Dolmabahce and the Military Museum

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted, it's been a crazy week and half. Last week was jammed packed with events from morning to night, but it was great.

Last Wednesday: Dolmabahce Palace and the Military Museum

We met at Taksim at 9:30 (the least harmful of the single-digits, haha) to take the bus over to the palace. When we got there I was already overwhelmed at the grandeur of the grounds, everything was so huge and ornate seeming. It was destined to be a very different experience from that at Topkapi. We wandered around the outside for a while taking pictures of this and that and then decided to head back up to the front entrance of the palace to begin our guided tour. Also, I forgot to mention that a journalist that some of the group members had met the night before had met us at the palace because he was interested in interviewing some of us, I was not interested. Anyway, so we got to the front and stood in a huge blob behind a huge group of Asian tourists. In order to enter the palace everyone had to put little plastic booties over their shoes, they were pink, looked like shower caps, and looked hilarious on everyone (especially ones wearing rainbows). After putting on our booties we joined a huge tour group, to big to actually hear anything that the guide was saying. Thankfully we had a pamphlet that gave little snippets about each room and besides we were all to busy gawking at the rococo-ness of the place to really care about all the minute details. We proceeded all around the place seeing grand rooms, apartments, hamams, entertaining halls, bedrooms, and of course the room where Ataturk died. After exploring both floors we exited and proceeded to get some Dankek and su from the Harem Cafe because we were all sort of fading by this point. Then we went through the harem, which was a series of lounges and apartments used by the women of the harem. It was nice and all but it wasn't Topkapi's harem which will always be the coolest : ) We wrapped up the tour with lunch at a cafe near the palace and the journalists proceeded to ask some political questions to those at the other end of the table. I ordered a pizza and wondered how sunburned I'd be by the end of the day. ha

Next was David and Kevin's site project, the military museum. We hailed 3 taxis and headed over there. Outside of the museum was a huge canon barrel, big enough for Kristina and Zoe to climb into. David and Kevin lead us inside and began describing some of the items and the history behind them. I'm not one to really care for looking at tons of relics, but I found it very interesting to learn more about the specifics of the fall of Constantinople and about some of the legends that surround it. Also, the exhibit on the "Armenian Issue" and the Turkish government has decided to call it was truly eye-opening. It proceeds to make the Armenians out as the instigators and has picture after picture showing Turks that were martyred. After this we headed back to collapse in the flat after a long day of museum-ing.