JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Why am I posting pictures of breakfast? Because in regular life I don’t have breakfast; I wake up just before lunch. On this trip I need fuel. Right after breakfast I’m getting in the van with my luggage to visit three sites, then have lunch, then go to the airport to catch the 1500 flight to Izmir.

The new hotels in Istanbul are close to an old, run-down area of town which is undergoing redevelopment. Apparently rich people are buying up the land and constructing commercial complexes. Check back in in a few years.

En route to the Blue Mosque we passed the Pera Palace hotel, a regular stop for passengers of the old Orient Express. Agatha Christie stayed here and imagined bloody murders.

When I see people leaning over a bridge looking at the water, I automatically think a corpse has floated up. This is a much more pleasant scene: People fishing on a Sunday morning. They catch bonito, tuna, mackerel, bluefish and other migratory species. When the fish from the Black Sea migrate to the warmer Aegean, they have to crowd into the Bosphorus strait, where anglers are waiting.

First stop: the Blue Mosque, known to locals as the Sultanahmet. Tourists refer to it by the beautiful blue tiles inside the building. Built in the 17th century, the mosque is still in use; tourists are allowed when there are no services. Note the people massing in the courtyard and the cat strolling past them as if he owns the place.

Shoes are not allowed inside the mosque: you have to take them off at the threshold and carry them. I have to find a place to sit and unzip my snug, heavy boots then stuff them into a tiny plastic bag.

So I trudge inside in my socks, and this is what I see. My grumbling ceases immediately. From looking up at the walls and ceiling I develop a crick in my neck.

It’s like vertigo, except that you’re looking up. If I recall Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red correctly, figurative representation is not allowed; instead they have exquisite miniatures, mosaics, calligraphy.

In the spring the garden is resplendent with tulips. We think of tulips as Dutch, but they were first cultivated in Turkey during the Ottoman Empire. The bulbs arrived in Holland during the 16th century and tulip mania exploded.

Outside, my tour guide to the Hippodrome was waiting.

Turkey itinerary, click to enlarge

Fulya the tour guide from Orion collected the tour group from Istanbul airport at 0530 and delivered us to our hotel in Taxim Square. En route she pointed out places of interest—a Roman aqueduct from the 4th century, the Sea of Marmara beyond those buildings, the wall of Constantinople, the Bosphorus strait, the Golden Horn—casually rattling off names from Byzantine and Ottoman history as if they were the people next door. Because they are the people next door.

In Turkey history isn’t dry textbook material; it’s a living presence. For instance they’re building a metro line under the Bosphorus, the strait that separates Asia from Europe. Fulya explained that 97 percent of Turkey is in Asia and 3 percent in Europe; the people who live on the Asian side take the very efficient ferry across the Bosphorus to go to work in the European part. So a metro line was designed. But while they were digging underwater, they discovered the remains of an ancient Roman harbor with 35 well-preserved shipwrecks, a major archaeological find. So construction of the metro was halted while archaeologists went through the site.

By 0615 I was in my room at Best Western Eresin Hotel in Taksim Square. It’s newly-renovated, efficient, rather narrow beds but comfortable, popular with tour groups.

By 0800 I was having second breakfast (the first had been served inflight at 3:30 in the morning) at the Terrace: coffee, borek, sausage, yogurt with honey and I don’t know what its Turkish name is, but in Indian restaurants it’s called gulab jamun.

By 0830 we were on the bus to Topkapi Palace, seat of the Ottoman Empire.

I’m about to pass out so I’ll explain these photos when I’m online next.

The Voynich Manuscript. Photo from the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive.

Its name sounds like the title of a Robert Ludlum thriller, and it has bamboozled generations of spies. An emperor reputedly once owned it, the Jesuits later acquired it and Yale University now has the infuriating thing. For those in the know, all that is needed is to roll one’s eyes and mutter about the Voynich Manuscript, which was discovered (or, technically, rediscovered) a century ago this year.

Wisely, Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library decided to be open about so controversial an item, and the entire manuscript has been [external] posted online for scrutiny. There, one finds an object that initially does not seem to merit the fuss.

Scott Van Wynsberghe: Deciphering the mysterious Voynich Manuscript

We don’t know, but many years ago a psychic told us that Noah’s Ark landed on Mount Arayat in Pampanga.

“Umm…not Mount Ararat in Turkey?” we asked.

“Mount Arayat,” she declared. “The scribes made a typo.”

8 Alleged Resting Places of the Ark of the Covenant

Photo from Save Your Heritage

10. Nabta Playa
From 7000 and 6500 BCE, an incredible urban community arose in what is today the Egyptian Sahara. The people who lived there domesticated cattle, farmed, created elaborate ceramics, and left behind stone circles that offer evidence that their civilization included astronomers as well.Archaeologists believe the peoples of Nabta Playa were likely the precursor civilization for the great Nile cities that arose in Egypt thousands of years later. Though the Nabta civilization is today located in an arid region, it arose at a time when monsoon patterns had shifted, filling the playa with a lake and making it possible for a large culture to bloom.

10 Civilizations that Disappeared Under Mysterious Circumstances in io9.

We still haven’t visited the Maitum anthropomorphic jars, created around 110 BC by unknown artisans and used as burial vessels. These jars were discovered at the Ayub cave in Maitum, Saranggani Province.

A page from 10,000 Years of Art by Phaidon Books.

When at brunch I heard that former National Museum consultant John Silva had fired a broadside at the former (short-lived) board of the National Museum, and that the recently-resigned museum director Jeremy Barns had returned fire, I allowed myself to entertain the hope that we were in the midst of a real, all-out Culture War. There’s nothing like a Culture War—Verbal battles waged by smart people with large vocabularies! Polysyllabic insults unleashed! (I blow my nose at you! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!)

Naah, it’s still about politics.

John Silva vs Jeremy Barns.

Bert wants to know why the newspaper’s website is still Beta.