The Topkapi Palace is where the Ottoman Sultans lived. And what's this? 
This is a blurry photo of the Topkapi Dagger, one of the most famous pieces in its Treasury. Sean saw a picture of it in a book when he was a kid (here's a not bad photo of it) and was fascinated. So even though no photos are allowed, he tried to sneak a pic.
Here are some of the outside bits. The palace is made up of a series of courtyards, each more secluded from the public. 
Of course, if you're the Sultan, you build your palace with a nice view. 
And with lots of nice stuff inside. In addition to the Treasury, where I saw more emeralds that were larger than a fist -- and not my fist, my hand is tiny, but like a giant's fist -- than I imagined existed in the world, we also saw the Harem (the private apartment for the Sultan's mother, his wives, his concubines, and his children and where the battery on Sean's camera died), and the sacred relics ("in this case is Moses's staff" uh-huh). 
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Topkapi Palace
Saturday, October 08, 2011
Aya Sofia
The Aya Sofia was built in 537. 
It's been a church, a mosque, and since 1935 a museum. This is what it looks like inside. It's ginormous. 
Here's a mosaic of Madonna and Child juxtaposed with the minbar. 
This is the Omphalion, the spot where emperors were coronated.
This column is very crooked, most likely because it is very old and there are earthquakes in Turkey. 
Crosses can be seen through the geometric designs put over them.
The dome.
The walls have crazy, symmetric marble designs. 
There are a lot of mosaics. In this first one, the Empress Zoe is depicted to the right of Christ and her husband to the left. As she had three husbands, they just scraped off the old head and put up a new one each time. 
Outside the Aya Sofia but in the same complex, there are the tombs of five sultans. I think this one was my favorite. 
Sunday, September 25, 2011
The Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque, and the Basilica Cistern
In Istanbul, we stayed in the historic area of Sultanahmet where the most famous tourist spots are. In AD 330, Istanbul -- then Constantinople -- was the capital of the Roman / Byzantine Empire and the Great Palace of Constantinople stood next to the Hippodrome -- the stadium for horse and chariot racing. The palace is almost entirely gone; the Blue Mosque now sits on that site, but the Hippodrome is still there. They've paved the old racetrack and the surface is several feet above the surface in ancient times. There are three monuments in the Hippodrome. One was erected in the 10th century and was covered in scaffolding when we visited. The other two were were brought to the Hippodrome and erected in the 4th century AD as relics of the ancient world. One of them is the Obelisk of Theodosius:
It's from ancient Eygpt -- 1490 BC. The other is the Serpent Column. It once was 8 meters tall, with 3 serpent heads supporting a golden bowl and was created to commemorate the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. One of the serpent heads is displayed in the istanbul Archaeology Musuem, but this is all that remains at the Hippodrome: 
Next to the Hippodrome is the Blue Mosque, built in the early 1600s and so named for the blue tiles in the interior. 
Next to the mosque (on the same grounds) is the tomb of Ahmed I.
Underneath Sultanahmet is the Basilica Cistern, dating to the 6th century. It's huge with columns everywhere. And a nice escape from the heat. At the back, there are two Medusa heads used a column bases and clearly taken from some other location and brought there for unknown reasons. 
Monday, September 12, 2011
Flying to Turkey
Sean and I took 1200 photos in Turkey. So it'll take a while to sort through them and write blog posts. Anyway, Sean bought my ticket to Turkey on miles and all he could get was business class. It was glorious (yes, I had lie-flat seats). This is my lunch on the Munich-Istanbul flight: 
From top-left, it is masarpone and rosewater mousse; salmon with arugula butter; duck confit, smoked duck, and chicken liver creme fraiche; and sbrinz cheese and roquefort.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Not Stranded
Sean and I went to Turkey for two weeks. It was awesome and I'll try to work up some blog posts with pics in the next week. We were supposed to fly back Sunday. With the whole hurricane thing, we tried twice to change our flight but no one would let us change unless our flight got canceled. When the flight was finally canceled, we spent 3 hours trying to call the airline -- never reaching a human being -- before deciding to go to the airport. There, it only took 15 minutes to rebook us on a different airline for Monday, although it was a 1 hour train ride to the airport. Unbelievable that in this day and age, going physically to the airport is still the most effective thing to do.
I have a whole bit to write about the actual trip back, but I'll save all but the punchline for another post: we made it back but our luggage did not.
Monday, August 08, 2011
New Apartment
No pictures yet of our new place in Cambridge, but here I am, blogging from my very own balcony, and it is glorious. More than twice the space of the old place and with lots of cool features for cheaper rent. Also, since the move means that I can't take the train to work anymore, we finally bought a car, ending my 5 years of carless-ness.
Anyway, I used to tell everyone, 'hey, you should come visit me in Boston!' but then I would feel terribly disingenuous. I do want all of you guys to come visit me, but there wasn't really room in our old place for guests. And hotel rooms in Boston are outrageously expensive. So I kind of felt like I was telling people that 'hey, why don't you spend $250/night to come see me.' Which seems pretty jerk-y. But, in the new place, there's room for you, your spouse, and maybe even your progeny! So everyone should come visit. Well, maybe not right now, since we're going on vacation this weekend (new travel photos to blog!) and we haven't bought anything for guests to sleep on yet. But soon!
Monday, August 01, 2011
South End, Boston
After two years, we're moving out of the South End of Boston. We're not going far, just across the river to Cambridge. Even though the South End is expensive and gentrified, full of restaurants equal parts nice and douche-y, it's still a pretty and fun place. Also, it is super conveniently located (south of the river, Back Bay, downtown), and even though Boston is one of the few places in the US with a useful subway system, I hardly took the T and just walked everywhere.
