_yawn_

I am sitting in the apartment looking out onto the Bosphorus with a cup of tea about to eat some dinner. Today Pete and Leah are off sleeping in some caves so Sarah and I decided to take a recovery day. We just hung out, bought some food, and walked around the neighbourhood a bit. Yesterday was more exciting though.

Yesterday we hit up the Grand Bazaar. I can attest that it is Grand! It was originally built to spur commerce in the city and I’d say it’s still doing a pretty good job of that 600 years later. The whole thing is covered and labarynthine. It’s crazy, check it out, here is the satalite picture view, you’ll get some idea of what I’m talking about:

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=&sll=41.01075,28.968673&sspn=0.002089,0.005493&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=&ll=41.010698,28.968287&spn=0.002089,0.005493&t=k&z=18

There is no sky under any of that mass of red and white rooves. Windows yes, but the whole thing is covered.

There is even stuff going on before you get to the covered part. Down a tiny little alley just as the bazaar starts you can find the floor of Turkey’s currency market. Well, it’s not off the alley, it _is_ the alley. This back-room currency exchange started when currency trading was illegal but after trading became legal in the 80’s the market just stayed in the alley. Now these guys represent brokerages that represent banks and do $25 million worth of trading every day in their beat up leather jackets in the dark with tourists gaping at them. Totaly crazy.

We spent most of our time yesterday in the antiques area. There was three genre of stores in the antiques section: jewelry, pocket watches, and things made of brass. I really liked the brass stores. Sextants, a grappling hook, and 100 year old coffee grinders all stuck out. I particularly liked this section because it wasn’t very touristy. It was all quite expensive and interesting and clearly for people who know what they are doing. There was just so much neat stuff all jumbled together. Besides the many many watches it was almost all different. The antique section felt like it was going to be hard to top so we decided to wander on after we finished exploring it. We are definitely going back to see more of the Bazaar another day.

After finding some cheap and tasty Donair’s for lunch we found our way to the Spice Market and holy smokes, Crowded! It was amazingly busy. The spice market is the same closed-in kind of place as the Bazaar but is much smaller. Stores are mostly selling… well… spices. As well as tea, honey, candy (mmmmmm baklava), meat, and the occasional trinket. Sarah bought some Orange tea and in the back of the store it smelt _amazing_. It was like living in the spice cabinet of an Indian restaurant. I just wanted to eat the air.

We bought baklava, tea, honey, dried figs, and a keychain. But after an hour in the Spice Market it was time to find some personal space. Luckily Topkapi Palace, which takes up a huge amount of space in the old city, has an amazing park in it. Which we took full advantage of. It is green and quiet and has a lot of space. Heron’s nest in the tall wide trees by the tens and bright tulips line the paths. After a walk through we decided to wander home until our dinner reservation.

Elif had suggested a restaurant out by Babylon and had also been willing to make us reservations. After her suggestion of the show at Babylon it seemed like extreme foolishness not to try the restaurant. We arrived at 9 and decided to do their set course and all you can drink for 55 turkish lira, which is like 40 CAD. I’m not going to talk for the others but this dinner didn’t really work for me. Yes I got smashed on Raki but the food was pretty underwhelming. Especially considering how great the food has been so far. They supplied many dishes but none of them were that interesting and none of them were that good. Sarah and I prepared ourselves dinner tonight and it was much much better and much much cheaper.

In fact all we did was head up to the grocery store and supplement our already well stocked vegetable collection with some sausage, bread, and kofte (a spicy meat pate). Add Efes to taste and serve with a breathtaking view of the Bosforus.

Good god I’m enjoying this so far.

Day 2.

Alright, time to see one of the seven wonders of the world!

The Hagia Sophia is pretty amazing. It’s one of the few structures in the world I have any particular interest in seeing. I mean there is steeped in history and there is _steeped in history_. Is the Hagia Sophia is the most interesting buiding in the most interesting city in the world? Might be. Plus it still looks awesome. That shit looks contemporary. If someone built that today it would be all over the architecture magazines. No wonder it had such a massive influence on architecture the world over. Every mosque in the city (and there are a lot of mosques in Istanbul) looks like a mini Hagia Sophia.

We got up early and had a great breakfast at a local coffe place. Sarah and I split a classic Turkish breakfast. Which was crazy good. It’s got all kinds of stuff in it. I’m just going to link you to a site with a good description. Suffice to say great bread + great butter-cream-stuff + great honey = really great. We wiled the morning away eating, drinking, chatting, and watching cabs blow past eachother on what should really be a one way street.

