Istanbul, day 1

Well, I'm certainly glad that I decided not to drive in this city. Yesterday I drove to Istanbul International Airport from Cannakale and left my car in the long term carpark there. The drive there was nasty enough, as I still had to drive through about 10 kilometres of Istanbul motorways to get there, and half of it was a big roadwork site. Turkish people are pretty Laissez-Faire when it comes to road rules at the best of times, but when there's no lines on a technically three lane road with stop-start traffic its positively harrowing. The traffic in the city proper is worse.
Well anyway, I'm glad I don't have to think about the car for a few days. Right now I'm in one of the most vibrant, cultural cities in the world. And it's huge - with a population possibly larger than the whole of Australia and a history that spans over two thousand years, I don't think I can do it justice in the few days I'm here, but I'm giving it a shot.
Today I started off with the Istanbul Archaeological museums. Basically it's a complex of three buildings with a bewildering amount of antiquities to see. About halfway through the second one I had a brainfart and simply couldn't process any more. I knew this would happen, which is why I went to the Mesopotamian exhibit first, as I've seen precious little of Mesopotamian finds so far in any museum, and the culture intrigues me at least as much as the Minoan. The Sumerian culture of the area of course was the world's first civilization, starting off at the whopping early time of before 3000 BC. Remember how much effort I put into explaining how old the Minoans were at 1800 BC? Let that sink in.
The other thing I took from the museums was a decent understanding of the history of Turkey and Istanbul.
Lying as it does at the important position between east and west, Turkey has been invaded and ruled by more people than seems fair. The first empire that controlled the area was the Hittites, coming from the same cultural space as the Mesopotamian civilizations. These guys held onto the country until about 800 BC. After the Hittites the Persians took the reigns and generally made life difficult for the Greeks for a few hundred years. When Alexander the Great came out of Macedonia and started taking over the world of course he needed to have a go at Turkey as well. Next of course came the Romans. In the early fourth century AD the Roman empire, getting too big for its boots, was divided into the eastern province and the western, with the city of Byzantium as its capital and renamed Constantinople after the Emperor at the time, Constantine. Today this city is known as Istanbul. Not long after, this divide turned into a complete split, the eastern and western empires becoming effectively independant of each other. The western part, after a particularly nasty invasion from the Germanic tribes, fell to bits, but the eastern part, known nowadays as the Byzantine empire, chuffed along, slowly stagnating until the crusades finally put an end to their fun. It's something most people don't realize, but the existence of the Byzantine empire for all this time effectively means that Rome survived well into the second millenium AD.
So then it was the Ottoman Turks' turn to have a piece of the Turkey Pie (sounds tasty). These guys, led by fat, beardy Sultans, turned Turkey into an Islamic country, converting its many churches into Mosques. The Ottoman Empire lasted until 1923 when, after a war of independence, the Sultans were kicked out and the country became a republic under Mustafa Kemal Pasha, renamed Ataturk. This same dude led the Turkish forces in World War I against the Anzacs.
So now you know the history of Turkey as well!
After the museums I visited the so-called "Basilica Cistern". This huge underground cistern was built in the Byzantine era to supply water to the palace and was forgotten until the 16th century when a French archaeologist noticed the locals catching fish by dropping a bucket through a hole in their floor.
It's a strange, eerie kind of place - or at least it would be without the hordes of tourists and built up gangways about the place. It's filled with a forest of columns, and a population of carp even swim about in the water. Interesting to note is the two columns at the far end with carved medusa heads as their bases. Nobody really knows why they were used, where the Byzantines got them or why one is upside down and the other on its side.
After the Basilica Cistern I visited the Blue Mosque, which is one of the prettiest buildings in the city. And its then that I realized that for my whole time in Turkey this was the first time I visited a mosque.
Finally I visited the Galata tower. This building is very prominent in the skyline of Istanbul. It was built in 1348 on the site of a much older tower. At the time the district of Galata was a walled citadel, and this one of its main defenses. Throughout the years it's been damaged, burnt, repaired and repurposed a number of times, and at the moment it serves as a restaurant and bar. My constant desire to climb landmarks drove me to go up it, despite numerous advice not to bother and go the hotel next door for exactly the same views. I should have listened. I thought it would have been a gruelling stair climb for just a balcony like most of the other monuments I've climbed, but as it turned out it was an elevator to a restaurant and a narrow balcony that was so packed I couldn't even go out onto it.
Still, it was a great day. And Istanbul is... well, it's Istanbul.
Photos tomorrow.