey. What an odd place. On one hand Istanbul is completely modern, totally gentrified and cosmopolitan with all the fancy stores, western looking people, and everything from Louis Vuitton to Burger King. On the other hand there are many women in headscarves, mosques on every corner, and women can't make eye contact with men on the street because that is taken as a sexual invitation. 

Luckily I did not have any scary experiences with men but some of the girls in my program were getting hit on wherever they went. 

The programs organized by my class were incredibly cool. I got to go to one of the local private universities and talk with Turkish students about the Kurdish minority in Turkey and how they thought the government should deal with the conflict. I went to the Human Rights Association in Istanbul and talked with a man who told us how they work to reveal human rights violations in Turkey and help people who want more rights. Some of his story was really sad because in one year 25 members of their organization were killed because in Turkey, if you speak against the government you can be labeled as a terrorist. He said that even though people do have rights, no one has constitutionally guaranteed rights, which means that the government can change their mind about what is and isn't allowed whenever they want. 

Probably the most amazing experience I had was to talk to the head of the Kurdish national party (the Peace and Democracy Party the BDP). She was a woman who was elected from jail through write in votes. At that time the BDP was not governmentally recognized as a party (and it is easy to exclude parties from parliament in Turkey because they have a 10% parliamentary threshold to even have a member in government) but this woman was elected with over 10% of the votes and she wasn't even on the ballot AND she was in jail for being a terrorist. Absolutely amazing. She said that the parties main goals were to secure women's rights and minority rights in the new constitution. What an amazing person.

Okay onto the fun stuff, below are pictures from some of the places I went. 

This is an old palace (I don't remember who's palace it was) and we saw it on a cruise we took on the Bosphorus.

This is a beautiful mosque that we saw from the cruise. I really wasn't kidding about there being mosques around every corner, in just this photo you can see three.

This is the Istanbul modern art museum. It's an old warehouse, right on the water (a mosque behind it). This is as seen from the cruise.

This is a governmental building. The Turkish flag is beautiful.

This photo is a big deal because its me in Asia. Istanbul spans across Europe and Asia and so on the cruise we went to Asia and here I am! My first time in Asia! 

One thing I've seen from my travels is that there are Egyptian obelisks EVERYWHERE. This is from an Egyptian king who wanted his symbol here in Constantinople (before it was Constantinople though).

Here I am in front of the Blue Mosque. What a spectacular place. See photos below. At first We thought we might have to cover our hair, but in the end we did not.

The inside of the mosque is beautiful. There are endless paintings, mosaics, and designs. You could honestly look at it for hours. 

The reason it is called the Blue Mosque is because the whole mosque used to have a blue background like you can see in this photo. 

This is the palace of the kings of Constantinople. Many, many kings lived here. There are so many rooms with crown jewels, sultan clothing, weapons, everything imaginable. 

This is how big the complex is.

These are of the entrance to the harem quarters. None of the sultans had wives, they just had harems who were taken care of by eunuchs. There was a mother of the harem who was supposed to be the favorite concubine at the moment. Disgusting I know, but all apart of history. 

The whole palace had the most spectacular mosaics I've ever seen. This was the entrance to the princes suite. This is a representation of the Sultan family tree.

I'll let these photos speak for themselves. They are the domes and stained glass windows of the prince's suite.

This is the outside of the Princes suite. Equally beautiful you can see.

The thing about Istanbul is that there were cats everywhere. I probably saw 1000 cats in my 5 days there. This guy was just chilling in the flowers at the palace. I didn't touch any cats but many of the students in my program did. They loved them. 

This is the Hagia Sophia from the outside. It was the largest dome church in the world until recently. It might be number 2 or 3 now.

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These are these little gold tiles that used to cover the whole Hagia Sophia. The Greeks? maybe covered them with this yellow plaster, which basically ruined the beauty of these tiles. 

These stand for God, Muhammad, and something else. 

