Entries about roses

Topkapi Palace was an absolutely wonderful experience; definately one of the top of my life to date. It just kept on giving - round every corner there was something else interesting, or another beautiful view.

Topkapi Palace was the most important residence of the Ottoman sultans for 400 years, and was famous for its opulence, luxury and magnificence. Legends built up about the famous Harem and the eunuchs who guarded it. The very mention of Topkapi Palace brings to mind images of jewel-encrusted sultans lounging about on shady terraces and gardens, sipping at iced sherbert from crystal goblets and languorously picking at silver or fine porcelain platters of fruit or confectionery...

Anyway, having entered through the main gate into the fine gardens of the first courtyard (which are free to get into), we continued through the next gate into the second courtyard. We didn't have to pay at this point because we'd bought Istanbul Museum Cards on our first day, which allows free entry into lots of famous attractions within a 5 day period.

From the second courtyard we entered the famous Harem. Only part of it was open to visitors, but due to the vastness of it, even that took quite a while to see. There were different apartments for the sultan, the Queen Mother, princes and other members of the sultan's family, a courtyard for the eunuchs, a short corridor with a long counter where eunuchs left dishes of food delivered by kitchen staff (for the concubines and other people to take), and one or two other places. The decoration of each room was beautiful, with stunning, colourful patterned tiles all over the walls. One room had paintings of piles of different fruits.

My favourite part of the Harem, however, wasn't a room at all but the Courtyard of the Favourites, where only the sultan's favourite concubines were allowed to go. The terrace had a really good view of the Golden Horn, the river which separates the two European sections of Istanbul, in the distance. I sat on a bench and pictured how I thought the courtyard might have looked 400 years ago; I thought of an extract from a book of historic travel accounts from over the ages that I have, which was written by a European visitor to one of the earlier Ottoman sultans. He was the only visitor allowed to get a glimpse of the Harem; usually, he said, anyone caught within the Harem or even glancing into it from outside, who was not the Sultan himself, the Queen Mother, one or two other select members of the sultan's family, a concubine or a eunuch, was instantly put to death. He mentions peering through an iron-barred window for a few seconds and glimpsing concubines playing at ball in a courtyard.

Once we emerged from the Harem, we wandered round the other two courtyards and then looked round the second one again properly, as the first time we'd been there we'd gone into the Harem almost straight away instead of exploring.

We saw so many interesting places and things, it would take me forever to describe them all in appropriate detail! The following are some of the highlights;

- a lovely rose garden with a fountain in the middle; the rose season has clearly just turned, but there were still lots of relatively fresh-looking red and pink blooms left.

- a terrace with an even more beautiful view of the Golden Horn and Galata Bridge than the courtyard in the Harem had. It also overlooked the Fig Garden and the Elephant Garden behind (no explanations for the name of the Elephant Garden were given; maybe one of the sultans kept a managerie in that garden at one point?) Overlooking this view was a small golden-roofed covered seat where one of the sultans liked to break each day's fast during Ramadan.

- a terrace on the other side, with a magnificent view of the Strait of Bosphorus, the other European section and the Asian section. On the way there we looked through a couple of small but magnificent kiosks; the Terrace Kiosk, where the Sultan watched sporting contests in the garden, the Revan Kiosk, which was used to store the Sultan's turbans, and the Baghdad Pavilion, used as the library of the Pricy Chamber from the 18th century onwards.

- a bottle rose sherbert we shared... It lived up to every expectation! It was sweet and tasted a lot of roses; apparently mashed rose petals was one of the main ingredients. The courtyard we sat in was the perfect place to drink it.

- the palace kitchens, especially the confectionary kitchen where huge copper cauldrons, iron ladles and marble slabs were displayed. There was lots of fascinating information about the confectionary, syrups, sherberts and also medicines, soap and scented candles that were made here.

- the Arms & Armour display. This was one of the best I've ever seen; extremely well preserved and beautifully engraved and patterned helmets, daggers, swords, axes, maces and bows. It also had arrows, chainmail and colourful wicker training shields.

- the Treasury; this contained a massive glittering diamond, a 22-carat gold jug and ewer, a basket of huge emeralds, rings encrusted with rubies and sapphires, more very finely engraved swords, a British Order of the Garter presented to one of the sultans by Queen Victoria, Chinese Ming pottery and lots more.

- Some of the holiest relics of Islam, including parts of the Prophet Mohammed's beard, his sword and of of his footprints set in stone. In the same exhibition we saw a metre square model of one of the holiest Islamic buildings in Mecca, made entirely from mother-of-pearl.

On our way out of the palace we stopped to flop for a bit on the grass. Outside the gates we bought two salted, grilled corn-on-the-cobs from a street seller and ate them on the way back to the hostel. It was now past 17.30 and we'd spent four and a half hours at Topkapi!

For dinner we ate on the rooftop terrace of a fish restaurant round the corner from the hostel. Dave had bass, I had bream (both of which came with rice and salad) and we shared an iceberg salad and a spinach casserole. Dave also had some olives wrapped in anchovies. They gave us free baklava and Turkish coffee afterwards! Dave went into raptures about the baklava, and for good reason!