Morning meal dispatched we picked up some essentials for the apartment (pomagranites!) and wandered down to catch a tram across the golden horn. Our first experience with public transit in Istanbul was with MUNI-like trains running on sometimes their own lane and sometimes in traffic. They are really nice. Cheap, clean, and they run often. We enjoyed the view as we crossed the Galata bridge which seperates the old city from the rest of Istanbul. The bridge crosses the Golden Horn near the point that the Byzantines strung a massive chain across the estuary to stop anyone from messing with their port. Twice invading armies were so stymied by this chain that they actually lugged their boats overland to drop them in the Horn on the other side. No chain today, but it’s very pretty, and very busy as it is Parliment/Children’s day! The holiday celebrates the first sitting of parliment (thank you Ataturk) by replacing all the members of parliment with children for a day. on the docet? Presumably free icecream and less math classes.

Anyway things were pretty busy down at the Hagia Sophia which is also across from the Blue Mosque. Luckily as we were staring at the line in dismay we were aproached by Ibrahim Yerli. He claimed his status as a tour guide would get us through the line without having to wait. Of course we’d have to hire him as a guide first. Usually this kind of thing is bad news. It’s going to be some kind of scam. But Ibrahim, an energetic man in his 50s, seemed trustworthy. We also genuinely liked the idea of having a guide, he didn’t want any money until after the tour, and the line was really long so we agreed. Well shit, right decision!

Ibrahim was an amazing guide! He used to be a teacher and it showed. He was enging, energetic, and knew his history. With something like the Hagia Sophia it’s great to have a guide. It has so much history layered over itself you just wouldn’t know what was going on and how things had changed without a knowledgable guide. The high point for both Sarah and I was spotting the changes made when the Hagia Sophia went from being a church to being a mosque. Churches have a lot of crosses. Mosques? Not so much. Every cross in the whole place had to be removed, remodeled, or covered up. Which made for a great game of spot the cross. The best one, which Ibrahim pointed out, was on a set of giant bronze doors. The giant bronze doors had previously had giant bronze crosses on them. Simple solution to that problem: Smash off the two arms of the cross and leave the long stick behind as a decorative feature. Worked great! You’d never notice it used to be a cross if someone didn’t point it out.

Other high points? The deep wells worn in the marble floors by guards standing beside the emperor’s entrance, the magnificent columns stolen from all over the ancient world to speed up construction, and the sheer magnificence of being inside the Hagia Sophia. What an amazing building to be inside. It is just breath-taking.

Anyway, I highly recomend Ibrahim yerli as a Hagia Sophia tour guide if you are ever in need.

From there we did some lunch (which was nothing to write home about, so I won’t) and the cistern. The cistern is pretty neat too. But I’m growing sleepy and the hagia Sophia really stole the day. Tomorrow the plan is to check out the Grand Bazaar (which always makes me think of the Tea Party again).

Oh wait, I did want to mention this egyptian obylisk. An emperor several hundred years ago pilfered the top third of a massive obylisk built by the egyptians several thousand years ago. They plopped it down on top of a base exalting the emperor and the games he ran at the Hippodrome. To the side there was also a monument to how hard it was to raise the obylisk. Which seems a bit much. Considering the egyptians built and raised it when it was three times as big.

But what really stood out to me was the graphic design. We spent all day walking around third century Byzantian architectural and graphic design. When we saw this bit of egyptian design from 1400 BC it was like being ripped thousands of years into the future. It’s design is so clean where Byzantian architecure is ornate and so crisp where Byzantean is shaded. It is so single minded and made of such single minded elements. It was like finding a 60’s design magazine in ancient Rome. I have some understanding of why the world went nuts for the stuff back in the 20’s.

Alright. Now I really am off to bed. Tomorrow the Bazaar and hopefully the bizarre.

First night in Istanbul was pretty amazing!

We touched down at 5:30pm local time and got into our apartment at about 8:00pm which is basically 8:00am pacific. We all felt surprisingly awake despite having not slept at all during the 20 hours of travel so it was time to hit the town!

Lucky for us our landlord Elif was quite willing to let us tag along with her as she and her husband hit up Club Babylon for some local music. Which was lucky for us, not only for the music tip-off, but also for helping us find the place. This district of Istanbul (we’re kind of near Taksim) is crazy! It’s clear that the city has just been building up on top of itself for thousands of years with little input from city planners. The streets are all exactly the width of a car, they ramble up and down the undulating terrain in labyrinthine patterns and are chock a block with tea houses and ancient looking apartment buildings. It is a thing to behold.

So we arrived at Babylon with about 1/2 hour to kill before the show started. Babylon, by the way, is spelled with a 1-in-a-0 on/off symbol. Which made me assume it was a geek bar, which made me feel at home. We got to try the local beer for the first time! Our driver was all “you have to try Effes, it’s the best istanbul beer!”. But it also appears to be the only Istanbul beer so it was a pretty easy choice when we sauntered up to the bar. I approve of Effes pilsner. It’s not great, but it doesn’t have the sickly taste of a Molson. It’s tastey enough and even at the club it was like 3$ Candaian so big win. We also had a few Efe Raki which I was looking forward to. Raki is _the_ Turkish liquer. It’s got this Ouzo/Absinthe thing going on so it’s my kind of drink. They serve it in a glass mixed with water along with another glass of water, and I can attest that it is a nice drink indeed. Although much more expensive at like 10$ CAD. We were almost the only ones drinking at the show. I discovered later this is because the booze at shows is considered too expensive and people mostly get their drinking in before and after. Although having witnessed the first night of a three day weekend I would say there was generally less drunkeness than a typical Canadian night out.

