Randal and I spent the morning wandering around Izmir lost in the confusion of streets around the bazaar. Everyone tried to help us, and thankfully Randal is good with a map because if not we’d still be wandering around out there. The bazaar seemed to be surrounded by dozens of other narrow shopping streets filled with everyone in Izmir who wasn’t doing something else. As it turned out we’d gone the long way around to get there and were, when we finally realized it, “just down the main road from our hotel!” We’d actually started the morning walking along the waterfront which is a linear park with walking and bike paths. But we’d headed away from the part of the city with the bazaar. I stopped a woman walking her dog and she helped us by expaining to a taxi driver where to take us. He asked for 10 Euros but we said 10 lira and to use his meter. It came to 10 Turkish Lira. We got out of the taxi and then got ourselves lost again but it worked out fine and the weather in Izmir is lovely, sunny sweater weather. Tomorrow we’ll take the bus to visit Pamukkale and stay two nights at the Artemis Yoruk Pension. Pamukkale has natural formations created by hot springs flowing downhill depositing layers of calcium carbonate. The ruins of ancient Hierapolis are there too. But I still have to catch up on Istanbul stories. This one is about our visit to the Million Stone and the Basilica Cistern.
Ru
DoraMac
Million Stone and The Basilica Cistern
Million Stone
“The Million Stone, marking the beginning of the road to Europe, used to be considered as the center of the world during the Byzantine era. The city (Constantinople, now Istanbul) was the center of the world and this point was the center of the center. All geographical distances were calculated in accordance with this point. Its name, (which can also be milion) comes from the unit of length, the “mile.” From my Istanbul Guide
And here I thought Fenway Park (home of the Red Sox in Boston, Massachusetts) was the center of the Center of the World.
The Million Stone was just a short walk from our hotel and the Basilica Cistern just a bit further. It was cold and drizzling so shortly after this I bought my souvenir umbrella to make it stop raining, which it did.
Yerebatan Sarayr or The Sunken Palace or the Basilica Cistern
!
Upside and downside became two of our favorite new words in India. We heard them used here too. During our tour of Dolmabahce Palace we were told the throne used by the sultan was on our behind. (In back of where we were facing.) I wanted to point out that it had connected with his behind but never ours, but resisted. Language can be so fun.
The entrance is street level and then you walk down to the “sunken palace.”
The cisterns were dark with “Halloween” lighting so photos were hard to take.
The bases of the columns were in water where carp were swimming.
This is what it actually looked like with the ghostly lighting.
An interesting factoid* I found while trying to learn enough to explain it to you……
“Remember the scene in the old James Bond movie From Russia With Love when Bond is rowing in a small boat through a forest of marble columns? That scene was filmed in Yerebatan 
Two sculptured heads of Medusa are used as the base of two columns in the southwestern part of the cistern.
The cistern brochure tells several stories about the Medusa heads. Medusa was one of the three Gorgonas, female monsters of the underground and their powerful images was used to protect important places. Perseus cut off the head of Medusa which gave him the power to defeat his enemies. Because looking at Medusa would turn one to stone the head was placed upside down and sideways to somehow preventing that from happening.
The Cisterns were so huge and open that you never felt “underground” or claustrophobic; it was too fascinating. The underground reservoir has the capacity to hold 100,000 tons of water.
The land over the cisterns is apparently sinking and there are plans to perhaps close it off from any construction.
From the Cisterns we walked to the Carpet Museum near the Blue Mosque. It was closed for renovation so we walked through the small bazaar behind the Mosque. “And what to my wondering eyes should appear” in the window of a carpet shop but a Boston Red Sox cap just like the one I had lost in India. “I want to buy that hat,” I said. “I have to buy that hat!” I said. But though they happily would have sold me a zillion dollar carpet, it was no dice on the cap. Apparently tourists had given the shop owner their hats, maybe for a better carpet deal. The owner wasn’t there and the salesmen wouldn’t sell me the hat. But the Sox are winning and that’s all that matters.
*Factoid..
“The “-oid” ending in English is normally added to a word to indicate that an item is not the real thing. A humanoid is not quite human. Originally “factoid” was an ironic term indicating that the “fact” being offered was not actually factual. However, CNN and other sources have taken to treating the “-oid” as if it were a mere diminutive, and using the term to mean “trivial but true fact.” As a result, the definition of “factoid” is hopelessly confused and it’s probably better to avoid using the term altogether.”
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/factoid.html
I don’t know what made me use the word factoid rather than fact, but when I looked it up it seemed appropriate. Sometimes everything I write here should be assumed to be factoids because I don’t always get it exactly right and it is more “my memories” than real facts.