From Shipka we descended into the Valley of the Roses. Right now we are in the middle of the rose season, which is a big deal here; Bulgaria makes about 60% of the world's rose oil, plus smaller amounts of other rose products like rosewater, soap, hand cream, liqueur and things like that.

Now when you hear or see the name 'The Valley of the Roses' you may get an image in your head of a valley completely filled from one side to the other with field after field stuffed with red, pink or white roses. Wonderful scents hanging languorously in the air. Roses as far as the eye can see (until the mountains appear in the horizon)! The reality is not quite like that, however. Now Mum and I were under no false illusions - we knew it wasn't going to be like the idealised image it's easy to come up with - and so we still really liked what we saw. There was a lot of farmland, both arable and for livestock, but we did pass the occasional field of pink roses; a novelty to people from the UK, where there are some rose gardens, but not open fields like the ones we saw here.

We stopped in the outskirts of Kazanluk at the impressively named Research Institute of Roses, Aromatic & Medicinal Plants, which contains the small but interesting Museum of the Rose.

Before we went inside, we looked round part of the grounds and admired some almost perfect-looking deep red roses clearly at the peak of health.

Inside the museum, bowls of rose petals were placed around the museum - a great touch, I thought. The scent was amazing. We saw lots of old equipment for the distillation and storage of rose oil (attar of roses), fascimiles of black and white photos of rose pickers in action, and some documents relating to the attar of roses trade. No wonder real rose oil is expensive; apparently, to get 1 kg of rose oil you need 3000 - 3500 kg of petals from the pink Kazanluk rose, or 5000 kg from the white rose! The petals are picked in the morning, from 4 am until about 10 am; apparently petals picked in the afternoon lose up to 50% of their oil content.

Mum and I both bought ourselves a bottle of rose liqueur from the tiny shop attached to the museum. Then we crossed the road and walked into a rose field. The roses were not very close together (the majority must have been picked already) but there were still a decent amount there and we both enjoyed looking round.

From the rose field we headed into the town centre to visit the famous Thracian tomb. This we were unable to do; it was locked up and apparently only archaeologists and other official people are allowed in. We did however visit the full-scale replica round the corner. This is absolutely tiny, but the frescoes are fantastically well done. You would never guess that they are replicas if you didn't know otherwise.

It was another hour and a half before we arrived in Plovdiv; both Mum and I dozed off on the way. The hostel we stayed at (Hiker's Hostel) wasn't as good as Guesthouse Old Plovdiv, but the owner was friendly and the place served our needs. After a rest, we went for a walk. Neither of us was particularly hungry for some reason, so instead of dinner we visited a Turkish coffeeshop attached to Dzhumaya Mosque. Mum had a decaf coffee and I had a normal Turkish coffee; to go with our drinks, Mum had baklava while I had sutlac (Turkish rice pudding).

Going to Arbanasi today was a priority for Mum, as she was really keen to see it and we hadn't managed to go there when she visited me last October. We arrived at about 9 o'clock because the weather forecast had predicted sunshine in the morning but then a thunderstorm later on.

First of all, seeing as the sun was out but might not be later, we went to the magnificent viewing point where I had taken previous visitors.

Then we went into the Church of the Nativity (stopping at an outdoors gym on the way - we tried out one or two of the machines!). Mum absolutely loved it, just like I thought she would. It's just so colourful and atmospheric inside! It started off with just us there, but then a party of young American men came in with a guide. This turned out to be quite beneficial to us, because we could overhear all the interesting information the guide had to offer the group. She showed them (and us) the painting of the Wheel of Life with its days, seasons, signs of the Zodiac, man at different life stages and the angels pulling on ropes to turn the wheel; the bad tradesmen in hell, suffering punishments related to their crimes; the shepherds in appropriate period dress (including one sitting in the Turkish manner, playing a pipe); the unicorn amongst the animals being named by Adam; the remaining original frescoes from the 15th century and the second layer of ones from 1681; the dragons on top of the iconostasis; and more. We also overheard her say that figures of the Ancient Greek philosophers were painted on the wall or ceiling of one of the rooms, but we couldn't spot them when we went to look.

From there we went on to Konstantsalievata's House, the house museum I'd taken previous visitors to. I described this is a previous blog entry so I won't write more about it here, except for that Mum particularly admired all the heavy carved wooden chests and the wonderful carved wooden ceilings.

After that we were both quite hungry but it wasn't lunchtime yet, so we had a coffee/ hot chocolate and some baklava at a café instead. We both loved the baklava; it was different to any we'd had before, being in a large slice like a slice of tart or pie. It was very syrupy and delicious; quite often (especially in the UK) baklava is very stiff and solid and stodgy, but this wasn't.

Our next destination was the Church of St Atanas; I hadn't been before and didn't know anything about it, but I thought it would be interesting to check it out. Well, unfortunately it was closed when we arrived! We did however see a huge quantity of red and black beetles on the steps.

