Trip Up the Golden Horn

Hello all,
Evidently it's been three days since I last posted. On the other hand, it's been a fairly slow week, as people have been dealing with various illnesses and the group's been getting ready for the trip; we leave tomorrow (more on that later). I'll just hit the high points:
Thursday: our plan to take a boat trip up the Bosporus to the Black Sea was foiled by sickness- this time it was Prof. Shields who succumbed to one of the bugs going around. We took another day to clean, pack, and work on our projects. That night we had a little party with Robin (our landlady), some of her friends, the Shieldses, and other assorted mystics. Great company, with delicious items to boot:
After the last of the guests departed around 11, the affair took a decidedly undergraduate turn, with lots of Efes and dancing. Not many pictures, but it was a great night:

Soulja boy. Oh god.

Kristina and I, somewhere between the third and fourth glasses of rakı. If that doesn't make me a real Turk, I don't know what does.
Friday: woke up with a pounding headache (whoever said rakı doesn't give you a hangover either played a cruel joke on me or didn't know what they were talking about) and went to join the group in front of the Spice Bazaar for our trip up the Golden Horn. First we took the ferry to Fener, where the Greek Patriarchate has been located since 1453. After his conquest of the city in 1453, Mehmed II gave the Greek Patriarch religious and temporal authority over the city's Greeks; quite a concession, as Greeks represented a sizable part of the city's population until the 20th century. After the Turkish War of Independence, population transfers, and anti-Greek riots in the 1950s, very few Greeks remain, putting the Patriarch (currently Bartholomew I) in the awkward position of administering his flock from overseas (he is the spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians). The church, built in 1600, is just as sumptuous as you'd imagine, with golden icons, mosaics, and candelabras everywhere. I didn't get many good pictures because of the lighting, but here's the altar:
Interestingly, the Patriarchate uses as its symbol the double headed eagle, symbol of the Byzantine emperors (and later adopted by the Russian czars).
Afterwards, we walked through the neighborhoods of Fatih, with their rundown houses, winding streets, and bands of roming, grinning children. I wish we spent more time walking through them:
Man, was this a steep climb! That's the Golden Horn down there
Cool corner house.
I almost feel like a real photographer with this picture
Just wanted to get a picture of the house in the background, and then the little dude on the right popped up. Ochay.
Before continuing to Eyup, our destination, we stopped at the Bulgarian Church of St. Stephen:
You know what's on the right! Don't you? Don't you??? (it's Galata Tower, where we live)
The church is made entirely of iron pieces, made in Vienna, shipped to Istanbul, and put together in the 1890s. Rather dark and gloomy inside, compared to all the mosques we know here.
After lunch, we took the ferry further up, almost to the end of the Golden Horn, getting off at Eyüp. Eyüp is the neighborhood named after Abu Ayyub, the flag-bearer of the Prophet who was killed during the Arab siege of Constantinople in 670 (some scholars believe the defeat of the Arab sieges of Constantinople in 670 and 714 were as important as the Battle of Tours in halting the Arab incursions into Europe). His grave was 'discovered' in Ottoman times and a mosque compound built around it. Today, the mosque is surrounded by acres of graves, as the ground is believed to be sacred. Also, the mosque is a common destination for families celebrating a son's circumcision. In Turkey, this happens between ages 6 and 10. I don't want to talk about it. Still, it's a really big deal: they dress them in these tiny king suits (pictures below) and they fuss about them as they proceed through Eyup's tomb and the mosque. Pictures:
The view east, over the Golden Horn from the Pierre Loti Cafe. If you click, you can probably see Hagia Sophia, etc. in the center.

Does he know he's about to be circumcised?!??!

Another one of the little princes, in the mosque

Part of the grounds
UPDATE- so the power went off as soon as I posted that last picture last night, and stayed off until now; it's about 5am, and we leave in an hour for our trip. Here's out itinerary, quickly:
-Canakkale
-Selcuk
-Pamukkale
-Egirdir
-Konya
-Kappadokya (Cappadocia)
-Ankara
I wanted to post a map, but I'm afraid I don't have time. Anyways, I'm not sure how much internet we'll have access to on the road, so this may be my last post for a week or so. Hopefully by then. Thanks for reading, and I'll update as soon as possible!