Marble domes and delicious torture (Istanbul 3)...

This morning's run was hard going. I woke at 7:00am and was out of the hotel and running through Sultanahmet by 7:30am. Once again, Gülhane Park was virtually deserted, although there were a few more people than yesterday when I ran through today. It was still pretty deserted by most people's standards and, consequently, such a peaceful part of the run.

After running the length of the park and back, rather than retrace my steps and carry on up the slope to the front of the Hagia Sofia, when exiting the park I turned left up the much steeper incline toward the entrance of Topkapi Palace. What a climb; by the time I rounded the corner at Topkapi I was rasping for breath. Because of the high humidity in Istanbul, you start to sweat just standing still. By now it was dripping off my nose and my eyes were stinging because of it. I was bathed in it by the time I arrived back at the hotel via the Roman Hippodrome at 8:00am.

After breakfast, it was looking a little overcast and so it seemed the perfect day to pull on my jeans rather than shorts and visit the Blue Mosque. With its stained glass windows and tiling, it's pretty big stuff. The thing that most amazes me about this place, however, is the volume it encloses. The dome is cavernous and it's square footage must be the size of two football pitches.  Even more staggering is that it's all carpeted - me, I'd have gone for laminate flooring.

Given that it was still a little overcast, I thought I'd nip over to the Süleymaniye Mosque (still wearing my jeans). I decided to take a shortcut down the side of the Grand Bazaar. What should have been a 10 minute stroll turned into a 45 minute hike when I got lost in this retail labyrinth. Eventually I found the mosque and again, I was totally bowled over by it's size and stripy pink marbled beauty.

After a fleeting return to the hotel to change into my shorts and to apply some factor 15, I visited the Roman Basilica Cistern. There are two things that struck me about this place: that such a huge structure is lurking just a couple of metres  beneath our feet and also the size of the fish that live in the waters there (huge - Robert Benchley could write a best seller about it).

Tired and a little sweaty, I made my way to the Cağaloğlu Hamam and ordered the full massage and scrub (Michael Palin ordered much the same from this Hamam in his Around the World... series for the BBC). After a short while, a rather ordinary Turkish guy arrived and told me where to get changed. Once changed into the sari like wrap and wearing the wooden soled shoes provided, he directed me to a corner of the main marble walled and domed room. Here was a room where I sweated for 20 minutes, afterwhich he returned (now wearing his sari wrap) to collect me for my massage.

O.M.G. This massage was wonderful! Balanced precariously on that fine line between pain and pleasure, I was manipulated by a burly Turk on a marble slab for 30 ecstatic minutes. After this he left me sitting next to a large marble basin for 15 minutes in the main marble domed room. Some English guys sat opposite playfully splashing each other with water. After my massage all I could do was pant, my eyes rolled back in my head. Next he returned with some shampoo and his scrub mitten. For another 30 minutes I was now scraped and defoliated to the depth of a chemical peel before being left to relax, virtually flayed by this torturing Turk.

There wasn't one part of my body that wasn't bent, folded, twisted, kneaded and manipulated into some unnatural position and then flayed. Were he working in the UK, he'd have to regularly sign a register at the local police station.

Not cheap but boy was it good!