The club really was more of a concert than a club. Which is awesome by me since I kind of hate clubs and the music was fucking rad! It was a band called Baba Zula. They played this Turkish folk/rock/regae music that was so fucking cooool because it was all middle-eastern sounding but also rocked the house (think early Tea Party). Their lead man played an electrified Tambur wich is Turkey’s historic solution to the guitar/madolin/shamisen problem. Their bongo dude was crazy. I had no idea you could do that with bongos. All the stoned undergrads in the world combined cannot hold a candle to this guy. Plus belly dancing, sexual inuendo, and political commentary (although most of that was in turkish). They put on quite a show (and the Raki helped get through things when they dipped into the reggae spectrum)!

From there we wandered (not stumbled I’m happy to say) out to find our first meal since the plane. Which was also my first real meal in over 24 hours since I don’t eat on planes. Elif pointed us to the fish district with instructions to obtain Mussels. And obtain mussels we did! 2$ for 3 Mussels stuffed with rice and delicious delicious spices. I also had a lamb intestine sandwich which is, in my opinion, the perfect bar food. The other’s don’t share this opinion.

We managed to get home thanks to Leah, Sarah, a map, and only a couple wrong turns to fall unconcious at about 1:00am local time. What a perfect way to start off Istanbul!

Alright. We are about to be off to Turkey and the Mediteranean!

We are leaving today from Seattle with my cousins Pete and Leah after a month of hanging out in B.C. Thanks to Micheal Bayne and Natalie for putting us up for a night in Seattle and showing us around. Their place is crazy. It used to be a kind of small theatre space so it has scuff marks all over the ground excepting a stage-shaped rectangle and it has theatre lighting on the ceiling! How do you top that? Sarah took the opportunity to get some fantasy shots in. We also played tag, did cartwheels and got in some office-chair curling in their huge space.

B.C. was pretty awesome. We have some good pictures that still have to make it online. Played some awesome 8 player starcraft games with the whole family! Is your family that cool? My Mum agressively expands to swamp out her opponents with hydras. What’s your Mum’s Starcraft strat?

We also went on a picture taking expedition for my cousin Ariel with the express purpose of finding some animals to take pictures of. Doomed cause right? Never happen. Well turns out we found a tiny salamander, various bugs and slugs (one of which ended up on Sarah’s nose), and a freaking Tree Frog! So massive success on that front. Pics to come.

Here is hoping that our flight to Turkey is equally sucesful and that no volcanoes get it into their heads that we won’t be flying today.

Pics for this and future legs can be found on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/apes_abroad/

I’ve been playing Spelunky all day and just wanted to get a few thoughts out of my head.

Most importantly: Spelunky is Nascar racing.

At some point I was trapped in a hotel room and ended up watching the Rednecks Turning Left show. I discovered that cars break down alot in Nascar. There are all sorts of things that can go wrong in Nascar from mechanical difficulties to cars running into eachother. What is interesting is that the percentage chance of something going wrong is proportional to how hard you’re driving your car. So if you take off like a hare you’re car is going to fall apart and you’re going to lose. But if you’re slow like a turtle everyone will pass you and you’ll lose. So Nascar is the game of balancing the two goals of going fast and not breaking down. It’s fundamentaly a calculus problem. Which seems to be amusing to the human brain.

Spelunky is almost exactly the same thing. But in Speluky speed is replaced by collecting gold.

Fascinatingly the goal in spelunky is not to beat a set number of levels. It is to get 100,000 gold to the guy standing at the end of level 4. But you can make multiple trips to fill him up. So if you take him 50,000 the first time you play and 50,000 the 2nd time then you’re done. But you can also play through ten times and take him 10,000 gold each time.

Spelunky is also fucking hard. Making breakdowns inevitable. So the longer you spend in the level the more likely you are to die. But the only way to get more gold is to spend longer in the level.

So you have to do the same kind of calculus Nascar teams do. What is the optimal amount of gold to grab each time through the level? If you try to get all 100,000 in one trip then you may die hundreds of times before you make it. But if you just grab 1,000 you have to play it at least 100 times!

This is a fantastic meta-game that gives each run purpose and meaning as every play you make is seen in the light of this risk/reward calculus.

What would make Spelunky really awesome is if Derek explained to you that this guy who wants 100,000 gold exists instead of making you wander off to the Spelunky Wiki to figure out how the fuck to save your progress.