By the time we'd wandered over there and back again it had started drizzling. We decided to have lunch slightly early; however Arbanashki Han, the place where I took people for lunch before, had a big party arriving soon, so we decided just to go back to the same place we'd had baklava. I had pepper burek (stuffed peppers with batter or breadcrumbs on the outside) and tarator and Mum had breadcrumbed chicken bites with a salad garnish.

The rain was tailing off by the time we left the café and headed to another place I'd been to with previous visitors; the monastery of Sveta Bogoroditsa. We both bought and lit candles there and wandered around both rooms, admiring the icons, frescoes and flowers. This time, instead of tulips, daffodils or carnations, they had roses and sweet williams in vases along one side. Two or three lambs munched on leaves outside.

Our walk back to VT went well - we took the same route as I had taken with Kate and Andrew. The vegetation had overgrown even more than when they were here two weeks ago, but it was only a problem in that since it had only just stopped raining and Mum was wearing flipflops, she kept sliding on the grass in them! The sun came out relatively soon into the walk, however, plus the path became less overgrown, so the problem didn't last. It was a lovely walk and Mum enjoyed it too.

Once back at the flat it was between 4 and 5pm - we'd left at about 8.50 in the morning! We put our feet up for a couple of hours before going out for dinner at Hadji Nikoli. I took her here when she was here last October and she had requested a return visit. Since the temperature was so mild, this time we sat in the courtyard. No pianist this time unfortunately, but the food was just as good. Mum had grilled tiger prawns and vegetables and I had tarator (of course!) and cannelloni.

We both had coffees (I had Turkish) but didn't have any pudding there because we knew we had strawberries waiting for us back at the flat. More strawberries with rosehip syrup - a perfect way to round off the day.

At lunchtime we were due to catch the bus to Veliko Tarnovo, but we managed to fit quite a lot into the morning.

The first place we went was another gorgeous National Revival house (the Old Town is full of them).

In the courtyard we admired the roses - right now we are in the middle of the rose season in Bulgaria.

From there we walked down the road to the Roman stadium remains, popping into one or two antique shops on the way (one of these shops had lots of amazing old painted wooden chests - we both coveted them, but potential transportation difficulties put us off buying any).

The stadium lies in front of Dzhumaya Mosque, in the middle of the main shopping street. The seating in the stadium is made of the same gleaming white marble as those in the Roman amphitheatre.

Our next destination was the intriguingly-named 'Singing Fountains' within Tsar Simeon's Gardens. I visited this park back in March, but it was still a bit wintry-looking then, plus I didn't go as far as the fountains. This time all the trees were fully in leaf and the flowers had bloomed. The fountains turned out to look quite impressive, set within a massive pool which I was desperate to swim in. The sun was very hot and the water looked so inviting! No evidence of singing though...

After staying there a while we suddenly realised what the time was. Quick march back to Guesthouse Old Plovdiv! On the way back we saw part of a procession celebrating the Day of Culture & Literacy. This public holiday celebrates the Cyrillic alphabet in particular.

We took a taxi to the North bus station, where I bought our tickets to Veliko Tarnovo. We had a bit of time to kill then, so we took turns to go next door to Lidl while the other person stayed to look after the bags.

In the morning, almost first thing after breakfast, we did something I've wanted to do for many years... we went on the Teleférico, the cable cars, up Pichincha Volcano!

We went up to 4100 metres altitude. The view you get over Quito from up there is jaw-dropping.

I was incredibly happy up there; I'd been wanting to come to this particular place for years!

Once we got back to the hostel, though, and we'd nipped out to a nearby café for a quick lunch and come back again, I started feeling sad about the fact that it was Father's Day yet I was unable to see Dad. We went back out again soon after, though, so I cheered up, especially when I knew it was a place Dad would have enjoyed visiting. This was Quito's botanical garden, set within Parque La Carolina.

Special mention goes to the rose garden - although the peak of the season was clearly over, enough flowers remained to create a lovely sight - the big orchid house, the koi carp pool, the collection of bonsai trees, the carnivorous plant house and some other individuals such as an arabica coffee bush, a vanilla plant and a couple of young quinine and jacaranda trees. The extremely relaxing atmosphere and beautiful setting were also great pleasures.

After eventually leaving there, we carried on within the park to the Vivarium, which holds several types of reptile and amphibian, all native to Ecuador.

We saw an anaconda, some boas, an extremely venomous coral snake, a tree snake, two baby caimen, a green tree frog, some baby turtles, a green iguana and one or two other things. It was very scientifically done and it was fascinating to see them so close up.

We stopped at a shopping centre on the way back to the hostel and Dave was surprised by the sight of a Radioshack shop... he then had the bright idea of getting an SD card reader there to solve our problem of being unable to look at or save to USB the photos he'd taken since the Galapagos on his camera. So he bought one and then we moved on to a supermarket, where I showed Dave various tropical fruits and bought a big bottle of guanábana drinking yoghurt.