So, today as usual I woke up early, got ready and then went to breakfast with my roommate. After breakfast, I finished gathering up my stuff and headed off the boat for my SAS trip "Palaces of Istanbul and Asiatic Side." So if you haven't guessed, today I finally stepped on Asian Ground!!!!!! It was so exciting crossing that bridge in Istanbul and seeing the bright, highlighter yellow sign that read, "welcome to Asia" on it.. I had finally made it to my 3rd continent!!
Asia wasn't much different than Europe, the only difference was that Asia was more residential with more housing and green landscaping than the European side of Turkey, but really, you couldn't tell the difference.. I didn't care, though, I had stepped over to yet another continent on my trip!!
For my SAS trip today, we visited 4 palaces throughout Istanbul, and those palaces were amazing!! Unfortunately, in 3 out of the 4 palaces we couldn't take ANY photos at all, or else I would have been in there all day taking pictures! It's amazing how intricate the artwork is in all of the palaces.. you have to look everywhere to see each and every detail and the most fascinating art work is usually on the ceilings, the last place anyone would think to look! It was absolutely amazing though.
The first palace we went to was "Dolmabahce Sarayi" and was by far the biggest palace we visited today. It took my group a little over 1 1/2 hours to go through, and that is without seeing all the rooms and hearing all the stories the palace had to offer. I believe there were over 250 rooms in the palace, so it was huuuge! There were the most gorgeous chandelleirs throughout the place, with the biggest one weight 4 1/2 tons, yes I said that right.... now picture something weight 4 1/2 tons and picture how big of a room it would have to be in to make it look smalll!!!! The room that chandelier was in had over 50 columns, I started counting just because I was amazed that in the ROOM ther were huuuuuge columns that you would normally see outside of a place, not in it.. but they were in it and they were absolutely giant! I could not ever imagine living in that palace, it would take you at least a week to figure out how to get around, and that is if you did nothing else but try to figure out the layout of the palace. There are no other words to describe this palace, but absolutely increadible.. I was amazed at every single thing we saw in there.. and one fascinating thing we learned was that the kitchens in the palaces were never actually inside the living quarters, they were always outside in another building so the whole place didn't smell like the food that was cooking! werid!
After the first gigantic palace, we went over to the Asiatic Side and visited "Beylebeyi Sarayi" which had the prettiest chandelleir in the entranceway.. I wanted to steal it! The chandelleir was made of all crystal, but most of the crystals were a really prett blue-turquoise color.. it was giant and beautiful! This palace was not nearly as big, with only about 24 rooms in it, but it was filled with the prettiest chandelleirs, and most of them were really colorful. In this palace there was also a giant pool in one of the halls, but it's not used for swimming it was only used for the noise of the water and for decoration!
The third and fourth palaces weren't as big or as cool.. but they were still interesting.. in the 3rd palace which was "Yildiz Sale" it was the guest house to the palace, and you would have never known because it was huge and beautiful. In the biggest room in that palace, yes room, the rug in it was 4400 square feet and it went from one end to the other, which meant that room itself was 4400 square feet, just in one of the rooms!! Also in that palace we walked by a camera crew and all these lights and stuff and found out that they were filming a documentary for the history channel on Monarchy during the ottoman empire.. so we saw the actors getting made up for it and the settings and everything.. that was neat! Everyone doing the documentary tried to get our dean's youngest daughter to be in the documentary as the princess.. they all loved her! She is 2 1/2 and apparantly in Turkey, they love babies.. so the director took pictures of the kids, gave them gifts, and then gave our dean his information so apparantly he could bring back Gracie (the little girl) if he wanted to!? It was soo funny!
In all the palaces we visited, something they all had in common was chairs and large dining room tables. In every room of each palace there were sooo many places to sit.. in one room the size of a big living room or soemthing there would be at least 12 big chairs in it.. and then 2 or 3 couches as well, it was crazy. In each of the palaces they all had really big dining room tables, that could easily sit at least 20-30 people.. they were huuug!!! Also, in all of the palaces we had to put on these booties on our feet, like a plastic bag type thing that is made for your foot and they were pink.. everyone had to wear these around.. they looked dumb, but I guess that's a way of preserving the palaces!
After a lonnng day of looking at palaces, I came back to the boat and took a nap before going to dinner. After dinner me and 4 other girls went to the big square in Istanbul which I forget the name of.. apparantly it is like New Orleans, and there are people there all the time, all night long.. so we walked around, shopped and then listened to some Turkish music... me and my roommate also tried Turkish Raki, which is the special drink of Turkey... and it was not good! It reminded me of ouzo in Greece in that it tasted kind of licorice-y, but it wasn't good.. atleast I can say I tried it though! The whole time we were walking around the square, though, we were followed by a little gypsie girl trying to sell us tissues.. yeah little packs of tissues and she would weave in and out of all of us trying to put it in our hands and stuff.. it was so annoying and she finally left us alone after about an hour!
All in all it was a good but very tiring day!
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