(day 3) hidden palace

I made a new friend at breakfast this morning. He was eating breakfast near me and asked if I was the one that had left the hostel early this morning. Puzzled, I said no, I had been in the hostel all morning (it was only around 8:30am). Then I laughed and asked, "oh wait, did you see a short asian girl with blonde hair this morning? yah that wasn't me, there's two of us running around here". Last night at the terrace I had met a girl named Lily from Houston, she is Korean-American (but pretty American), is short, has very platinum blonde hair, and quit her job to go to Germany to see if she could pursue her dreams of a career in the music industry there. Very sweet girl, I enjoyed talking to her. But anyway it just goes to show that even seven thousand miles away from home you will still find people like you, and also, that you are not as special as you think. ;)

Anyway my new friend works at the hostel as the night shift front desk. He looked Hapa but spoke English with a Russian accent, but turns out he is from Uzbekistan! The only thing I know about Uzbekistan is that it is near many other -stan's (that gave me a lot of trouble during World History map memorization), and that it is notoriously hard to go visit. It is one of the hardest countries to get a visa, I'm not sure why.

His name is Ali, short for Ah-lee-sha (I don't know how to spell it, but it sounds like Alicia), and he's quite a character. He has lived in many other countries (Russia, Greece, Germany, ...) and has been in Istanbul for a year, but is going back home at the end of the month. Since he's leaving, he decided to go around and see all his favorite places in Istanbul again. So when I said I was going to Topkapi Palace he said he would come along, and I for one was very glad to have a buffer to ward away all the Turkish hawkers.

Joining our merry band of two was a Taiwanese guy living in Seattle named Kurt. I had chatted with him and Lily the night before. He's a PhD student that found a way to use water as a renewable energy source (albeit very inefficiently). I saw a picture of his "water battery" that was lighting a tiny LED light. Science. Bizarre.

Anyway we started off for Topkapi Palace, but Ali said he wanted to show us something first. We wound through some narrow streets, finally stopping at an innocuous looking restaurant. Walking past the entry gate and through the courtyard, we suddenly see this sign:

Followed by a set of rickety and dusty steps descending into the ground....

Ancient Roman ruins, hidden right under this street of restaurants! How cool is that. It felt super Indiana Jones.

Unlike the Hagia Sophia and other restored Roman buildings that I had seen, this one was still quite crumbly and the whole area being restored felt a little unsafe. I had wondered how much of these old buildings were original and how much were added during restoration, and this gives me a pretty good answer I think -- the stones and the structure are kept intact, but I think much of the mortar is replaced.

According to a plaque, this is the Great Palace (Palatium Magnum) whose construction was started by Constantine I, and Byzantine emperors continued to live here (among other palaces) until the 11th century (the start of the final decline of the Byzantine Empire).

The section of the palace we were in was where the foreign envoys were hosted.

They were still in the process of removing rubble out of the structure, which we heard through the flimsy and shuddering walls (the whole building was shaking a little).

The domed ceiling of one of the small chambers. It's amazing how good the construction is, I guess that's how it survived for 2000 years.

Through a narrow staircase. Like, look at that arch. It's so perfectly place it looks like machine work.

There wasn't a whole lot to explore and even though I'm sure it's safe, the threat of a cave-in felt all too real to me, so we didn't linger very long. It was really, super cool though. I was really thankful I met Ali that morning and that he showed us such a neat place, I certainly would never have stumbled across it on my own.