7/29/21

So I may have spoken too soon last time about feeling all better on the train. I spent the rest of that night shivering under my flannel and blanket. One of the first things we did once I arrived was to schedule a rapid Covid test at a drive-in site, which thankfully came back negative. Most likely, I just contracted a regular old cold due to having so much contact with strangers on this trip and having a weakened immune system from lack of sleep. This past year of my life, since last March, has been the largest stretch of my life without even a simple head cold, thanks to all of the mask-wearing, sanitizing, and hand washing, and it has been glorious, but we have to readjust to having germs in our life at some point.

I got off the train in Whitefish, Montana, where I was picked up by two of my favorite people: my parents! They flew in the night before to Missoula, rented a car, and drove up to meet me and explore nearby Glacier National Park together. I could not have made this segment of the trip work without them – there were no hotel rooms or rental cars available anywhere near any of the four train stations closest to the park, so my parents generously agreed to help me get around, themselves eager to visit the park for the first time as well. Even so, we had to play games with our timing when visiting the park, since the main road was under limited access 6am to 5pm to reduce overcrowding.

That first night we brunched on some impressively large hashbrowns before a much-needed nap at the hotel while we waited for the park to open to all visitors at 5pm. While I was in no state to go on long hikes as I’d hoped, I was determined to ride along in the car and enjoy the views at several of the look-out points along the way. We drove from the West Entrance along the Going-to-the-Sun road until Logan Pass, along the continental divide separating the Pacific watershed from the Atlantic. These were some of the most dramatic peaks I’ve seen in my life, with jagged peaks and gouged-out summits with sweeping valleys in between. Streams are everywhere, carrying fresh meltwater down the slopes. The forests and lakes and wildflower meadows are gorgeous as well, full of adorable little rodents scurrying about. The pictures are magnificent but seeing it in person is even better.

The second day, we drove around the park all the way to the East side entrance, which took about three hours, because it was less crowded and still had open reservations for the shuttle service. We returned to Logan pass and went on a 3 mile there-and-back trail to hidden lake overlook. It was crowded, but for good reason. It has a bit of everything, from alpine meadows to looming peaks on either side to mountain stream crossings and an excellent view of the namesake lake. While a large crowd of us were peering across the opposing mountain face at a group of three mountains goats, barely visible as white dots, another mountain goat wandered about 25 feet from the trail right behind us. They seemed quite accustomed to large groups of tourists gaping and taking pictures. As amazing as our visit was, we only got to see a tiny fraction of the park, and only the most highly trafficked portions. We definitely will have to return and try out some more hikes now that we know our way around a little better, and we’ll be sure to make reservations several months in advance.

I’m now on the train back, set to arrive in Indianapolis over 36 hours after our departure, with a short layover in Chicago. My parents are already home from their flight, but I’m enjoying my slower journey. I’m sitting next to a very nice man, Ignacio, who recently had a tracheostomy, preventing him from being able to speak, but we struck up a friendship by having him type out his responses on his phone, plus some charades and lip reading (which I found I am not very good at, but I improved somewhat). He is Cuban, currently living in the Northwest as a chess and poker player, and he was very sweet and eager to share his story with me and ask me about my own life. While it took a bit more effort to communicate, it was worth it seeing how happy it made him to have someone take the time to talk with him. He showed it by buying me snacks/meals every time he got something for himself, despite me insisting it wasn’t necessary.

I’m excited to have two full days at home before heading to Baltimore for a week-long materials science summer institute on quantum magnetism hosted by Johns Hopkins, my parents’ alma mater. I may or may not get around to writing a post about it, we’ll have to see! My plans for my short intermission at home are to do laundry and watch the Olympics all day. I can’t wait for Track and Field to start!

7/25/21

Wow! There’s so much I want to say about Seattle! Despite only being in the city for 48 hours, and without getting a chance to venture out into the nearby national parks, this was still one of my busiest and most fun stops on my trip. If I weren’t already moving to the Chicago area in the fall, Seattle would be at the top of my list for places to live!

The train pulled into the station at 3:30pm on Friday and I walked the two blocks over to the hostel where I had booked a room, located in Seattle’s Chinatown district just south of downtown. I stayed in a room with double bunk beds, although I got lucky and only had to share the room with one other roommate instead of three. Eager for adventure (and a late lunch), I walked over to the Pike Place market, a half-indoors multi-level conglomerate of souvenir shops, grocery stands, vendors of fresh-caught seafood, and various eateries. Taking advantage of the proximity to Puget Sound, I ordered some cod fish and chips then made my way to a spot recommended by my train neighbor Linda: Rachel’s ginger beer. They sell craft ginger beer in a variety of flavors as well as several variations on the Moscow mule cocktail. I chose the Front Porch – ginger beer with Aperol and gin. They even offer refillable ginger beer growlers, how cool!

After my late lunch/early dinner, I kept on with my walk along the shore of the sound, heading north. Ever the ambitious sort, I got it into my head that it would be fun to walk all the way to Discovery Park to watch the sunset over the mountains. Why didn’t I take a bus? Couldn’t tell you, but I keep putting myself into this type of situation. Be warned if you ever travel with me: wear your walking shoes. I finally reached the overlook spot, quite a bit after I had anticipated, just 30 minutes before sundown at 9pm. After a few selfies (ok like 20) in the golden hour light, I made the difficult decision to head back. As great as it was seeing the mountains of Olympic national park across the water, and Mt. Rainier due south (it is truly enormous and quite prominent from several points of the city), I worried about getting through the woods of the park before dark. I made it in the nick of time and found a bus station that would take me back all the way to downtown. A good thing too, as I hit my record of 14.7 miles walked on a single day of this trip.

As ready as I was for bed, I struck up a conversation with a fellow hostel resident and he convinced me to go with him to check out some of the gay bars in the Capitol Hill district (another 30 min walk, each way). I was definitely glad to have a friend to accompany me, as I’d have been too nervous to go out by myself in a foreign city. As it was, I maybe got too comfortable and had to deal with a bit of a hangover the following morning, but I was glad to have made it back safe and sound, without even a lost jacket.

My start to Saturday was thus a little later than I had planned, but I dragged myself through a cold shower and got some pastries at a bakery next door, Fuji bakery, a small shop in an unmarked building with an unassuming order window facing towards the street. Despite its quaint appearance, it has excellent reviews on Yelp and consistently had a line of customers waiting to order, so I figured it was worth trying. They specialize in malasadas, Portuguese-style fried round donuts filled with pastry cream popular in Hawai’i, that are supremely delicious. I devoured their crunchy-cream version (coated in sugar and cornflakes) as well as a beautiful blackberry croissant. Energized, I found my way to the ferry station where I hopped on a boat to Bainbridge island before noon.

Bainbridge island is the closest ferry destination you can reach from Seattle, only 30-45 minutes away, and it is famous as the birthplace of pickleball. I loved being on the water, although the wind was intense and chilling and I had forgot to bring my jacket along. On the island, I stopped for a bowl of Pho at a Vietnamese restaurant where I saw a group of girls waiting for their order, one of whom looked oddly familiar. Thankfully I happened to be wearing a Carleton college-branded face mask, so she was able to place me as a fellow classmate! She and one of her friends are both in the year below me, so while we didn’t know each other well, it was fun to say hi and chat for a bit. You never know who you’ll run into or where!

I considered renting a kayak for an hour in the harbor, but I was tired and forgot my jacket and my sunscreen, so I returned to the mainland after lunch and a short walk. That evening I took a bus up to the base of the space needle (I was advised by friends that the views from the observation deck were not worth the wait for the elevator) then found some excellent Filipino takeout at a restaurant called Jeepney’s. Seattle is historically home to a large Filipino immigrant community, so I was eager to try their cuisine while in the city. I ordered a vegetarian sisig, with mushrooms and tofu over rice instead of the traditional assorted organ meats. Cooked in soy sauce and citrus and topped with herbs, pickled veggies, mango salsa and a mayonnaise sauce, it was one of the most deeply layered foods I’ve ever eaten. Deeply savory, unquestionably funky, with creaminess and fruity sweetness added on top, it didn’t seem like it should all work together, but it melded beautifully. Clearly, I’ve been missing out on Filipino cuisine my whole life!

I woke up at six on Sunday to get my laundry done before I left. Checking out at 9am, I dropped my bags off at the Amtrak station for a small fee so that I’d be free to wander unencumbered. Originally planning on walking up to the Washington park arboretum, for lack of a good bus route to take me there, I found the lack of sleep catching up to me and stopped at Capitol Hill for lunch. I wanted to try out Chung Chun rice dog, a Korean specialty corn dog store (Ramen and potato-coated corndogs! A “corndog filled with nothing but mozzarella”, no dog in sight! Sounds odd, honestly, but it has an abundance of 5 star reviews), but I vetoed that in favor of an acai bowl with fresh fruit, as I wasn’t quite feeling up for that much grease. Later, I met with a Carleton friend, Will, who is from the Seattle area, at a green tea specialty café, where I enjoyed a matcha soft serve. It tasted like a leaf, in the best way possible. He dropped me off at the train station, where I had time to take stock and realize that I wasn’t feeling very well. I started questioning whether I was just sleep-deprived and tired, like I initially assumed, or if I was starting to get sick. I decided to get on the train, an admittedly dubious decision, but I was convincing myself that with some more rest and food I would feel a lot better – which indeed I did! And I was very meticulous about wearing my mask the entire time, just in case. I have to remember to take care of my body when traveling. While it’s exciting to try and fit in everything you can in a short period of time, it’s still important to take it easy when you need to.

The train has been gorgeous so far. I wish I could’ve rented a car and done more hiking in Olympic national park and the Cascade mountains, but I’ll just have to wait until my next visit. We just passed through a tunnel for 15 min straight, the longest in the US. Now we’re through the mountains and into the plains of western Washington. Catch you in the morning!

7/23/21

Time for the Portland update! I had a great time visiting my old high school friend Yasmin, who graduated this spring with a BFA in painting from PNCA and now lives in the city teaching art to elementary school students. She recently defended her thesis, an autobiographical documentation of key memories through a series of 23 works, that I got to watch her defend on zoom this past spring. I’ve loved watching her art develop over the years while at the same time seeing her adjust to Portland and become more confident in her identities. These transitions have definitely been related, and it goes to show that finding a safe and comfortable space and pursuing your passion can have a marked effect on your happiness and self-assuredness. (You can check out her work at https://pnca.edu/gallery/yasmin-correa).

I was very glad to have Yasmin as my city guide, for she knew all of the bus lines and metro stations like the back of her hand and helped us traverse from one corner of the city to the next with minimal hassle. The Portland public transportation system has this wonderful app that, when installed, allows you to simply wave your phone near the sensor at the front of the bus and it automatically registers your account and charges the appropriate amount, no need for a barcode or anything. Maybe this isn’t very exciting for other people and I’m just behind on my public transportation technology, but I thought this was very cool.

Portland is a very industrial-looking city, especially along the river with all of the steel bridges crossing the Willamette. There are some tall buildings downtown, but for the most part the city consists of one and two-story buildings, giving it a short profile. I came in with a stereotypical image of Portland as a hipster city, and honestly it wasn’t wrong. This was probably the first time when I’ve felt boring and ordinary for having a tattoo, and kind of lame for having just one small one. I passed so many people with artwork peering out of their shirtsleeves that I started playing a game of “spot the ink-less Portlander”. Lots of dyed hair, choppy bangs and thrifted-looking outfits as well. I like that the city has its own style and maintains a distinct identity from other cities.

Our first stop on Thursday was Powell’s bookstore, the famous three-story bookshop that offers handheld shopping baskets for those seeking to fill a whole shelf of their home library in one fell swoop. The store is divided into rooms of different color, each with a specific set of genres neatly labeled and organized. Of the nine different rooms, four of them are dedicated to nonfiction, meaning you can find a book on pretty much any subject you’re interested in, with a high degree of specificity. Several of their books are used, so if you find a slightly battered copy you can get a pretty good discount on it. Additionally, the shelves are replete with staff recommendations to help the overwhelmed shopper find their next read. I managed to leave with just one book (quite an accomplishment!), just enough to replenish my train supply but not weigh down my luggage excessively.