This is just another mosque we saw. It was built by an incredibly famous (described as a genius by our tour guide) architect. I guess he was the Michelangelo of the Muslim world.

This is the Kariye (Cora) Church. It was started around the 13th century and finished in the 15th. It was completely painted and done in mosaics on the inside. See below! 

Viva en Roma

So I spent the week in Rome! On the way we got stuck overnight in Riga, which was like being dropped straight into Soviet Russia. The best part about it was that I actually got to practice my Russian with Latvians. I also practiced my Spanish but that was in Rome where I spoke Spanish while the Italians spoke half Spanish-half Italian.

The history in Rome was amazing. You would walk down a totally normal street and at the end of it there would be something magical. I took 500 photos so below you will see about 50 of them.

These two photos were in Riga. Even though we got stuck overnight, the next day was beautifully sunny. You can see the USSR style buildings behind me. 

This is from the bridge we crossed everyday on our way into the center city. In the background is St. Peters Basilica which is truly ever present on the city landscape. 

I never actually figured out what the name of this building was but it's pretty magnificent. 

We tried to go to a flower market in the Campo de Fiori but we walked into a real market. All the fruit looked so delicious. 

This column was about 100 feet high and had 360˚ carvings all around it. It was absolutely magnificent! 

In the same group of ruins as the column were the remnants of this building. The figures on it reminded me of the movie Hercules so I included them for fun.

This arch is right outside the Colosseum. We eavesdropped on a tour and the tour guide said each of the carvings were scavenged from other buildings. I have no idea how the Romans could have done this but it is really beautiful. In a museum we went into, there was an old painting of what we think was this arch during Roman times and it was in water. It could have been like that 2000 years ago.

These photos are all from the Roman Forum. I don't know a whole lot about each of the buildings because we couldn't afford to pay for a tour but it is pretty cool to imagine what the roman city must have looked like. There were aqueducts, baths, air vents for the baths, castles, and gardens. In the garden there were orange trees and all the oranges from the bottom had either fallen or been harvested. I shook a few trees and this orange fell down for me. Sadly it was over ripe and we could not eat it. It was a victory all the same. 

Can I just say that the Colosseum is absolutely as spectacular as it looks in these photos. It is completely unbelievable that 2000 years ago people built this colossal stadium. 

These two photos are of the Church Sopra Minerva (or something close to that). One thing that you could never do is see all the churches in Rome. I maybe visited 5. They were all beautiful

Right next to the church is the pantheon. I actually walked around the back of the Pantheon and thought the ruins hadn't been excavated yet. Wrong. When I walked to the front I realized what I had found. Sadly, like just about everything in Rome, it was Catholicized. Oh well, I could appreciate it as a temple to the Gods of ancient Rome.

This is the Piazza del Popolo. There is a road from here straight to the Vatican. You can see St. Peter's Basilica in the background of the bottom photo. Up where I'm standing in the bottom photo is a big park and you can walk to the Spanish steps from here. Overall, the Spanish steps were not the most magnificent thing I saw but this Piazza is beautiful.

I visited the Trevi Fountain 3 or 4 times, sometimes on accident, sometimes on purpose. It was so beautiful. I think the photos speak for themselves.

This was the Piazza Navona. Mostly I just liked the fountain with the man spiking the squid. The church here was quite beautiful as well.

This is Michelangelo.  

I also visited the Vatican 3 times. There was plenty to see and I could have spent all day inside St. Peters. The Sistine Chapel was closed for conclave but just the church itself was pretty magnificent. My photos don't really do it justice. 

This paint is leftover probably from when it was originally done. I just couldn't believe how in tact it was.

This church had a meridian line down the middle of it. I took a photo of the dome and tried to capture some of the colors on the stain glass. I kind of succeeded.

This castle was one of the biggest ones I'd ever seen. We did not pay to go inside but there was a bridge going from it to the Vatican. Totally awesome. I am standing on another bridge with about 6 or so statues like the one depicted.