istanbul day two

on our second day in istanbul, we made our way with the rest of the tourist throngs to the aya sofia, one of the most beautiful sights in the world. what fragments of the original mosaics remain are incredible, and to think that the entire thing was covered in them is actually staggering. then we wandered around, and ended up at the hamam, or turkish bath. i was the youngest person there, followed closely by my mother.
this is the hamam:
you walk through a door that looks like it could belong to a run-down hotel, or maybe a restaurant, or anything but a bathhouse. but you trade your sneakers for croc-knockoff slippers at the door, and go inside to a large central room with two levels of wood-paneled changing rooms. you're assigned your own, strip completely, wrap yourself in a towel, and go downstairs. upon entering the caldarium (hot room), you hang your towel on a hook and just chill (or sweat, really) with all the other naked women on the slabs of marble ringing the room. shafts of light pierce the steamy haze from different angles from star-shaped holes on the dome of the bath. large turkish women in one-pieces massage (or scrub violently, depending on the masseuse) the clients on a large octagonal slab of marble in the center of the room. they scrub you so hard that you are completely covered in little bits of dead skin. it's kind of gross, actually. but if you can get over that, it's totally worth it. i haven't felt this clean in my entire life.
as a present on the way out, they give you a pair of chartreuse granny panties. or in my case, a pair of heart-and-star-print (chartreuse orange and white) bikinis.
and no one speaks english.

also, we bought more pillowcases.