(If anyone is curious about my travel reading list: Trumpet by Jackie Kay, a poetic novel on gender, privacy, and the loss of a loved one; The Shining by Stephen King, a classic thriller; Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, excellent writing about a dislikeable character, that delves into sex and race in South Africa; The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers, a hodgepodge of history meets travel writing meets action movie; and Islamic Empires by Justin Marozzi, the book I’m reading right now at home as I type this, which traces the history of 15 different Islamic cities, each one representing a century from the 7^th to the 21^st).

We had lunch at a food cart, just one in the extensive fleet of food carts spread about the city. Thai, Mediterranean, and Mexican seem to be the most abundant versions, but various other cuisines are also represented. We then took a bus to Mt. Tabor, an extinct volcano in the suburbs that has since become a popular local park with beautiful trails and several green-blue historic reservoirs. Later that afternoon we took a walk along the river, crossing the Willamette on one of the pedestrian-friendly bridges and enjoying the parks set up along the riverbanks.

The train to Seattle is short and sweet, a mere three hours, and I am sitting next to a fascinating woman who worked as a geologist and has traveled all over the US and the world. Lots of her travel stories started with an unexpected opportunity to which she responded “sure, why not!”. I want to grow up to be the cool person on the train with a fun science job and endless travel stories! I am off to a good start.

7/21/21

Hello from the train to Oregon! It’s been a week since I last wrote in here and I spent the entirety of it in the Bay Area revisiting old friends, eating my favorite foods, and wandering about my old stomping grounds. This is my fourth visit to Palo Alto since graduating high school, the last time being two years ago. It’s kind of hard to believe that I used to live here only four years ago – it feels like so much has happened since then. Looking back at all of the old sites I passed by every month, every week, every day, I was reminded of all the happy memories and friendships attached to them but also of the stresses and anxieties and uncertainties that linger. It is encouraging to note that I feel more like myself now, not fundamentally different from who I was before but a little more developed and surer of myself.

            In fact, I can say that about all of the friends I met this week – everyone is the same person that they used to be, just a little bit more settled into that version of themselves. It’s pretty amazing how quickly I was able to resume conversation with my friends, most of whom I had not seen or talked to much in the past 4 years. It’s a good reminder that although friendships will naturally wane as life moves on, a strong friendship can survive periods of separation and pick up when the time is right.

            Over the course of the week, I met with old high school friends, bassoon friends, and orchestra friends who happened to be in town. In all likelihood, I was able to see so many people in a single trip because of the pandemic, with so many people either working or studying from their parents’ house. Because this was primarily a social visit, I have fewer exciting touristy activities to document, with most of my energy spent on hitting up as many of my favorite restaurants as possible. The bay area enjoys a high degree of cultural diversity, which is represented in a wide array of cuisine options; I ate Korean tofu soup, Chinese dim sum, Pakistani curries, a Filipino-Mexican fusion burrito, a Hawaiian poke bowl, my all-time favorite pepperoni pizza, and several rounds of boba and ice cream (including olive oil ice cream! I ordered it for the novelty, and it turned out to be one of my new favorite flavors). It was a week of indulgence and my wallet definitely lost a fair share of weight, but I allowed myself some extra budgetary leeway, as a treat. I did compensate slightly by avoiding all ride-sharing apps and taking lots of public transportation, the occasional carpool, or simply walking wherever I wanted to go. In fact, according to my phone I averaged 20,640 steps a day for the whole one-week period, equivalent to 7.9 miles per day. I think my body was eager to make up for the hours and hours of sitting on trains.

            The most touristy thing I did was to visit the SFMOMA, which had been under renovation throughout most of the time when I was in high school and only reopened after we had moved to Indiana. While in SF, my friend Jenny and I also walked along the Salesforce park, a recent construction in downtown that sits on the roof of a three-story building stretching the length of four city blocks. A walkway takes you on a loop of the long, skinny park passing through gardens from different regions of the world: California, the Mediterranean basin, the Chilean coast, South Africa, and Western Australia – all regions sharing a “Mediterranean” climate of dry summers and rainy winters. I had fun seeing the great diversity of plants and flowers, a collection which never seemed to repeat itself once along the length of the park. If I had more time, I would have enjoyed a beach day in Pescadero or half moon bay, or some more hiking in the foothills, but lacking a car I will just have to wait until my next visit. Next stop is Portland, I’ll recount my adventures there on Friday’s train.

7/12/21

Colorado was a blast! Lots to catch up on. The rest of the train ride was nice, I had an empty seat next to me, so I was able to lay down flat across the seats, curled up, and get a few hours of sleep. I fell asleep as we entered Nebraska and woke up with the sunrise in Eastern Colorado. I get the sense that I didn’t miss out on much. After about an hour at the Denver station, we started climbing up the hills. For this portion of the trek, they start enforcing shifts in the observation car, with the largest windows, due to the popularity of this scenic stretch of track. Luckily, I got a seat early and I got to enjoy the dramatic slopes, rivers, reservoirs, and 27 tunnels between Denver and the next stop, Fraser.

            At Fraser I was picked up by another of my closest college friends, Anya (whom you may remember from our Jordan adventures together), who had kindly agreed to host me for the weekend. She lives in Idaho Springs, a small town of less than two thousand people in the mountains outside of Denver. I scarfed down a rather large sandwich (train food leaves something to be desired, both in taste and in price), took a much-needed shower, then hopped back in the car to drive to Mt. Evans.

            After the road passes above the tree line you enter the realm of the alpine sheep. They are everywhere, walking across the road by themselves or in packs, minding their own business – unless you get too close, in which case they stare at you with blank eyes and approach menacingly and you roll up your windows in fear. It was quite an ordeal trying to get from our parking spot to the trailhead due to the roaming packs of wild sheep.

            Mt. Evans is one of 58 “14-ers” in Colorado – mountain peaks over 14,000 feet (in this case, 14,264 feet). It is also the highest paved road in the United States, with a road leading up just short of the peak. It’s a great way to summit a 14-er while only having to hike about 5 minutes! However, be warned: the drive up is not for the faint of heart. It is a narrow, winding road that is not particularly well-maintained, flanked by steep drops and no guardrails. And then, if that wasn’t enough, about halfway up you see a sign that reads “road narrows” and narrow it does. I was also very excited to see a warning sign for “road damage ahead”, that certainly boosted my confidence. Lucky for me, I had an experienced mountain driver and Colorado native at the wheel.

            Another piece of advice: going from <1000 feet elevation to 14000 feet in the span of about 24 hours is not a trivial matter. I did alright, other than a few spots of lightheadedness and shortness of breath, but we were very cautious and made sure to be hydrating constantly, snacking, and taking it slow. At the peak, we were high enough to look out and see the clouds at eye level – in fact, we were consumed by a cloud about 5 minutes after summiting, so we got lucky with our timing.

            On Sunday we chose a more substantial hike up Herman’s Gulch, a rather steep out-and-back trail up to an alpine lake. On the way we passed streams, wildflower meadows, rocky peaks, and patches of evergreen forests. I’ve missed this kind of mountainous terrain so much; it reminds me of our trips up to Lake Tahoe as kids. It has been at least 6 years since I last hiked in the mountains, long overdue.

            Anya’s parents arrived that evening from Boise and took us out to dinner at a brewery. I had met them briefly at graduation, so it was great to see them again and get to know each other a little better. They even gifted me a four-pack of the beer I ordered to take with me, a wonderfully bitter double IPA. *Future Gregor notes that after carrying these in my luggage for three weeks, they arrived safe to Indiana and tasted great once chilled.

            I’m writing this on train #2 from Fraser, Colorado to Emeryville, just outside of Oakland. We passed through Glenwood canyon, which was so tall that I could only see the tops of the rock walls using the ceiling windows in the observation deck. Our train attendant informed us beforehand that the river was nicknamed “moon river”, and we got to find out why – twice. Next up is Grand Junction, then Salt Lake City tonight, Reno in the morning, then Sacramento and finally the bay area by tomorrow afternoon.

7/9/21
Per my aunt Jeanne’s request, I am renewing my travel-writing series, this time documenting a journey slightly closer to home. I found that writing down an account of my travels and my thoughts throughout was a great way to memorialize it both for myself and for others, and I am able to include so much more detail and authenticity in my account when writing by myself as opposed to relating it orally, in conversation. I hope you enjoy what I have to say, but the process of writing this is fun for me regardless.

            This morning, my dad and I drove from our home in Carmel, Indiana to the Union train station in Chicago where he dropped me off on an Amtrak train headed west. This will ultimately be a three-week long solo train journey, although I’ll be accompanied by various friends along the way. While I have certainly traveled farther and longer, I am excited to be doing it so independently. It is the perfect opportunity to go off and have some fun and adventure after over a year of caution and staying home and canceling plans. It’s pretty cliché but this really does feel like the time in my life when I am supposed to be going out and meeting new people and saying yes to new experiences, and while I am ever so grateful for my family and how well we get along and for the ability to spend my senior year of college on campus surrounded by my friends, this trip is the kind of thing I’ve been longing for. Plus, it may be my last opportunity to embark upon a longer trip before I become engrossed in grad school and am forced (I mean, have the privilege) to spend my summers stuck in the lab working and pretending to be an adult.

            So far, the trip has gone off with only minor hitches. We hit a bad patch of stop-and-go traffic on the drive up that delayed us an hour. I had planned to meet up with my college friend Miles for lunch at the French market just a few blocks away from the train station, but we decided to call it off due to our delayed arrival in the city. Unfortunate, but at least we had given ourselves extra time and I arrived at the train station with an hour to spare before departure. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Jordan it’s that traveling is an exercise in patience and adaptability, and that was certainly true from the very start of my journey.

            I’m two and a half hours into the first train leg as I’m writing this, but I am already convinced that train travel is loads better than plane or even car. I met a woman while waiting to board, Daria, and we hit it off and chatted about our trips and our lives. Some old lady a row behind me found an (unopened) bag of strawberry Pocky and distributed it about the cabin, all of us laughing at the easy camaraderie of our carriage. There is quite enough leg room in coach, and the seats recline nicely and have leg rests and footrests. Our cabin is only half full, but I bet that even at full capacity it is still quite roomy. All luggage can go overhead for free, and there is no long security process to wade through. You barely even have to wait in line to board, since they check your ticket after departure. I haven’t yet checked out the snack/dining car, but I am excited. And while Illinois is not the most exciting state for sightseeing, the view is still nice. We’ll see if I change my tune by the end of this trip, but I hope not.

            I decided not to bring my laptop, so I am journaling in an actual journal, by pen. I’m not looking forward to retyping this later, since my handwriting is atrocious the way this train is rocking, but oh well.

Hello once more! It sure has been a long time since I last posted on here. I never quite got around to finishing my blog post on Istanbul – winter term snuck up on me quicker than expected – but luckily, I thought ahead and made notes for my future self. At the time of writing this, I have completed winter term at Carleton and I am back at home for the foreseeable future. I hope you enjoy!

Day 0:

The Carleton squad reunited once more for a final adventure in Istanbul before making our return to the frozen north for winter term. We actually planned this trip exceedingly far in advance, having booked our tickets and Airbnb way back in May when we committed to the program. In addition to Rosemary, Anya, and Margot, we would be meeting up with our friend Nick, another Carleton Arabic student. Nick studied in Amman over the summer with a different program before spending fall semester studying political science at UCL in London.

There’s a student in our program, Clark, who happened to also spend his fall break in Malta, independent of our own plans. A week later, when we took our trip to Palestine, we saw him on the bus towards the land border, again by coincidence. It so it turns that he was also visiting Turkey after the program’s end, and he was on our flight! Funny how these things happen.

Like all travel days, it wasn’t particularly fun, but we made it safe and sound. I had a mild panic about getting my tourist visa, which was entirely my own fault. Turkey offers e-visas that take about five minutes to fill out and obtain online, but they require you to submit your request 24 hours in advance. Me being silly, I kept putting it off until the morning of the plane, when I was blocked by their website from submitting my application. A mild panic ensued after reading online that they ceased offering visas upon arrival, but Anya assured me that was not actually the case. In the end, it took all of 10 seconds to purchase my visa when we landed in Ankara, and it only cost me $10 extra. Turned out fine, but I was lucky, and I’ll make sure to be more prepared next time.

We hit another speedbump when our luggage didn’t arrive at the carousel in Istanbul after our second flight, but it turns out they held all of the luggage from international flights separately and we managed to find it with a little effort. The taxi to our apartment was a fun exercise in Google translate and made me appreciate how much a little Arabic came in handy when I was in Jordan. Because we landed on the Asian side of the city and our apartment was on the European side, we got to cross over one of the bridges spanning the Bosphorus. It was the perfect welcome to the city, with all of the lights of the city shining through the night and reflecting off of the water. It looked very grand.