Neighborhood things I'll miss:
SoWa market: A farmers' / food truck / arts & crafts / vintage & antiques market, Sundays in the summer, only a couple blocks from our apartment. We'd get kringle from the Danish Pastry Shop, salted caramel chocolate cupcakes from the Cupcakory, the best iced coffee from the actual bricks & mortar cafe on the site, fresh veggies, decorations for our apartment, and good baby shower presents. And, we'd wander around and point out all the really adorable dogs people have (a lot!).
Don Ricardo's Restaurant: Amid all the fancy-pants restaurants, this is a real neighborhood place. It's Peruvian (plus Brazillan and South American). Everything comes with this burning hot salsa that's so good that you want more even though you're in pain. Other notable items: empanadas (specifically the spinach and cheese ones which sound like they'll taste like Hot Pockets but are actually really great), paella that comes with a lobster tail & claw (for less than $20), and, the dish I couldn't stop ordering, whole fried pampano fish with plantains, salad, and a whole other plate with rice and beans ($15).
J.J. Foley's Cafe: An Irish bar and restaurant, this was our neighborhood bar. We went at least once a week. And the food is significantly better than average bar food.
The dog park: In a neighborhood with a lot of young people with money to burn, we saw a ton of adorable puppies all the time. Even better, the dog park is just one block from our old apartment.
Things I'll have to come back for:
Toro: I wrote about Toro the first time I visited. In short: it's fantastic. Prices have risen significantly, so it's not the steal it used to be. Now it costs about what you'd expect it would and more than you'd want to pay everyday, but it's still great.
Aquitaine: Sean wouldn't let us go to Aquitaine; he was sure it was 100% douche-y. But his parents came for a visit and I argued that we could live with douche-y on someone else's dime. There's no question that it's an expensive place, but it was excellent in every aspect. The interior and ambiance was classic and classy, not douche-y. The service was possibly the best service in a restaurant ever. And the food. The food. (It's French, by the way.) Everything was at minimum 'really good': the arctic char entree and the bread pudding were incredibly and unbelievable good, respectively.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Not Courmayeur, Mostly Valle d'Aosta
And here are all the photos from my Italy trip that were not of Courmayeur itself. 
I went for a 'walk' (which turned out to be hiking -- I hate hiking). But it was pretty (pics above and below). 
On one afternoon off (there was more than one afternoon off: it was that kind of conference), we went into Aosta itself. Here is the town hall, but there were a lot of nice Roman ruins too. 
Arco d'Augusto:
Porta Praetoria and the Torre dei Signori Sancti Ursi:
And a Roman theater:
For the conference dinner, we went to some 'agriturismo' place with a field full of cows with very very loud bells attached to them. 
And somewhere behind those clouds and thereabouts is Mont Blanc.
Finally, back in Milan, I stayed one night in a hotel before catching my flight back to the US. It had a garden and pool area crawling with these (kinda cute) little lizards, which did not want me to photograph them.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Italy II: the revenge (Courmayeur)
I went on a week long trip to Italy for a repeat of the 2009 Italy conference I went to: lots of the same people, same organizers, same week in June, same region of Italy. While still in Valle d'Aosta, this time the little town was Courmayeur not Cogne. And this time I was going to be prepared. 
Imagine June 2009: winding mountain roads, wildflowers everywhere, cheese at every meal (even cheese soup). Me: lactose intolerant, allergies and no antihistamines, antiemetic chewing gum that made my whole mouth numb and freaked me out.
This time I brought piles of Lactaid and Claritin and Dramamine. How did it go? Well, for some reason (maybe they had an early spring), there were no wildflowers. The Dramimine seemed to work okay. But even though I took Lactaid like vitamins, everything I ate made me sick. The first few days were the worse; I felt terrible and I was starving because I couldn't eat anything. Still, I guess two out of three isn't bad.
Here's a photo of my hilariously tiny bed:
And a bunch of photos looking out of my hotel room in different weather conditions:
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
How Weird Is This?
I'm working on a post or two about my trip to Italy, but I thought I'd post about this since it happened today. This morning, when I went to put my laptop in my backpack, I noticed that one of the rubber feet had fallen off. I wasn't surprised since it had been loose for a while:
The odd thing is that it turns out that the rubber foot is structural. Without it, you can see straight into the inside of my computer. I tried to take a pic: 
How weird is that?
By the way, I found the missing rubber foot on the floor of my office and currently it's held in place with tape. Should I try to glue it back on? With what?
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
At the AAS
I'm attending the AAS meeting in Boston right now (yes, right now). I brought a poster to justify my presence here and a lot of people bring flyer size copies of their poster to give out. The work in my poster is already published, so that seemed a little silly for me (people should just read the paper). At the printer, however, they made a proof of my poster and I figured I might as well bring that and see if anyone took it. I really didn't believe anyone would though. It's not regular paper -- it's like a square foot big (maybe bigger) and much much thicker than regular paper. But it's already disappeared from my table! It was gone before lunch. So someone here is carrying an oversized, cardboard-y version of my poster.
Sent from my iPhone
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Random Germany Thought #3-- Strawberries and Doing the Dishes
I've been eating grocery store strawberries lately. On the whole, they're crap: giant monstrosities that taste like crunchy water. In Bonn, you only buy strawberries for a few weeks, when they're in season. They're always very local -- small, but super sweet and full of strawberry flavor -- and you have to eat them right away. Many farmers set up road-side stands (there was a very good one across the street from work, in front of the bakery) where you can buy them in giant boxes. Mmmm.
Is this a German / European thing? When I do the dishes, I wash, then rinse, then dry (if for some reason I didn't have a place to air-dry them). When I would do a dinner thing with the students in Germany, they would wash, then towel dry. No rinsing. I got used to it although I think it kind of freaked out the Canadian postdoc.