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European hotels, still recovering from last year’s recession, may get a temporary boost from the plume of volcanic ash spreading across Europe.

“It’s tremendous good news for the main players involved,” said Guillaume Rascoussier, an analyst at Oddo & Cie in Paris. He cited Whitbread, Accor and Rezidor Hotel Group as the main beneficiaries.

Ash from the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano drifted southeast, shutting airports across the continent over the weekend. As many as 6 million passengers may be affected if the closures continue, according to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. While that means many can’t get to their destinations, some are finding themselves stuck and in need of accommodation. Read more…

Many of the stops along Istanbul’s Metrobus routes are not disabled-friendly, according to a social rights association that has filed a complaint against the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.

According to a law passed in 2005, all public structures built after that date had to be disabled-friendly, said Süleyman Akbulut, head of the Social Rights and Studies Association, or TOHAD. “We warned the municipality many times and they just ignored us,” he said.

Disabled to file complaint against Metrobus

The 41 kilometer Metrobus line has 32 stops and runs between Avcılar on the European side and Söğütlüçeşme on the Asian side of the city. While it has provided some relief to public transportation with its special Metrobus-only roads, there have been serious criticisms over the buses used. Phileas buses used on the route have been criticized for being too expensive and not strong enough for Istanbul’s population and roads.

Akbulut said the stations at İETT Camp, Küçükçekmece, Şirinevler, Bayrampaşa, Edirnekapı, Ayvansaray, Halıcıoğlu, Perpa, SSK Hospital, Çağlayan, Zincirlikuyu and the four new stations in Kadıköy were not disabled-friendly.

All their warnings to the municipality were dismissed with the reply: “We are on it. Our work is continuing,” said Akbulut. Read more…

Much of the action in novelist Jenny White’s gripping 19th century detective story “The Abyssinian Proof” takes place in and around a village inside old İstanbul that sounds as if it must surely have been made up.

Yerabatan Sarnici

Set inside an ancient cistern dating back to the fifth century, it’s a self-contained and almost absurdly quaint place in which houses peep out from amid the luxuriant foliage growing out of crumbling antique walls. Could such a place ever have existed? Well, actually it did well into the 1970s when, in “Strolling Through İstanbul,” John Freely and Hilary Sumner-Boyd described it as a “very picturesque little farm village whose housetops barely reach to the level of the surrounding streets.”
They were describing the Cistern of Aspar, a giant hole in the ground in front of the mosque of Sultan Selim I as you approach it from Fatih and Çarşamba. But what on earth was this cistern, and what role did it play in city life?

Way back in 1978, I remember being taken by a Turkish friend to visit the Yerebatan Sarnıcı (Underground Cistern) close to the Aya Sofya in Sultanahmet. At that time, it was not officially open to the public, and we stood at the edge of a dark space that seemed to stretch back into infinity, peering at the dim shapes of 336 soaring pillars topped off with elaborate Byzantine capitals; a steady sound of dripping provided the soundtrack to our visit. It was a sixth century cistern, my friend told me, although at the time that meant absolutely nothing to me. Now, of course, the Yerebatan Sarnıcı is one of the city’s main attractions, kitted out with walkways, suitably evocative lighting and the haunting sound of the ney (reed flute), and always crowded with visitors who gaze in awe at the sea of columns and at the fish swimming in the water beneath them, before trekking along the walkways to inspect the upside-down head of the Gorgon Medusa adorning the base of a column at the rear. However, probably not one person in a hundred really appreciates the part that the cistern played in ensuring that first Byzantium, then Constantinople and finally İstanbul were kept supplied with water. Read more…

Mosque

From church to mosque: İstanbul’s forgotten Byzantine heritage

Is it a church? Is it a mosque? Is it a museum? Aya Sofya (Hagia Sophia, the Church of Divine Wisdom) may be one of İstanbul’s most famous buildings, but it’s also one that suffers from an acute identity crisis, having started life as the great sixth century church of the Emperor Justinian, before becoming a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and then a museum in 1935 after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk declared the Turkish Republic.

Something similar happened to Chora, near Edirnekapı, which also kicked off as a church before becoming the Kariye Camii (mosque) in the early 16th century. It too is now a museum and makes a wonderful showcase for the mosaics and frescoes of 14th century Byzantium. Read more…

Turkish Museum

Many visitors to İstanbul manage to make it to the Archeological Museums to gasp in wonder at the beautiful Alexander Sarcophagus and the recent finds from the Marmaray excavations that uncovered the city’s medieval port and an incredible cache of 35 wooden boats complete with their cargoes.

Others manage to squeeze in a trip to the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts to admire the room-sized Uşak carpets and the reminders of a nomadic way of life now gone the way of the camel trains, or to the Rahmi Koç Museum, which is crammed full with reminders of past modes of transport. The Pera Museum does well at attracting visitors in part because of its popular temporary exhibitions as does the Sabancı Museum, up the Bosporus in Emirgan. A few brave souls also venture as far as Büyükdere on the Bosporus to visit the Sadberk Hanım Museum and its fine archeological and ethnographical collections.

Read more…