When we arrived, we took a few minutes to catch up with Nick and explore the apartment before dividing up the beds and heading to sleep. It’s crazy how tired travel makes you, despite it being a day full of sitting and waiting. As for the apartment, it was as vertical as an apartment could be. It took two sets of tight stairs just to get to the first floor, which held one bedroom and the bathroom. The next landing had the kitchen and another bedroom, and the third was the third bedroom. It was quite a lot of stairs to drag our luggage up, but it was kind of fun.

Day 1:

Unfortunately, our trip was marked by illness, and Anya had to remain in the apartment for our first full day in Amman. Not wanting to do anything too exciting without her yet still wanting to go explore, we decided to walk around the city and see some of the neighborhoods on foot. Most of the touristy destinations are on the European side in the district of Fatih, which includes the oldest parts of the city. Our apartment was still on the European side but in Beyoglu, a district separated from the old city by an inlet of water called the Golden Horn. The city is quite pedestrian-friendly, especially compared to Amman, and it took us about an hour to cross over to the old city from our apartment.

The streets of Istanbul are beautiful and surprisingly quiet. Most of the lanes are just wide enough for a single car, although they aren’t one-way streets. They say Istanbul combines elements of European and Middle Eastern cities, but to me it felt much closer to its European counterparts. Actually, the proximity of the water, colorful buildings, nearby skyscrapers, and rolling hills reminded me a little bit of San Francisco. Like Amman, there are plenty of cafes, although it differs in the abundance of Turkish flags. Turks tend to have an abundance of national pride and are similarly proud of their country’s founder and first president, Ataturk. Famous for secularizing the country despite its large Muslim majority, his image is displayed in many shops and streets of the city.

We ate lunch at a café in the Balat neighborhood and did some shopping in some of the souvenir and vintage stores before heading back to check on Anya. Turkish cuisine features primarily meat and bread, and it can be difficult to find suitable options for vegetarians (sorry Margot!). However, she managed to get by with some carefully chosen restaurants and lots of lentil soup.

That evening we explored Istiklal Cadessi (Independence street), one of the hubs of the modernized city. The street, which is fully pedestrianized with the exception of a classic red trolley that passes along it, is lined on either side by retail stores. As you walk along it in the direction of Taksim square, they tend to get more high-end. There are about ten sweets shops along its length selling baklava, Turkish delight, and other candies, so of course we had to stop and each eat a giant baklava the size of our palms. You can also find numerous vendors of simit, a type of Turkish bagel coated in sesame, and roasted chestnuts.

The street ends in Taksim square, which was constructed shortly after Turkey’s independence and is considered the heart of modern Istanbul. Adjacent to it is a huge mosque under construction, one of the initiatives of the current president, Erdogan. It stands out in the middle of the modernized, secular plaza as a replica of the classical mosques from the Ottoman Empire. The construction is strongly symbolic of Erdogan’s vision to strengthen Turkey into a regional superpower as it once was in the Ottoman era.

Day 2:

Sunday was Nick’s last full day in Istanbul (he was flying back earlier than the rest of us to spend Christmas with his family), so we decided to hit up the big sites of Hagia Sophia and the Sultanahmet mosque. Plus, Anya was feeling well enough to come with us today, so we didn’t feel guilty about leaving her out! We walked over after a quick, light breakfast in the apartment, passing the Spice Bazaar on the way. While not as large as the famous Grand Bazaar, it was full of colorful spices, nuts, cheeses, and sweets.

As we walked towards the Hagia Sophia, we kept pointing at different mosques and asking, “Is that it!?” and Anya kept having to disappoint us. The old city is full of dozens of mosques, dotting the skyline with their huge domes and pointed minarets. All of them are built in the same Ottoman-Islamic style, so from a distance it almost looks like someone copy-and-pasted the same mosque all over the city. The high density of mosques stands tribute to the long history of the city and its identity as an Islamic city for the past several centuries, although in the present day it feels more secular than, say, Amman. Compared to Amman there were a lot fewer women wearing Hijab and it was common for restaurants to serve alcohol along with dinner, which was never seen in Jordan. This in part due to a gradual secularization of Turkey and partly due to international/tourist influences in the city, but it certainly does not reflect the more rural parts of Turkey which remain much more conservative.

If you keep a close eye, you can learn to differentiate between the many mosques of the city. Depending on their design, they have anywhere from zero up to six minarets. Some come with a courtyard and gardens, others are more compact. The Hagia Sophia is particularly easy to identify in that it is the only mosque painted red, a remnant of its past as a church. Well, to be accurate, it’s no longer a mosque either; it was converted into a museum by Ataturk nearly a century ago, and no longer hosts any religious worship. As such it sports an entrance fee to all visitors, whereas the mosques are free for anyone to visit, Muslim or otherwise.

From the outside, the Hagia Sophia looks like a big old pile of square rooms stacked on top of each other, like a man-made mountain. It hides the fact that the majority of the inside is, in fact, hollow. What struck me most as soon as I entered the Hagia Sophia was simply the height of it. The dome is immense, creating a vast open space within. This style of architecture is all about the feeling of space inside, the outside is just the shell that defines its boundaries. The engineering is pretty spectacular: the central dome is supported by half domes on either side. These are held up by pendentives that are partway hidden in the walls, given the appearance that the dome is floating with little to no support. The technology was ground-breaking at the time, and there actually still exists a Little Hagia Sophia a few blocks away that was built as the test run for that groundbreaking dome design.

One of the oldest sites in the city, the Hagia Sophia was originally built on the site of a pagan temple by order of Constantine the Great, founder of the Byzantine emperor. Its original form was much humbler, consisting of a simple wooden-roofed basilica, consecrated in 360. It burned down in 404 in a riot before being rebuilt by Theodosius II in 415. It then burned again in 532 and was rebuilt by Emperor Justinian I in what is essentially the structure that stands today. He had the church constructed in just five years, which was incredible considering its size and architectural ingenuity. The dome has suffered a few partial collapses over the years, but it was always reconstructed. After the Muslim conquest in 1453, Mehmet II converted the building into a mosque. In the process, the walls were fortified to prevent collapse, four minarets were added, a mihrab (prayer niche) was built instead of an altar, and many of the original mosaics were destroyed and painted over.

Visiting the site now, one can see the competing influences of its Christian and Islamic pasts. In addition to the minarets, the building features eight enormous pendants hanging in the upper corners of the museum. The names, written in Arabic, say: Allah, Muhammad, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali, Hasan, Hussein. The first two are the names of God and his final prophet, while the following four are the four righteous caliphs. These were the four leaders of Islam after the death of Muhammad, and they are greatly respected in the Sunni tradition. The last two names are the two grandsons of Muhammad, both of whom were martyred for political motives. It’s a little curious to see their names up here because they are much more important in the Shia tradition than for Sunnis (these being the two main branches of Islam). However, they are still generally respected by Sunni Muslims, and I noticed their names in some of the other Ottoman-era mosques in the city. The Mihrab, a widespread feature of Islamic architecture, is a wall niche in the direction of prayer, towards Mecca. In the Hagia Sophia it is off-center: The original church was built to face Jerusalem, and it was easier to just place the Mihrab off-center than try and move the foundations of the building.

As for the Christian elements that still remain, the most obvious is a painting of Jesus and Mary that hangs high above the front of the church. There are also several fragments of Byzantine mosaics that remain, although the majority of them were removed. It is curious that a few of these Christian icons survived the Islamization of the site, because although Muslims recognize Jesus as a prophet, Islam bans all depictions of humans in art so as to prevent the worship of people (such as Jesus or Mohammad) instead of God. Another remnant of its Christian past is the Omphalion, a marbled area on the floor roped off to visitors. The Omphalion, meaning “navel” in Greek, is believed to have been the site of coronation ceremonies for the emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire. As such, it was the seat of power for the Byzantine emperors and the center of their world. Pretty neat!

By the way, when I was in Istanbul taking notes on my adventures during the evening, I had difficulties accessing Wikipedia as I tried to learn about the history of the Hagia Sophia. It turns out that Erdogan blocked all access to Wikipedia following certain articles on the site that insinuated that Turkey acted as a sponsor country for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda. While only a minor inconvenience for me, it is a worrying display of the restriction of knowledge by the government. Just a few weeks ago, the Turkish courts ruled the ban a violation of human rights, and access to Wikipedia was restored in January 2020, less than a month after we visited.

After visiting the Hagia Sophia, we stopped for lunch (my first time eating salmon in months!) and walked down to the Blue Mosque. The Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque (officially the Sultanahmet mosque) are about a 5-minute walk from each other and are separated by a public garden. The twin majesties of these two buildings on either side of the park is quite a view. Strangely enough, we kept seeing bald men walking through the park with bleeding scalps, drops of blood drying on their heads. We couldn’t figure out for the life of us who they were until we got back to the apartment and I googled “bloody scalp Istanbul”. It turns out that Istanbul is a hub for hair transplant operations, and people from all over the country and the Middle East fly in to pay for a full head of hair. Who knew?

While the Hagia Sophia no longer holds any religious practices, the Blue Mosque and others are open to Muslims for prayer 5 times a day, to the exclusion of all other visitors. We happened to time our visit perfectly in the one hour gap between prayer times that afternoon. While all visitors can enter the mosques for free,  they are required to remove their shoes (bags are provided to carry them while inside), dress modestly (no shorts) and all women must wear headscarves. Headscarves and large baggy skirts are provided at the entrance for those who need it. This being the most famous mosque in Istanbul, there was a bit of a line to get in, but it wasn’t that crowded on the inside.

Compared to the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque is much more recent, having been built between the years 1609 and 1616. It caused a stir at the time of its construction because it has a grand total of six minarets, which was equal to the number of minarets at the great mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam. In response, they added a seventh minaret to the Masjid Al-Haram in Mecca and there you go, problem solved. To this day, very few mosques have six minarets, but none except the Masjid Al-Haram have seven or more. The Blue Mosque also hosts a school, a hospice, and the tomb of Ahmet I.

Unfortunately, the dome of the mosque was under construction at the time of our visit, so we didn’t get the full experience, but it was marvelous to behold all the same. The walls are covered with incredible blue patterned ceramic tiles (hence the name Blue Mosque) while the ceilings are painted in intricate floral patterns. The floor, not to be outdone, is a lush red carpet with more floral patterning (and soft on my shoeless feet). The large (hidden) dome is supported by four mammoth “elephant leg” pillars and bordered by four semi domes on each side. We spent a good half an hour in there just looking at the walls and the ceilings.

The mosque was sectioned off by the religion and gender of the visitor. The front portion, about 60% of the total area, was reserved for Muslim men to pray. Even during public visiting hours you could find people praying on their own. The middle section was where visitors were allowed to walk. The back strip was a smaller area for Muslim women to pray. The uneven gender segregation reminded me of the Western Wall, where the men’s section was both larger and closer to the site of the ancient temple.

Leaving the Blue Mosque, we took one more stop at the Basilica Cistern, a short jaunt over from the Hagia Sophia. Constructed by emperor Justinian I in the sixth century, it is a giant underground cavern supported by even rows of columns. When in use, it had a water storage capacity of 100,000 tons, although it was nearly empty when we visited. It collected water from the surrounding mountainous regions for use by the residents of the city. Most of the pillars were unadorned, but one in the center was covered in tear-like motifs, said to be in honor of the hundreds of slaves who died during its construction. Two pillars in the back of the cistern are famous for incorporating giant Medusa heads at their base. No one quite knows why these heads, which were scavenged from previous ruins, were included in the cistern seeing as they would be underwater and unseen, but some suggest that they were to protect the cistern from contamination as an extension of Medusa’s power to turn enemies to stone. Tradition has it that the heads, one of which is upside down and the other sideways, were intentionally placed that way so that they wouldn’t turn onlookers to stone with their gazes.

