Hamam and night sky

To go along with my description of our trip to the hamam, I thought I would share with you the ONE amazing sunset that Istanbul treated us to. I can't believe that it has been over a month since we returned from the trip and I am still busy trying to process through it.

I honestly never thought that experiencing a hamam would happen. My first venture out to a hamam was with Eric one night after O boy was in bed. After consulting the guidebooks we found one that was co-ed (there are only a couple - most are really traditional and have separate areas for men and women) we managed to get ourselves there only to be met by a burly jerk of a guy telling us it was full and we needed to make reservations. After looking at him with an evil eye - we turned our backs and took a walk instead. The second trip to try and visit a hamam was with my mom on another night after O was in bed. We found one close to the apartment and walked down there. In our naivete we walked into what we thought was the front door - turns out it was the front door for the MEN's section. We were stopped about 2 feet in the door and told (with a stern look from a guy with bushy eyebrows) that the women's entrance was around the corner. So MB and I back up and go around the corner down a steep hill along a sketchy street with only one little light and see a grated door that is locked up tight. Turns out it was not open on the day we were there. OK...so third time must be a charm - or should I take this as a warning that I am not supposed to experience a hamam?

A couple of days later MB and I head out again to the same neighborhood hamam. This time we act like we know what we are doing. We go down the hill and alas - the grated door is open and it leads into a set of steps that go further downhill. We walk down the steps and tentatively open the door. We step into a wide open reception area with windows at the tops of the walls to let light in. We are met by four older female attendants all dressed in flowery mumu type dressing gowns. We pay for our services and are each lead to a little dressing room. The room has a little bed, a mirror, hooks for your clothes - but the strangest thing is that the rooms are all windows from about the waist up. This should have been a sign to me that privacy and modesty need to be left at the door. We undress and wrap ourselves up in peştemal , slip on our little wooden slippers and off we go. Through another door and into an inner chamber to yet another door. We step through the door and faster than you can say "hamam" our attendant grabs hold of my towel and whala - Stacy is naked! I have to tell you - it was a little disconcerting. My MB says that she held onto her peştemal with a death grip until the addendant gave up and let her keep it.

The inside of the room is beautiful - all marble with a giant marble inlay slab in the middle surrounded by little sinks around the outside edge of the room. There are colored glass circles in the roof that let sun in and the whole room had a kind of hazy appearance. So there I am naked sitting on this heated marble slab - and when I say heated I mean hot. The center of the slab is wicked hot and as you lay there you start to sweat and you get slippery and you feel like you are going to slide right off the edge. We lay there chatting for a bit of time and then in come our two attendants. They are dressed in what I came to call a "uniform" it consisted of black lace bikini undies and a little strip of cotton cloth tied around their breasts. Wow! And I thought being naked was intimidating. My attendant is looking at me like I am supposed to do something and I have no clue what to do - I am usually good in new situations, you just watch the person ahead of you but we were the only ones in the hamam. I sit there trying to figure out what she wants me to do until finally she flips me over on my belly and starts splashing water on me. She proceeds to scrub me with an exfoliator mitt and show me all the dead skin and debris that she gets off. This is not a gentle scrub down - this is a freakin aerobic event and a couple of times I wince but dang if my skin doesn't get super clean. Next she splashes me with water and starts to soap me up. She uses a white cotton pillow case looking thing with a bar of soap in it - she makes these crazy suds and soaps pretty much every inch of me. I looked like this minus the blond hair and the look of ectasy on my face. It was trippy how many bubbles there were. During the soaping process she is massaging you and I was slipping and sliding around the marble slab like a chicken gettting prepped for dinner. I kept thinking that I was going to slid right off onto the floor but the attendant was good - she used her knees and her massaging to slide me back and forth. After the soaping she rinses me off using these pretty copper pans full of water then I get to sit on a little marble step between her knees while she washes my hair. After she is done washing my hair she proceeds to rinse me off again - this time those pretty copper pans are not so pretty - she dumps pan after pan of water over my head until I start to feel like a drown rat and my contacts threaten to float away.

The whole experience was great. Going with MB and giving myself over to the exeperince was the perfect thing to do at the time and I would definitley do it again.