Cemberlitas Hammam

We have dinner at a place right by the hotel and start planning the

next day.  I make a reservation for a bath and a massage at the Cemberlitas Hammam.  Because why just do a Turkish Bath when you can do one in a historical building built by one of the best architects in the world?  That’s right, I went to the Frank Lloyd Wright of the Ottoman Empire, one of Sinan’s designed hammams.  I walked to the hammam and have the IstanbulKart 

to bring me back if I don’t feel like walking back home after this massage.  I don’t want to ruin the warmth and good feelings with snow which has fallen in the night.  So, this experience is why I’m finally able to start blogging again, because it was amazing.  I decide to go all out once I’m there and get a massage after the bath experience.  You

only live once right, I’m overdue for my massage at home, and with travel and schlepping suitcases around, I need it.  I get a mitt, disposal underwear and am sent to get undressed.  Lock up my belongings and a lady leads me into the hammam bath area, where I’m stretched out on a large marble slab that is convex and warm.  The whole room is warm and I’m supposed to 

 sweat out the impurities.  I’m the only one in there this morning and I just relax, hear the dripping water from condensation and enjoy the view of a dome with what seem like skylights that simulate stars.  I get 15 minutes to warm and relax, before my bath lady returns to wash me.  I believed that I was a person that took care of myself, pedicures ever so often, massage ever two weeks, but little did I know that I 

was wasting my time bathing myself.  This lady rubbed 15 layers of dead skin off my body from head to toe, then covered me in a foamy soap that smelled like verbena and lemon and washed me.  I was turned, maneuvered and washed as if I had no ability to wash myself.  And it felt like love and caring.  She rinsed me with buckets of warm water and then took me to the tap room where she could wash my 

hair.  I was left to rinse as much as I wanted and then sent to my massage.  This sounds like it was an easy, quick thing.  But this lady worked on my for 45 minutes.  There was some massage and a lot of exfoliating and a lot of soap.  I was sent to a tiny Asian woman for my massage.  I currently have an Amazon for a massage therapist and Summer’s elbow is nothing to sneeze at, but this tiny lady had fingers that could probably bend steel.  I was sent back to the changing room and felt like I had had a life changing event.  I told 

John when I got back to the hotel, that I found my sacred space on this trip.  And we’re all going to go to the next one.  I intend not to bathe myself again the whole time I’m in Turkey, I’m going to let others do it for me.  No pictures in the Hammam of course, but what a great experience.