After a pit stop at our apartment, we walked to a Turkish/Armenian restaurant called Ficcin, where I dined on some sort of crepe-quesadilla hybrid filled with potato. This was one of the restaurants that Anya had visited when she lived in Istanbul for a year with her family when she was a kid, so it was cool to revisit. Afterwards we stopped at the famous sweets store Hafiz Mustafa, primarily just to gaze at the rows upon rows of Turkish delight and baklava. Rosemary and I were seduced by the cakes they had on display and decided to each order a slice. After we told the attendant which cakes we wanted, he asked us if we wanted to go to the terrace, to which we said sure. We board this cramped little elevator and take it all the way to the top, then climb an extra flight of stairs until we emerge on the rooftop. We got to sit on the roof and eat our cakes and tea and enjoy the fresh air. We weren’t very near the edge, but had we chosen a different table we would’ve been able to look out over the crowds walking along Istiklal street. The cake, by the way, was stupendous, a sort of tres leches cake soaked in cream and sprinkled with pistachio. With waiters in fancy suits and even a dumbbell, we felt so fancy, and all together it amounted to about 7.5 USD for both cakes and the tea. Istanbul is really quite cheap for such a touristy location.

Day 3:

We began our third morning in Istanbul with a trip to the Galata tower, one of the major landmarks of the city. Now that Anya was feeling better it was Margot’s turn to get sick, and she decided to stay home, rest, and avoid the damp, chilly weather. Nick also stayed in to pack for his flight that afternoon. The tower itself was a quick 15-minute walk from our apartment in the Beyoglu neighborhood, near Istiklak street and across the Golden Horn from the Hagia Sophia and the other major mosques. It is a medieval tower built in the fourteenth century for military purposes, and as such it has stone walls built 12 feet thick to protect against attacks. After the Muslim conquest of the city it served as a prison before being converted into a watchtower for fires throughout the city. While no longer the tallest building in Istanbul by far, it stands 206 feet tall and offers an excellent view of the city. There is limited space at the top terrace, so we were fortunate to have gotten there early before the crowds appeared.

After saying goodbye to Nick and checking in on Margot, we took the bus over across the Golden Horn for more sightseeing. One of Nick’s friends had visited Istanbul before us and loaded up on bus credits before passing his bus card down to us, so we more or less had free transportation for the week. Right after crossing the Golden Horn, we stopped by the shore of the inlet to buy lunch from the fishermen docked nearby. There was only thing on the menu: fish sandwiches, with freshly caught fish grilled on the boat, skin on, and placed between sliced bread with some lettuce, onions, and lemon juice. They were fantastic! It took a little concentration and effort to pick out all of the bones that had been left in, but it was worth it for the freshness of the fish. Anya and I had heard of the fishwich vendors only that morning when we were watching clips from Rick Steves’ travel documentary on Istanbul while waiting for everyone to get dressed and ready for the day. By happy coincidence we recognized the boats from the documentary and figured we couldn’t say no.

We moved on to visit the Grand Bazaar, one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world. The core section was completed in 1461, but it stretches out beyond its original designated are into several of the adjacent streets. It is a confusing labyrinth of alleys lined with a hodgepodge of different vendors. It is somewhat organized by type of goods (jewelry, antiques, clothes, leather, carpets, pottery, art etc.) but there tends to be overlap. We gave up hope of trying to orient ourselves in there and just enjoyed wandering around and taking turns at random.

The Grand Bazaar is mostly full of tourists, and the vendors are well-aware of this and try to rip you off with every purchase. A decent haggling should let you decrease the price by at least half their original offer, but even this is probably well above the actual value. I found that prices I paid after haggling were still greater than the listed prices I found on Istiklal street, which itself is a very touristy area and probably overpriced as well. While I was a bit uncomfortable and clumsy with all of the haggling, this was Rosemary’s time to shine. They have a real knack for it and aren’t afraid to drive a hard bargain, and many of the vendors were impressed, or otherwise annoyed, by their relentless haggling.

Afterwards we visited the nearby Süleymaniye Mosque, one of the largest and greatest in the city. It was built by the master architect Sinan, considered by some to be Michelangelo’s equivalent in the Ottoman empire. He designed around 79 mosques, 34 palaces, 33 bathhouses, and many more structures besides. His Süleymaniye Mosque, one of his most famous designs, is a huge structure with four minarets and lovely courtyards surrounding it. It was much less crowded than the Blue Mosque and was not under construction, so it we got the full dome experience. While it has a somewhat less ornate interior than the Blue Mosque, it is elegant in its relative simplicity (and still rather ornate when it comes down to it). Rosemary, Anya, and I enjoyed the chance to sit on the carpet and take in the space at our own leisure. It’s difficult to describe the sense of calm that permeates these Mosques, even with the other tourists milling about, but I could’ve spent an hour or two just sitting there in silence. However, we got kicked out for daily prayers after some time.

The courtyard adjacent to the mosque were beautiful and contained the tomb of Suleiman I, one of the greatest Sultans of the Ottoman Empire and the patron of the mosque. While we ambled about and played with the cats there, we got to hear the call to prayer echoing from the nearby minaret as well as the calls from the neighboring mosques (of which there were many), creating a strange echoing atmosphere. The mosque is built on top of a hill, so we were also gifted a sweeping view of the city.

We went out that evening once more for dinner, eating Pide and Lahmacun, two types of Turkish flatbread/pizza. We decided on an early bedtime so that hopefully everyone would be feeling well-rested for the following day.

Day 4:

With Margot still sick, Rosemary, Anya, and I decided it would be a museum day. With such a long and fascinating history, it is no surprise that Istanbul boasts a large number of museums ranging from art to history and religion and beyond. Our first stop were the Istanbul Archeology Museums, which is actually a group of three adjacent museums for the price of one ticket. The main Archaeological Museum featured predominantly Greek-era art from different regions of Turkey and the Levant. We saw several statues and relief sculptures as well as rooms upon rooms filled with sarcophagi, including a mummy or two. The scale of some of these works was massive, and my eyes swam from all of the entangled limbs bursting out from the stone face in high relief. While we tend to associate the region with Turkish people nowadays, the citizens of Anatolia in ancient times were a lot closer to the Greek than to modern Turks. In fact, the ethnic Turks didn’t even arrive in Anatolia until the 11^th century with the invasion of the Seljuk empire, originally from the Central Asian steppe. That is why we find so much classical Greek art in ancient Anatolia before the introduction of the Turks and Islam.

The second museum was the Museum of Islamic Art in the Tiled Kiosk. Apparently, the word “kiosk” in Turkish means a small garden pavilion, not the newspaper stands we think of today. The word, originally from Persian, passed through Turkish then to French and finally to English to arrive at the meaning we are used to today, but this was not what the word originally meant. Anyway, this was certainly the nicest kiosk I’ve ever seen, and it displayed some of the finer works of Turkish ceramics. Turkey is known for its exquisite tiles, and especially for their blue ceramics (this is where the word “turquoise” comes from). The Tiled Kiosk had excellent examples not just of tilework but also of pottery and a mihrab, among other things.

The third museum was the Museum of the Ancient Orient, which focused on Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures. One of the coolest things in this museum was the Hieroglyphics and Cuneiform on display. Cuneiform looks about as hard to read as a surgeon’s scrawl, it looked like chicken scratch to me.

Three museums back to back was cool but tiring, so we stopped for a late lunch before heading back home. We found another one of the restaurants that Anya’s parents had recommended for us, this time specifically to try their Iskender Kebap. This type of Kebap (Kebab in English) consists of  thin slices of meat covered in tomato sauce and yogurt, over chunks of bread. Turkey has various types of Kebap other than the Shish kebab we normally think of in the US, which is grilled meat on a stick. Döner Kebap is similar the Arabic shawarma, consisting of stacks of meat grilled vertically on a rotating stick and shaved off upon serving. It’s a little disconcerting to be walking around in the morning and see the raw stacks of Döner Kebap in the windows before they’ve been cooked. There is also Cag Kebabi, which is like Döner Kebap but roasted horizontally instead of vertically. Adana Kebabi is a log made from minced meat with some spices (we were warned it would be spicy, but that was hardly the case. Spicy is not really part of Turkish cuisine, or Arabic cuisine for that matter).

During our meal, this precious stray dog wandered quietly up and sat by our feet. Istanbul, just like Amman, is dominated primarily by stray cats, but there are quite a few stray dogs as well. Unlike in Amman, which is populated by mangy, thin cats, the stray cats in Istanbul are clearly well-loved and with luxurious fur coats. The dogs are some of the most docile dogs I have ever met, I only ever saw them napping and calmly befriending tourists, never once barking or even running for that matter. By the end of the meal a second dog had wandered up, and I had to pause my meal to pet them a few minutes.

We made a pit stop at the grocery store to pick up some ingredients for dinner. Despite being away from our families for the holidays, we decided to have a joint celebration on that day, the third night of Hanukkah and Christmas Eve, by making some latkes and having a small feast. We had to improvise slightly: yogurt took the place of sour cream, and applesauce was nowhere to be found so we made our own from fresh apples, which ended up being way more delicious than the store-bought stuff anyway. It turned out sublime, and we followed our meal by watching Home Alone, except unlike Macaulay Culkin it was the kids who were abroad and our families who were home.

Day 5:

Christmas day! While we couldn’t get a tree and had decided not to give gifts to each other, we treated ourselves to a fancy brunch and a visit to the Topkapi palace. The good thing about spending Christmas in Istanbul is that everything is open! Not many Turks celebrate Christmas, but many of them wished us Merry Christmas upon seeing a group of white tourists. And you’d be forgiven for thinking the lights strung up everywhere were Christmas lights, when they in fact were for New Year’s, which is a much larger celebration in Istanbul.

We went to a restaurant near the Galata tower for a full Turkish breakfast, which is an experience everyone should have. Just for fun, we dressed up a little fancy, and they sat us in what felt like an old house masquerading as a restaurant. We sat on some couches around a coffee table and soon it was filling up with little plates of jams and cheese and meats and other delights. The jams were incredible, with chunks of preserved fruits such as kiwi and pear or otherwise nuts. The walnut jam was my favorite, I need to figure out where to find it again. They had a hazelnut spread that changed my world, and delicate clotted cream with fresh honey. This was all to be eaten with slices of warm, soft, fresh bread, or with the small little pancakes they served. On the savory side there was an avocado spread, some kind of red spiced chili paste, a bowl of fresh olives, and a variety of soft white cheese as well as cheese pancakes, grilled halloumi, and a few slices of Turkish sausage and some fried eggs. All of this was accompanied by some salads (one of shredded carrots, another of herbs and pomegranate) and menemen, a Turkish dish of eggs cooked in tomato sauce similar to shakshuka. Plus some tea and coffee, of course. We ate until we were stuffed because everything was so delicious and there was so much of it, too. By far one of my favorite meals from my time abroad, it was really quite special.

After brunch we walked over to the Topkapi palace, a sprawling expanse of luxurious buildings and courtyards that served as the home and courts of the sultans of the Ottoman empire from the 15^th to the 19^th centuries. Sort of like the Turkish Versailles. It’s built on the tip of the peninsula, next to the Hagia Sophia, overlooking the Bosphorus and the golden horn. At its peak it housed up to 5000 residents, including the sultan’s family, concubines, children, and servants.

There are three or four courtyards around which the buildings are arranged. Visitors can tour the official meeting room, the private library of the sultan, the political council room, and even the circumcision room. Anya informed me that circumcision is an important ritual in Turkey, and it traditionally consists of a party where the boy dresses up as a sultan and his family gathers to celebrate the occasion. This is usually done sometime before the boy reaches school age. For a prince, the circumcision ceremony might last 10-15 days. Had I not read the plaque designating the room to be meant for circumcisions, I would have had no idea: it was beautifully tiled along all of its walls and its ceiling. Other than these rooms, there were also several kiosks (garden courtyards), each decorated in a different color and style.

One of the most famous areas of the palace is the Harem, where high-class women and children lived. The word harem comes from the Arabic root حرم (Ha-ra-ma), meaning to forbid. The Harem was forbidden to anyone except the wife and concubines of the sultan, their children, and the black eunuch servants of the sultan. The most important women would be the queen mother, the sultan’s concubine who had born him his eldest son. Keep in mind that in many Islamic dynasties, the sultan often did not marry, but kept an entourage of concubines instead. While Islam allows up to four wives for any man, but only if he is completely equal and fair to all of them and none of them feel any jealousy, many saw concubinage as a way around this restriction. This is a complicated topic, and Islamic scholars differ on whether Islam allows for concubines or not. However, it was generally accepted that a child through a concubine was a legitimate heir, and many sultans were born out of marriage without any problems.

I enjoyed walking through the Harem in particular because, while being just as splendidly decorated as the rest of the palace, it felt like an actual home. We walked through the apartments of the queen mother and the prince as well as their private baths, private mosques, and some of the kitchens. Most of the rooms were empty of their furnishings, but I could imagine the people going about their daily lives in here.

