We are standing at one of the many courtyards within the palace grounds
Today we went to Topkapi Palace. It was built by a sultan in the late fourteen hundreds, and was passed down from father to son, sultan to sultan until the early twentieth century. We saw the weapons room, which was really cool, and would've been my favourite, if not for the treasury, which we saw at the end. We also got to walk throughout the harem, which is a big building where the sultan kept his four hundred concubines. A concubine is . . .
basically a nice word for hooker. The guide either said "concubine" or "slave woman". So this palace is basically the sultan's walled guarded mansion, with a big building for four hundred personal "slave women". We were walking through the vast stone halls of the harem, and it was hard to imagine, but the guide said that it used to be all gilded and carpeted and tiled, but when the British came, they stripped the palace down to its bare stone walls. It would've been cool if they had restored the palace to what it would've been like, but alas, I had to use my imagination.
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A view of Istanbul from the palace grounds
When we left the harem, we saw the treasury, which, strangely, the British had somehow missed. Huge thrones made of gold and jewels, a crystal box of emeralds, and a giant diamond for the sultan's turban. We left the treasury, and the museum. We bought a cup of tea and walked back to our hotel to pack up. When we had packed up, we waited for an hour and then got on a tour bus going to Ephesus.
Birch
Birch
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