While wandering throughout the palace, we had noticed one extremely long line stretching about 100 meters out the entrance of an unlabeled building. Without knowing what we were getting into, we hopped in. It turned out to be a museum displaying various Islamic artifacts. Pictures were forbidden within the building, with vigilant guards posted throughout the room. We snaked through the building in a queue, passing displays on various artifacts from the prophet and his companions (including his teeth, his beard, his sword, his footprint, etc.). We were not allowed to linger too long on any one artifact for risk of getting yelled at by the guards.

After spending several hours at the museum, we were pretty exhausted, so we grabbed some dinner and headed home for the night. It was my first Christmas away from home, and while it wasn’t a traditional Christmas, it certainly was a fun and exciting one! Besides, I knew my family would be waiting for me when I got home in a few days, and we could have our own belated Christmas celebration. I was super excited to gift them some of the treasures I found in my travels, I had even made a spreadsheet to make sure that everyone got a fair distribution of gifts. Last time I traveled abroad four years ago I had forgotten to get souvenirs for anyone but myself and my sister Anna still teases me about it, so I was determined to do a better job this time around.

Day 6:

We got moving a little slowly that morning, and by the time we were out of the house for breakfast it was practically lunch already. We sat in a café for a little while to wait out the rain, which lasted longer than expected and we had to buy desserts to keep ourselves busy (which I was not going to complain about). Once it cleared up a little, we crossed the Golden Horn once more to visit the Carpet Museum, built directly behind the Hagia Sophia. Turkey is famous for its carpet-weaving tradition, and this museum offered several fine specimens detailing the history and development of the art form. These carpets were all hand-woven and hand-dyed, and the intense amount of labor poured into them accounts for their high value. Over time there developed a standard set of motifs and symbols that could be read by the admirer as a secret code written in the carpets. However, as detailed and precise as the weavers were in their designs, they always made sure to make a few minor mistakes in each carpet they made. This tradition started as a way to show reverence for God, since only God can create perfection. The weavers admitted their humanity by inserting small defects that would ruin the perfection of the carpet without detracting from the overall effect.

Margot was still feeling a little sick and tired from our big day yesterday, so she headed back after the carpet museum to rest some more. Anya, Rosemary, and I headed over to the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, but before doing so we stopped for an ice cream break. Turkish ice cream is different from what we are used to in the states because it incorporates mastic, a plant resin, and salep, a powder made from the ground roots of orchids. The salep thickens the ice cream and keeps it from melting, while the mastic creates a chewy texture. Ice cream vendors in the more touristy areas like to play games with their customers by taking advantage of the stickiness of the ice cream. Using a long, flat paddle, they will keep offering the ice cream to the customer before slipping it from their grasp. It’s hard to describe, but there are lots of videos online worth watching! Just search for Turkish ice cream and you’ll find plenty.

Salep (or sahlab in Arabic) is also a popular hot beverage in Turkey and the Middle East. It is made by dissolving salep powder in milk with sugar and toppings such as cinnamon, coconut, and ground pistachios. It actually reached popularity in the UK and other parts of Europe before tea and coffee did, which were more expensive at the time, but has since been overshadowed. Because of its popularity in Turkey, the orchid used to make it is endangered, and it is illegal to bring any salep powder outside the country. Fortunately, a substitute can be easily made using cornstarch.

The Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts followed a roughly chronological path through the different Islamic dynasties that rose and fell following the death of Mohammad. It was interesting to see how each dynasty had its own distinctive art design. I especially enjoyed their collection of Quranic folios, hand-painted editions illuminated with intricate designs and gold paint. The oldest Arabic scripts were written without any dots on the letters to distinguish them, which I can’t even imagine reading. For example, the letters ب، ت، ث (b, t, th) and the letters ح، خ، ج (j, kh, h) would all be indistinguishable. It’s hard enough to learn to read without vowels, it’s staggering to imagine reading with multiple letters represented by a single symbol. I’m glad they updated the system.

Day 7:

Our last full day in Istanbul, I decided to make it a work day. I had a few scholarship application deadlines and I wanted to finish writing my essays before getting on the plane home so I could have them edited. Besides, I had seen most of the big sites in the city, so I didn’t feel too bad about missing out. Rosemary and Anya went out separately to walk around on their own while Margot and I stayed inside to rest and work.

We had waited all week to board a ferry along the Bosphorus, hoping to go on a clear day in the evening to catch the sun setting behind the Hagia Sophia. Unfortunately, the sky proved to be cloudy every day and by our last night we had decided to give up and be content with a cloudy ferry ride. We took a boat across the Bosphorus over to the Asian side of the city for dinner at a pizza restaurant. It was rather cold that evening, but we went up to the deck anyway to see the skyline. It soon started hailing, which then turned into a downpour. We walked through the rain to our restaurant and arrived soaked. We were most worried about Margot, who was still feeling a little sick but had rallied her strength to go out one last night.

By the time we took the ferry back, the lights of the city and the bridges were brilliantly shining. The call to prayer went off as we were on the water, and we heard the voices echoing towards us from both banks. I’ll miss hearing the call to prayer when I’m back in the states, it had becamo a welcome and familiar part of my day.

We dropped by the apartment to change into some dry socks then stopped by Hafiz Mustafa one last time for deserts. I ate my last Kanafeh as we sat on the edge of the terrace and said our goodbyes to the city.

Day 8:

It was finally time to head back home. We left for the airport by 10am, and I was feeling both excited to be back with family and heading to school in just over a week, but nervous for the transition as well. I had spent nearly four months outside of the US (only six days short), which was certainly the longest I’d been away from home. Goodbyes with my friends was a funny affair, since we were going to be in class together again in just a week.

Since I’m writing this a couple months after the fact, I can tell you that I managed to adjust back to home and to school successfully. It took a few weeks to adjust and feel comfortable again, but I had lots of friends coming home from study abroad in different places that felt the same. I’m not sure how to end this post without going too far into clichés, so I will just say that I had an amazing adventure and I will treasure these memories for the rest of my life. I hope you enjoyed reading along with me, wishing you all the best!

            It’s still feels a little unreal to be saying this, but my study abroad program is over! It’s been a while since I last updated this blog and I wish I could’ve talked with you all sooner, but the second term got a little hectic in terms of the workload. Writing our research papers was quite an undertaking (27 pages in Arabic, total!), and on top of that I had to worry about applying for scholarships and research internships for the coming summer. I feel like I just finished my previous summer internship and immediately I have to worry about the next ones, it’s ridiculous. As for the past two weeks, they have consisted of a near-endless series of presentations, skits, and exams, along with trying to fit in as much time with my new friends as possible before we part ways. Alongside finals, all students in the program took an Oral Proficiency Exam, designed to judge our speaking skills in Arabic by means of a thirty-minute conversation. The evaluation, which is judged independently by three separated graders not affiliated with my study abroad program, is a widely accepted certificate of language proficiency accepted by many organizations. While I don’t necessarily plan on using Arabic professionally, I’d still like to do well on the evaluation to proof to myself how much progress I’ve made in the past two and a half years.

            I’m currently writing this from our rented apartment in Istanbul, where my Carleton friends and I are spending a week together before returning to the states on the 28^th. It’s quite a strange experience to still be abroad while most everyone else in the program is arriving back home to see their families. On one hand I was feeling quite ready for the program to be over, and I’m still happy that the work portion of the experience is over, but I’m sad to be leaving my life in Amman. I’ll miss the people most of all, for they are what made Amman home to me. And it did feel like a true home towards the end, especially in comparison to my current trip to Istanbul where I am living the tourist dream. I felt comfortable with my surroundings, despite the difference in culture, and that’s the difference between being a tourist and living abroad. I don’t particularly feel like I’ve changed that much as a person, but I imagine the difference will manifest itself more sharply once I arrive back home and realize that what once was familiar may now feel strange. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve heard often happens. I certainly hope I’ve grown! Even while being sad about leaving, there are certain things I’ve had to give up while abroad that I am so excited about returning to. I get to take physics classes again! And music lessons, and orchestra! It’s a mixed bag for sure, but I think it will turn out well.

            Am I glad I chose this program? Absolutely! I learned sooooo much Arabic and was amazed by how easily I could understand and produce the language. I’m still far from fluent, but I’m closer than I honestly expected I would get when I embarked on this language-learning adventure two and a half years ago. Part of me regrets not sticking closer to the language pledge, especially during the second half of the semester when my speaking skills got a little worse because I wasn’t practicing it enough outside of class, but in the end I’m satisfied with how hard I worked. Living entirely in a different language is hard and tiring and taxing on the mind and I have so much respect for immigrants and international students who go about their entire daily lives in a second language. I also gained a better understanding of Jordanian and Arab culture from my first-hand interactions with Jordanians as well as our class discussions, which covered a range of topics from the rights of women, children out of wedlock, the plight of immigrants, honor killings, divorce in Islam, cultural diversity, global warming, horoscopes, and more.

            I learned a lot about culture that I haven’t shared here in these blogs, so I want to give any of you a chance to ask any questions you may have about my experience, Jordanian culture, Islam, or anything else. I’m far from an expert, but I would be happy to answer them! Hopefully I will write another final post answering any questions I get, and any other topics of my choosing, to wrap up my experience and share with you a little more of what I’ve learned. Feel free to leave a comment or contact me at gdairaghi@gmail.com.

            Alright, that’s all for now! I’m gonna go enjoy my Istanbul vacation 😀 Stay tuned for another lengthy travel blog in a week or so! In the meantime, enjoy this assortment of photos from the past few weeks.

            I uploaded my previous blog around 3am and I woke up at 5am to pack for my next trip. The upcoming Sunday was the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, and while it wasn’t originally scheduled as a day off, enough people in the program had assumed it would be and scheduled travel on that day that the program’s academic director declared it a holiday for everyone. My friends Ellis and Corie had the idea to take advantage of the three-day weekend to take a trip to Palestine and Israel, which is why I found myself getting up at 5am on a weekend after two hours of sleep. Our group, which included Ellis, Corie, Anya, Rosemary, Catherine and I, also decided to all take our one rest day, given to us by the program, on Monday, to give us a full four-day weekend to explore.

            Jerusalem is very close to Amman over land, only 45 miles apart as the bird flies, but the path between them is not direct or quick by any means. We took a taxi over to a private bus station, which ferried us over to the land border crossing. The process to get across constituted several passport checks, a visa fee, a bus across the border, checks for explosives in our luggage and on the bus, and light questioning by the authorities. Luckily none of us had any issues arise, but the officers did seem skeptical of our intentions when they learned we were all studying Arabic in Jordan. After security we took a taxi/bus hybrid into Jerusalem and got stopped once more on the way to check our passports. Of all the places in the world to lose your passport or have it stolen this would not be the place.  All in all, the journey took about 6 hours total.

            It was also very apparent while crossing the border that the vast majority of travelers were Westerners. Jordan hosts a very large community of Palestinians immigrants and refugees and their descendants, to the point where the population of Jordan that comes from Jordanian descent only reaches about 30% of the total population. Most Palestinians living abroad are unable to return to their homeland of Palestine, although those traveling with a US passport are privileged enough to enter. Because of this and many more important reasons, Jordanians and Arabs in general have strong negative opinions of Israel almost as a rule, even though the Jordanian government has relatively strong diplomatic relations with them among all of the Arab states. Many refer to the entire country as Palestine, refusing to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

            The hostel we stayed at turned out to be in the very heart of the old city of Jerusalem, which was super cool. The old city is the site of many of the holiest sites in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alike and it is an ancient walled city now surrounded by a more modern urban Jerusalem. It is divided into four quarters: the Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Armenian quarters. I’m still not entirely sure why the Armenians of all people got a whole quarter of the city, but apparently it’s been like that for a few centuries and it is essentially just an extension of the Christian quarter albeit with a distinct language and cultural heritage. Entrance to the city is limited to a number of gates, the largest being the Damascus gate and the Jaffa gate although there are several smaller ones interspersed throughout. Inside the city feels almost like an indoor hallway as there are canopies covering every street and the temperature is noticeably cooler during the day. It reminded me of Venice in the fact that it is filled with tourists and with tourist shops but doesn’t boast a huge number of actual residents. In fact, at night when the shops close down the city feels almost deserted. My recommendation to any potential future visitors: wear shoes with grip. The stones have been worn down by throngs of tourists over the years, and I saw a number of people slip and fall on the uneven ground.

            Despite all being very tired from the journey, we rallied our forces and headed out to sightsee that afternoon. Because we were visiting over the weekend we had to schedule our sightseeing around the rest days of the different religions as they affected when the sites would be open. Since Shabbat started that evening, we all decided to make the Western Wall our first stop.

            The Western Wall, or Wailing Wall, is currently the holiest site in the world for Jews even though it was not originally made for that purpose. It’s one of the walls surrounding the great temple which was destroyed centuries ago, but occupies a place of honor as the remnants of said temple and the closest place to Temple Mount that the Jews can access. Today, Temple Mount is the site of Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, two important monuments of Islam that stand directly behind the Western Wall. The wall is divided into two halves, one for each gender, although there is some controversy as the men’s side is larger and also closer to the spot where the Ark of the Covenant was believed to have been kept, making it a holier site than the women’s side. Tourists are welcome to visit but are required to cover their heads, either with a hat or with one of the free yarmulkes the site provides.

            Almost as soon as we arrived, another tourist asked Ellis and I if we found the wall impressive. While I don’t really agree with the question, I’m glad he asked it of us because it made me think about my perceptions of the wall. The wall is not supposed to be impressive in the same way that other religious monuments are. Yes, it is quite tall and quite old, but it is still just a wall. Instead, what struck me most was seeing the importance it carried to the Jewish men and women who were there visiting with us. Rather than impressing those who view it, it serves as a link to the past and to what has been lost. Along its surface were several men praying and leaning into it, many of them reciting verses from the Torah and rocking back and forth. It almost felt like intruding seeing all of these people trying to connect with God, and behind them just a crowd of tourists taking pictures of them.

            One of the traditions of the site is for visitors to write a prayer onto a small piece of paper and stick it into one of the cracks in the wall. The lower levels of the wall are filled with these prayers, while above them grow plants from the cracks in the stone and among them nest pigeons. I enjoyed seeing life growing on the wall alongside the wall, it felt appropriate given that the Western Wall is the ruins of the old temple. It gave a sense of renewal and rebirth.

            Our next site was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over two of the holiest sites in Christianity: Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified, and Jesus’s tomb. This was probably the strangest church I’ve ever visited in terms of its layout and function. The church serves primarily as a pilgrimage site, drawing in Christians and other tourists to come look at some of the artifacts remaining from Jesus’s crucifixion. As such, it lacked the grandiose symmetry that nearly every single other church has and adopts a sort of wandering maze-like structure instead. Surrounding the central congregational hall is a circular passage that itself branches off into several side chambers.

            The first artifact, which lies at the very entrance, is the stone slab that was used to carry Jesus’s body to his tomb after his crucifixion. We all got to kneel down and touch its surface, and several tourists rubbed their scarfs on it as a way to bless the fabric and carry it with them. Moving counterclockwise were several offshoots, one of which descended further into the ground and felt like a cave for all the exposed rock. Towards the end the passage opened up into a giant dome adorned with stars, under which was the shrine encapsulating the tomb of Jesus.  The space inside was quite small, and really only allowed one visitor at a time inside. The line for this was immense, so we did not get to see inside, but even just the outside of the tomb and the space it was kept in was impressive.

            Lastly, up a flight of stairs, we saw Golgotha, the site where Jesus was crucified. Once again, this site had a long line of people waiting to approach, kneel, and kiss the stone where the cross once stood. We didn’t wait in line but did get to look at the site and watch how the site’s visitors behaved, which was interesting in itself.

After these two sites we had a little more time before our tattoo appointment in the evening. Corie, who’s visited Jerusalem before, had told us about this shop called Razzouk Tattoo located in the old city of Jerusalem which had been open since the year 1300, reputedly the oldest extant tattoo shop in the world. What makes them special is that they have a collection of stamps that they use to mark the design on the skin before tattooing, with some of the stamps having been used for centuries. In the past, these tattoos were used to proclaim one’s faith as a Christian and to allow Christians into the churches, and as such many of them exhibit crosses and saints and other Christian imagery. Truthfully, I’ve wanted a tattoo for a while, but there’s never been any design in particular that’s called to me. However, I figured that if I was ever going to get a tattoo, this would be a pretty cool place to get one. I ended up deciding on a small stamp featuring the Lion of Judah on the inside of my left forearm. I was drawn to him mainly because of the design, but I also appreciate the symbolism of the lion as representing bravery, a quality that I greatly admire and strive to exhibit but one that I don’t always feel comes naturally to me.

By the way, it is true that tattoos hurt, but it’s honestly not terrible depending on where you choose to get it. My tattoo in particular took about three minutes to complete, although to be fair its quite small and without any colors or shading. Corie got a small cross of Jerusalem on her ankle, which took about a minute, while Ellis chose a somewhat larger mermaid on his bicep. It was a really fun experience and I’m super happy with my tattoo! Also, if you’re like my dad, I should probably assure you that the shop was very professional and sanitary and everything was new and sanitized with alcohol, and I’ve been moisturizing my tattoo three times a day since and he is doing quite well.

Because of Shabbat, finding dinner was a challenge that night, but we managed to find an Ethiopian restaurant in the new city that was still open. Afterwards, some of us were craving French fries, but unfortunately the nearby Kosher McDonalds was closed because of Shabbat. As we were complaining about our fate rather loudly in the middle of the street, an unknown hero passed us by and casually pointed out that there was a regular McDonalds just around the corner that was still open for the night. We feasted on nuggets before turning in for the night to recover a little before another full day of sightseeing.

On Saturday we decided to split into two groups, one of which was to stay in Jerusalem and the other of which was to go visit Hebron. I didn’t feel satisfied with how much I’d seen of Jerusalem yet, so I decided to stay with Anya and Catherine while the others took a bus to Hebron. Hebron, called Al-Khaleel in Arabic, is a city in the West Bank that holds the burial site of several prophets, including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As such it is considered to the second holiest site in Judaism after Jerusalem, and some consider it to be the fourth holiest site in Islam as well.

            Despite its location in Palestinian territory, Hebron is the site of several Israeli settlements, which has led to tension and outbreaks of violence in the city. The city is full of checkpoints and complicated boundaries that hinder movement of its citizens, in particular forcing Palestinians to go out of their way to avoid entering Israeli neighborhoods. The Israeli forces regularly use teargas to control the population, and the local schools are often disrupted because of this. The Cave of the Patriarchs, where Abraham and others are buried, has been the site of several attacks against both Jews and Arabs, leading to dozens of deaths there despite it being a holy site. As for the Israeli settlers in Hebron, they represent the most extreme Zionists who wish to continue pushing settlements further into Palestine. However, it should be noted that most Arabs don’t make a distinction between the terms Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist, and often associate this violence and oppression with all Israelis and even all Jews. This is a really complicated issue and I don’t feel at all qualified to be explaining it and by no means does this represent every point of view, but I feel it is important to understand a little bit about what is happening in these two countries apart from tourism and the holy sites.

            As for those of us who stayed in Jerusalem, we started our day by visiting a lesbian café outside of the walls of the city. I had a delicious omelet and a plate of fresh vegetables and various spreads and bread, with a mocha and the best grapefruit juice I’ve tasted in my life. It’s was so great to eat some vegetables, honestly. People like to say that America has a fast food problem, which it does, but Jordan isn’t any better. The worst I’ve seen so far was a French fry and cheese sandwich (which, incidentally, was from a shop called “Heart Attack: food worth dying for”). Another crowd favorite are Zingers, which are fried chicken sandwiches, and of course lots of shawarma. I’m so excited to return to the US and eat some salads.

            After breakfast we headed to back to the old city to do the ramparts walk, which takes you right on top of the city walls and lets you walk around about half of the city that way. The view from the ramparts was nice, but it was also cool to look down at what was below us inside the old city. We passed people’s houses and backyards, saw some dogs, and a few school basketball courts. Sometimes I forget that people still live in the city and that not everything inside is sacred. We also happened to stumble upon a parade right outside the Damascus gate comprising of several marching bands ranging from decent to amateur. Because there were no other groups marching other than the bands, the noise was quite cacophonous without anyone to provide some separation between the groups. Definitely not what we expected to see, but it was very fun to stop and watch for a moment.

            The ramparts walk has two separate sections, but it the entrance to both of them is at the same location, so we had to walk back across the city to finish our tour. Luckily, our path back aligned with the Via Dolorosa, the path that Jesus took as he carried the cross to his own crucifixion. It starts at a courtyard that contains two churches: one where Jesus was sentenced to death, and one where he was flogged before his crucifixion. Along its path are marked the three locations where Jesus fell while carrying the cross, one of which had a shrine built to it. During part of the path we ended up being chased by on the of the marching bands we had just seen outside the gates. We were directly in front of them, in immediate danger of being trampled, but there were so any people ahead of us we could only shuffle slowly out of their way. Eventually we managed to escape the chaos and make it back to the Jaffa gate for part two of the ramparts, which ended up being even more beautiful and dropped us off near Temple Mount once more.

            Next, we left the city and walked over to the adjacent Mount of Olives. Covering most of its surface is a historic Jewish cemetery with around 150,000 graves. Beside it are several churches marking important Christian sites, one of them being the Basilica of the Agony which stands next to the garden of Gethsemane. At the top of the mountain is the site where Jesus ascended to heaven. We felt like fish swimming upstream as we climbed to the top amidst the throngs of Christian tour groups walking down. Apparently, tour buses tend to deposit their passengers at the top of the mountain then meet them at the bottom, which I can’t blame them for – the hill was pretty steep. However, the view of the city was worth it once we reached the top. We arrived at sunset too, which made the view all the better.

            The rest of our day revolved around food: we stopped for Kanafeh back in the city before eating (mediocre) Ramen for dinner. We went out for drinks at a rather confusing bar called Putin Pub that nonetheless had very American décor (where I was carded for the first time! A milestone), which we followed with a gay bar, which made for a very interesting transition. All in all, a good day of exploring!

            The following morning, we woke up early to go see Temple Mount before it got too crowded. Out of everything to see in Jerusalem, this is what I had been most excited about. Back in high school, I took a class on art history and I remember loving the unit on Islamic art, especially Dome of the Rock. It wasn’t the only the reason I decided to take Arabic, but my fascination with Islamic art definitely encouraged me to do so. So, as you can imagine, I was very excited to finally see the dome with my own eyes. The building itself is a rather simple concept, but it has a powerful effect from the shining golden dome to the striking blue tilework and intricate patterning. What’s not apparent from the pictures is how much empty space surrounds the structure. After being in such a crowded city, the empty courtyard surrounding Dome of the Rock was almost as impressive as the monument itself.

            Depicting humans in art is not allowed in Islam, so the monument relies on calligraphy and decorative patterning. It’s hard to tell from a distance, but the calligraphy is incredibly intricate and carefully crafted. Every time the writing crosses itself, one of the lines is broken in such a way that it is apparent which letter is front of the other. The result is a jungle of letters weaving and twisting over and under each other, providing depth to words which normally are two-dimensional.

            The site of Temple Mount is special because it is considered holy to all three major Abrahamic religions. Like I mentioned, it is the site of the now-ruined Second Temple, the holiest site in Judaism, but is now an Islamic site. Dome of the Rock gets its name for the rock that lies underneath, which is believed to be the site where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son Isaac. In Islam, it is further believed to be the site where Muhammad ascended to heaven and met with the previous prophets and directly with God himself for the first time (prior to this, the angel Gabriel transmitted God’s word to Muhammad). Only Muslims are allowed inside the temple itself.

            After checking out of the hostel we split up once more: Anya and I wanted to go to Yad Vashem, the world Holocaust memorial center, while the rest went to Tel Aviv ahead of us. It was an intense experience, but one that I’m very glad I had. The architecture of the museum is incredibly-well designed and functions as a guide on your journey through the memorial. The basic design is a triangular prism, with the two walls coming together to a point at the top. As you walk through, the ceiling gets lower and lower, closing in on you as you walk through the events of the war chronologically. The path wanders from side to side, and barriers prevent you from skipping any part of it easily – you are forced to confront the story from start to finish. The museum is full of so much information, with summaries and statistic mixed in with artifacts, photos, video testimonies, and art. The two of us toured the museum separately at our own pace, and we took about three hours to get through it all.

            While the entire museum is heavy, I found there to be a handful of small, unassuming things that hit me the hardest. The video testimonies were especially difficult, but so were the stories of the survivors who, after surviving the death marches, returned to their hometowns and continued to face the same racism from their neighbors. One poem, which consisted of a prayer in which every other word was the name of a concentration camp, hit me unexpectedly hard. So did the sculpture showing the masses of people being led into the showers at Auschwitz where they were to be gassed, followed by scenes of “dentists” prying any gold fillings from their mouths. Every time I read one of the plaques describing one of the victims of the Holocausts or one of the people who helped provide a safe haven for the persecuted, I found myself skipping ahead to the end of their biography, hoping that they were one of the few who survived. At the very end was a circular room, which held the names of every known victim to have died during the Holocaust. I first thought it was going to be a bunch of plaques, but it was so much worse. Surrounding the room were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with books registering the names of all millions of victims. The room was about three fourths full, the empty space representing the hundreds of thousands of people who died without our knowing their names.

            The end of the museum finally gives way to a balcony that overlooks a beautiful, flourishing valley. It comes as a huge shock after all of the atrocities within the museum, but it serves a purpose. Looking out over the valley, it gave me a moment to process and to gather myself together. It also signals the end of the journey, and the beginning of something more hopeful. The two walls, which had been closing in the entire time, finally curve outwards and open up, signaling a brighter future for the Jews and for the world.

            At this point, Anya and I met up once again and sat a moment to collect ourselves. While there were additional exhibits, we both decided that we had been saturated, and stopped briefly for lunch before joining the others in Tel Aviv.

            How to describe Tel Aviv? It’s essentially Los Angeles, but nicer. The weird thing about visiting Israel after living in Jordan for several months is how incredibly western it is. The streets are much wider and cleaner, they have crosswalks that people actually obey, people wear short shorts and tank tops, and there are rental scooters all over the place. There are also lots of trees and lots of dogs and lots of hip cafes and such. Additionally, while there was a significant population of Arabs living in Jerusalem, they are almost nonexistent in Tel Aviv.

            Anya and I arrived just as the sun was setting, so we didn’t get to experience that much of the city. The rest of our crew had hit up the beach and the old city of Jaffa before we’d arrived. The hostel we were staying at turned out to be so much nicer than anything we expected, it could hardly be called a hostel. Instead of a large shared room with a bunch of strangers, we had essentially a hotel room with two bedrooms, a shower, and kitchen just to ourselves. Except it was so much cheaper than any hotel equivalent, and in Tel Aviv too, which is not a particularly cheap city.

            That night we hung out and went out to a bar nearby to our hostel. Despite not getting to see much of Tel Aviv, it was worth visiting for the food and the dogs we got to see. The next morning, before checking out, we stopped at a bakery/café where I ate the most amazing French toast of my life. Sometimes I pull up the picture on my phone and just look at it, it was so beautiful and it tasted even better.

            The trip back was a process (taxi to bus to light rail to taxi-bus to shuttle to taxi-bus), but thankfully the border crossing was so much easier and quicker leaving Israel. I had so much fun on this trip and I learned so much, it was an incredible opportunity. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much work done, but it was worth it! I have to say, going on a trip the week after our Malta vacation was a little rough on my work ethic, but I’ve recovering since. As I’m writing this I only have four more weeks of my program left – it’s crazy! Time is flying by so fast now, and I have so much work to do ahead of me, with research papers and presentation and starting to work on applications for summer internships already. To be honest, I might not get a chance to upload another blog post until after finals, but if I get a chance I’ll try to squeeze a short one in before then. Thanks for reading!

            Hold on to your seats because this is going to be a long one. As I mentioned in my previous post, my friends and I took a week-long vacation in Malta, and it was everything I imagined and more. I’ll do my best to capture the magic of it, and with the help of lots and lots of pictures hopefully you can get a taste of Malta from wherever you are in the world right now.

Day 0

            We left Amman on Saturday morning after finishing our midterm exams two days prior. It was an uneventful flight, and we landed mid-afternoon to a warm, humid climate. We packed light, so we decided that our first item on the agenda should be to visit the capital city, Valletta, before heading to the Airbnb apartment we rented for the week to drop off our luggage. Not wanting to rent a car (for cost reasons and because they drive on the left side of the road), we bought weeklong bus passes, which turned out to be one of the best decisions we made. The bus system in Malta is extensive and well-organized, and it is generally no problem getting anywhere on the island with at most one transfer. Amman doesn’t even come close. We figured that if we took two bus rides per day it would be worth the cost, and we probably averaged 4 or 5 rides per day. Plus, it was a surprisingly good workout trying not to fall over on some of the roundabouts, which was fun.

            Once in Valletta, we walked around and got a sense of the city, which is surprisingly small for the Capital. It’s built on a small peninsula reaching out into the Mediterranean, and it is separated from the rest of the island by a moat and high walls. There are no buses in the capital (streets are too narrow), but it is easy to walk all of it. We ate at one of the many restaurants there, and of course we had to order pasta for our first meal. We were all so excited to eat seafood after living in the desert for 2 months that we ended up ordering muscle and clam pasta, shrimp pasta, and octopus pasta. Yum!

            Afterwards we got some amazing gelato at an Italian chain called Amorino and it was exquisite. We ended up making many more return trips throughout the week. While my friends Anya and Rosemary favor the fruitier sorbet flavors, I can never resist a good gelato. The pistachio, Amarena (cream and cherry), hazelnut, and coffee flavors were to die for. After that, we took our bus back to our apartment, checked in with our lovely host Salvatore, an Italian man who plays the guitar, and settled in for the night.

 Day 1

            Unbeknownst to us when we booked our tickets, the weather forecast during the week of our visit was to consist of thunderstorms nearly every day. Not ones to let some bad weather stop us, we bravely donned our raincoats and set out to explore regardless of the inclement weather. Our first destination was the town of Marsaxlokk (yes, that’s a real name), a fishing town on the Eastern side of the island known for its weekly Sunday fish market. As we found out, the fish market sells more than just fish, and we were able to browse for souvenirs, knockoff handbags, and various deserts as well. Half an hour after arriving it started raining and thundering in the distance but there wasn’t much else to go, so we walked on. We tried to visit a nearby cove called St. Peter’s pool but as we were walking up a small hill on the way there we saw a flash of lighting strike directly at the top of the hill and heard the thunder half a second later. While we are brave, we also value our lives, so we decided to back down and wait out the storm in the town.

            Not willing to risk more lightning, we returned to Valletta by bus, which of course caused it to clear up immediately. We never did get to see St. Peter’s pool, but that’s ok because we got to see so much more! We spent the afternoon wandering around Valletta with no real plan (we saw most of it in a couple hours, since, as stated before, it is not very large. The population in 2014 was just 6,444 people). My phone is now filled with more pictures of brightly painted doors and balconies than I could ever have use for, but it was fun to walk around with no plan and no agenda.

            My absolute favorite part of the city was the lower Barakka gardens overlooking the bay to the East. It’s a beautifully cultivated area of calm of the type that doesn’t exist in Amman. I’ve missed seeing so much green in such a concentrated space. Almost as nice were the upper Barakka gardens, which we visited next, but not quite. As I sat in these two gardens it sunk in that I was on vacation, and that I could relax. I didn’t have to worry about any upcoming deadlines or stress about classes or anything, I could just exist and take in my surroundings for a while. Beforehand I hadn’t felt entirely comfortable with the slower pace of our vacation, and a part of me still felt pressured to be productive and was somewhat guilty for taking time off. However, sitting in those gardens was the moment when I really committed to enjoying our trip and began living in the moment.

            Still a bit tired from our traveling, we returned to our apartment for a quick break before heading out for the evening. I convinced Anya and Rosemary that they needed to watch the TV series Killing Eve, which we happen to own on iTunes (thanks Mom and Dad!). We began watching that afternoon and by the end of the first episode they were hooked. Even with all of our touristing that week, we managed to finish the first season and then some by the end of the week. A successful conversion of two new fans! All of you reading should watch it too if you haven’t yet.

            Our cravings for seafood hadn’t been satisfied yet, so we took the bus to the nearby town of Bugibba (again, a real name for a real place) for some sushi and a bottle of wine (white, obviously, red is nasty). That was followed by a precariously stacked cone of gelato (almond this time) and another episode of Killing Eve before calling it a day.

Day 2

            The next day we took a trip to Gozo, the second of the three main islands of Malta. The only way onto the island is by ferry, which runs every 45 minutes from the easternmost point of the main island. Coincidentally, we happened to get there two minutes before it departed.

            We arrived, trekked up a hill to get a better view of a nearby cathedral and the surrounding ocean, then hopped on a bus to the main city in the center of the island, Victoria (also called Rabat, not to be confused with the Rabat on the main island of Malta or the Rabat in Morocco). Located in the center is a fortified citadel, originally built by the Romans, but since modified by the successive inhabitants of the island.

            But first, lunch! In order to save some money, we decided to start packing lunches with us on our day trips. We decided on sandwiches (with French bread! Very hard to find in Amman) of turkey, salami, cheddar, tomatoes, and capers. We ended up eating these sandwiches for lunch every day, they were so good. I miss them.

            As for the citadel, we got a chance to walk around the old streets and stand on top of the city’s walls while looking out over the island. From its walls you can see the ocean on all four sides, which was a great reminder of how small the island really is. Within its walls are an old courthouse, a prison and, at the center of it all, a cathedral. We got to walk around the inside of the cathedral, although unfortunately the dome was under conservation efforts at the moment and we did not get the full effect. I love visiting cathedrals because of the sumptuousness of their interiors, there is something interesting to look at everywhere your eyes go. But beyond the decorations I also just love sitting in cathedrals and enjoying the feel of the space, which is so very different from any other building. Something about the height of the ceilings and the abundance of hard surfaces that refuse to damper any noise leads to a unique sense of space in cathedrals that enhances the feeling of sacredness. While I loved this church, I actually found it to be the least impressive of the four cathedrals we visited throughout our trip.

            And now for something completely different, our next stop was a Neolithic site called Ggantija, the oldest archeological site on Malta and considered to be the second oldest temple site ever discovered. Malta was one of the earliest inhabited sites in all of Europe and it hosted Neolithic civilizations over 5000 years ago. The Ggantija temples consist of stone walls shaped into vaguely clover shaped rooms, several of which house small stone altars. Walking through the ancient walls in the rain I liked to imagine it must have felt to live there all of those thousands of years ago. The inhabitants must not have known anything about the world besides the extent of their island, surrounded by the seemingly infinite unknown expanse of the ocean. This temple was thus the heart of their universe and the center of their lives, a small haven of safety and comfort within the emptiness of the world. While we were by no means isolated from the world on our visit, with the constant possibility of communicating with others off the island in an instant, even so I felt a little separated from the craziness of life. It was nice.

            While trying to get to a pizza restaurant we’d heard about for dinner we had a slight bus mishap and had to hop off the bus before we got too off course from our destination. By chance we happened to walk out to a brilliant sunset over a verdant valley, so we paused half a moment to take it in before hurrying on foot to our destination before it got too dark. Turns out it wasn’t so much of a pizza restaurant as a kitchen filled with Maltese grandmothers with a door facing the street in a quiet residential neighborhood. We ordered two pizzas and a ftira, which is like a pizza covered with dough on top and filled with potatoes and other toppings. Wow, was it delicious! Cheesy and warm and very very tasty. 10/10 would eat again. And with that pizza and a long return trip (bus then ferry then bus again), thus ended our second full day in Malta.

Day 3

            The following wasn’t quite clear enough to justify a beach trip, so decided to keep biding our time and head to the southern half of the island to visit the walled city of Mdina. A quick side note on the Maltese language: it is a wonderful and terrible hybrid of Arabic descent with lots of Italian loanwords and written using the Latin instead of the Arabic alphabet. To my friends and I, it looked like someone did a poor job transliterating Arabic, which, by the way, was not meant to be spelled using the Latin alphabet and which makes for a very awkward and clunky spelling system. We had a fun time trying to read the signs in Maltese, which was challenging but we could usually make sense of its vocabulary and grammar if there was an English translation beside it, which there usually was. For example, the city we visited, Mdina, actually just means “city” in Arabic.

            Even if you don’t know anything about Mdina, you might have seen parts of it before: it was featured as one of the filming sites of the TV series Game of Thrones, specifically used for certain scenes that take place in King’s Landing. Unlike King’s it is actually pretty small, and you can walk all of it in less than an hour. In the center was, big surprise, a cathedral! And what a cathedral it was.

            We first entered the adjacent museum that held some religious and historical artifacts as well as a respectable collection of Christian art and a special exhibit on Dürer. As much as I love Islamic art, there’s something really special and unique about the Christian approach to art, particularly during the Baroque period. It’s just so dramatic and intensely theatrical, they take all emotions and pump them to the max. Also, they really did love their dark backgrounds didn’t they, you can barely make out what’s happening in some of them, especially Caravaggio.

            I find it really interesting how much focus there was on the corporeal body throughout the Baroque period, especially in that most of the subjects were saints or other religious figures. They display their divinity in their pose, expression, and the symbols surrounding them but at the same time there is so much attention to their bodies and to anatomical naturalism, a legacy of the Renaissance. We tend to consider the divine and the corporeal to be distinct and often opposing aspects of humanity, but here they are brought together as one. After all, humans were created by God, not just their minds but their bodies too, so why shouldn’t they be depicted as beautiful and divine? Why do we as a society attach so much shame to our bodies instead of accepting them and loving them as they are? Even outside a religious context, our bodies are part of us but weren’t created by us (well kind of but we didn’t have creative control over the finished product), but they come with life as a package deal when we’re born and thus are one of the most special things we have. Treasure them!

            In addition to the museum, the cathedral was splendid and even fancier than the previous cathedral we visited in Gozo. All of the cathedrals we visited in Malta had these wonderfully intricate floor tiles, each one unique, decorated with colored marble. Each was about the length of a person, and most had some sort of writing in Latin labeling it. Well, it turns out that these were dedicated to the dead, and many of them actually contain their grave underneath. A little spooky, but also very cool. It also explains why there were so many skeletons on them.

            We followed the museum with lunch and more gelato then left Medina to visit St. Paul’s Catacombs in the surrounding town of Rabat. These are a series of upwards of 20 catacombs all built in the same area, many of which are open to the public to descend and take a look around. All of the bodies and artifacts have been removed, of course, but you walk around and make out where some of the bodies would have lied. These catacombs were built during the Roman occupation of Malta, and different catacombs show evidence of Pagan, Christian, and Jewish faith. I enjoyed seeing the catacombs, but it definitely put some stress on my back from the insufficiently tall ceilings. One a somewhat related note, did you know that during the Roman era people used to hire professional mourners to walk in the processions of the deceased and grieve loudly and publicly? Maybe if I can’t find a job in physics that can be my plan B.

            Following that we took a bus to Dingli, a town on the south side of the island known for its beautiful cliffs overlooking the ocean. The tops of the cliffs were made up of a porous rock covered in tiny, delicate flowers growing from the cracks. Below the cliffs was a lush overhang of land that gave way to the sea itself, and over it all was the sun. Luckily the sky above the setting sun was clear, despite the fact that the sky behind us was covered in clouds. Following the sunset, we returned to Rabat for dinner (I had a platter of traditional Maltese foods, including cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, broad beans, and toast) and then called it a day.

Day 4

            Wednesday was our first day of truly sunny weather, with no threat of rain in sight. We breakfasted on pastizzi, one of the traditional foods of Malta and one of the things I’ll miss most about our trip. Pastizzi are pastries made from a flaky dough similar to phyllo that encapsulates a variety of fillings, ranging from chicken to ham and cheese to spinach to Nutella. They are truly incredible and delicious and very cheap compared to most food on the island and they are sold all over the place, there were four pastizzerias just in the main square of Mosta where we were staying.

            We rode the bus down to the south side of the island to go explore the Blue Grotto, a series of caves in the cliffs facing the ocean known for the brilliant clear blue of its waters. You can buy tickets for a boat ride through the caves, which I was very excited for until we actually got into the boat and I forgot how much boats rock in the open ocean. Thankfully I didn’t get too motion sick, and the caves themselves were incredible. Our guide, who only spoke limited English, was very intent on giving us the best experience possible. He kept tapping us and pointing towards the cliffs and saying “Look at the colors!” and “Put your hand in the water!” and other suggestions for us. It was the perfect day for it too, with sunny skies and 70 degree weather and the water splashing in our face.

            After the boat trip we bought a few souvenirs and ate lunch overlooking the sea. We returned to Valletta just for some gelato (coffee and hazelnut, it was incredible) before returning to our apartment on the longest bus ride of my life (thanks, rush hour). In fact, that bus experience scarred us so much that we decided it wasn’t worth it to leave Mosta again that day and decided to just search for a restaurant within walking distance from our apartment.

            The restaurant that we found was around the corner from, one that we passed every day, and it turned out to be one of my favorite dining experiences I’ve ever had. Partly because the food was delicious, but mostly because of the atmosphere of the place. It was a very small restaurant, only one room with four tables, that served traditional Maltese food of great quality. Even better, they were having a Halloween special (why are they celebrating Halloween in Malta? I have no clue) featuring dishes such as “Hocus Pocus Rabbit and Pumpkin Risotto” and “Trick or Treat Yo’Self”. I ended up ordering a set menu of (a) calamari, (b) rabbit ravioli, and (c) imqarets, a traditional Maltese dessert that I would describe as a cross between a beignet and a fig newton. As for the rabbit, it’s also a traditional Maltese food, which was quite tasty and had a similar texture to pulled pork. We ordered a bottle of sparkling rosé to accompany it, which was very sweet and easy to drink. It was the kind of slow, unhurried meal with friends that I never used to understand when I was younger but now I get the appeal of. The atmosphere was relaxed and comfortable and we just sat and enjoyed the food and have deep conversation about life and what we want from it and such. At the end, much to our surprise, our waitress offered each of us a complementary shot included with our meal, either Baileys or Limoncello. We all chose limoncello without knowing much about it, and my life was changed. It tasted exactly like a lemon tart in liquid form! I didn’t even know they could do that. Wow, incredible.

Day 5

            A miracle occurred and we managed to snag a second day of sunny, cloudless sky. Time for the beach! It’s hard to believe I made it to day 5 on an island in the Mediterranean without once stepping foot in the Mediterranean ocean, but we set out to rectify this immediately. We returned to the ferry station, but this time took the much smaller ferry to Comino, the smallest and central of the three main islands. Even now, during the off season, Comino was packed with tourists looking to swim in the famous blue lagoon, a cove known for its clear blue water. There was barely any beach, only a thin strip of sand crammed with as many tourists as could physically fit on it. We settled down on an unclaimed rocky patch and got ready for some swimming.

            The water was cold, but refreshingly so, not freeze-your-socks-off Pacific Ocean cold. It felt so fresh and clean that I was genuinely surprised by how salty it was, although of course it was ocean water all the same. We took turns swimming to the other side of the lagoon, which took me some effort but I made it! Looks like my swimming lessons have finally paid off. On the other side of the lagoon I swam through a natural archway in the rock to the other side facing the open ocean, and wow, what a view! It’s one thing to enter the caves by boat, but swimming through them is next-level cool. I wish I could’ve taken pictures of this part, but like Wadi Mujib, bringing my phone along with me on this adventure would’ve resulted in its quick death.

            After our swim we trekked over to a somewhat less crowded beach on the island for an extra special Halloween picnic, complete with a bag of Kit-Kats. Who needs trick-or-treating when you’ve got the Maltese beach? Actually though, we did see some little kids trick or treating with their parents once we got back to Mosta that evening. Apparently, Halloween is a much more international holiday than I once thought.

            Swimming was lots of fun but it left us so tired from being in the sun all day that we couldn’t manage much else when we got back. Also, I think we were all starting to reach a point where we needed a bit of break, from each other and from the trip. Being a tourist is great and all but it is tiring after a while, and while Anya and Rosemary are two of my best friends in the world, it’s hard to spend an entire week with anyone without getting a little worn out. We were, after all, spending all day together every day then returning to the apartment where we all shared the same room. We finished the day with cheap Chinese food and that’s that.

Day 6

            We decided to spend our last full day in Malta by touring the Mosta Rotunda, the giant cathedral that’s been a five minute walk from us and where we’ve waited for the bus every single day but yet somehow hadn’t gotten around to visiting yet. The Mosta Rotunda, officially called the Basilica of the Assumption of Our Lady, is a Roman Catholic church styled upon the likes of the Pantheon in Rome and which constituted the third largest unsupported dome in existence at the time of its construction. Like the Pantheon, it has an oculus at the zenith of its dome, which rather counterintuitively strengthens the dome compared to a complete with no hole in the ceiling. It turns out the in a complete freestanding dome all sides lean in to the middle and create a point of high stress which is prone to collapse, but if there is an oculus in the middle you essentially remove that point of stress and the weight distributes more evenly across the dome’s surface. I find it kind of unbelievable that removing support from a structure can increase its stability, but physics is wild like that sometimes.

            Unlike the Pantheon in Rome, the Mosta Rotunda is decorated with a geometric pattern spiraling out from the oculus at the center of the dome, which I actually find to be more effective than the plain ceiling of the Pantheon. It creates a sense of movement and outward expansion, and even in my photos of the dome I almost feel like the picture is moving as I look at it. The dome suffered some damage during World War II, which is unsurprising as Malta was one of the most heavily bombed areas during the war as it was an important military base for the British. A bomb fell through the ceiling while the church was full of people praying, but it never exploded and all deaths were averted and the church remained intact. This, of course, was considered to be a miracle from God who protected the faithful and the church itself from destruction.

            After the Mosta Rotunda we headed back to Valletta to visit the last church on our list: St. John’s Co-Cathedral. This was by far the busiest of all of the churches, and we had to wait in line for half an hour before we could enter. Despite the very plain, unassuming exterior to the church, the inside was entirely and completely covered in gold flourishes everywhere the eye could see. The church was built by the famous Knights of Malta after they fought off the Ottoman from their attempts at conquering the island, which was, at that time, one of the major strongholds of Christianity. Despite being originally built in the Mannerist style, the Maltese felt pressured to modernize the interior to match the luscious Baroque style that had become popular in the Vatican, hence the contrasting styles between the interior and exterior of the building.

            Like the other churches, St. John’s Co-Cathedral has a beautiful beautiful beautiful floor made up of intricately designed graves. Above it is a barrel-vaulted ceiling covered with fresco paintings as per usual, but what makes the cathedral special in my opinion are the chapels on the side. Each chapel on the side is dedicated to a different country that made up the knights of Malta, from Germany to Aragon to Provence to France to Italy and many more. Each one is decorated in a style befitting the represented country and using many of its symbols, which makes for a delightful variation in the décor. Additionally, visitors are allowed to climb the stairs up to the balcony in the back that overlooks the church, which provide an excellent view of the entire cathedral. Everywhere you look is beauty in every possible detail, and it becomes even more beautiful when you stand back and take it all in as one. In my opinion, this is possibly my favorite cathedral I’ve had the chance to visit because it was not just excessively grand and opulent, but it felt like a unified concept as well in the use of the gold literally everywhere. Or maybe I just like shiny things, and this church was exceptionally shiny.

            After lunch and a brief downpour that left us drenched ,we bought our last gelato of the week. Well, I actually opted for a cinnamon orange hot chocolate, which was rich and delicious and about as thick as melted gelato. We bought some final souvenirs, including a Maltese grammar book for Rosemary (who is a linguistics major) and returned to the apartment for a rest. We finished the evening with one last trip to Valletta for dinner and drinks and finished off the first season of Killing Eve, the perfect ending to an unbelievable week.

Epilogue

            I think it’s fitting to call this an epilogue as I practically just wrote you guys a novel on my trip. We had a very early flight (left for the airport at 5am) and made it back to Amman safely, with some amazing views of Malta and what I think was Crete along the way. If we were at all worried that Malta was too small of an island to occupy a full week of tourism, we were definitely proven wrong. I experienced so much last week and made memories that I hope will last a lifetime. To be completely honest I returned to Amman a little apprehensive about continuing with my studies, but also feeling ready to be productive again. I’ve been writing this over the course of the week and right now it is very late on Thursday night (Friday morning) and I will not be telling about how my week back went because I want to sleep and I have big plans for the coming weekend, but spoiler alert: everything turned out well. You’ll have to wait until my next post to hear more! If all goes well, it should be pretty soon.

            Thank you to everyone who made it this far! It means a lot to me that you are reading my blogs, I love hearing that my friends and family are enjoying what I write because I really enjoying writing it and sharing my experiences. Alright, I’d better catch what few hours of sleep I can before my next adventure starts tomorrow, goodnight everyone!