Istanbul: July 3, 2012

This will be a long post.  We packed a lot into this day.  (By the way, I'm typing this on July 8 - we left Istanbul, have already been to Antalya/Olimpos and are now in Bodrum.)

Sultan Ahmed Mosque (nicknamed "The Blue Mosque")

This is the mosque outside our hostel windows, and it's call to prayer woke us up and put us to sleep.  (There was also a tiny mosque nearby with a really loud speaker and the man singing the call to prayer was not even close to as good as the fellow from Sultan Ahmed Mosque.  Not to mention the crazy sounding seagulls that joined in the morning!  Now I know where they got the idea for how a seagull would sing in The Little Mermaid - wow.)  It was built between 1609 and 1606, by Sultan Ahmed I, during the Ottoman Empire.  It incorporates Byzantine with Ottoman architecture.

Outdoor foot washing

Courtyard

Main room, where the men pray

Entrance area

Main dome - the ceilings are mosaics

Tile work - there are different panels covering the walls

Women coming in for prayer (visitors must leave during prayer).  They have a segregated area in the back.  Several women stopped to talk with Hannah and pinch her cheeks before entering.  (Hannah gets a lot of cheek pinches in Turkey.)

Hagia Sophia

Facing the Sultan Ahmed Mosque is Hagia Sophia (literally, a 2 minute walk from one to the other). 

While the Mosque is polished and pristine and beautiful, the much older Hagia Sophia stole my heart.  First dedicated in 360 A.D., it has been demolished or damaged by earthquakes and fires, and rebuilt or restored each time.  It has housed both Christianity and Islam.  And you can feel it all when you walk in.

Tile work - very little here compared to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque walls.

Mosaics - there were a lot here.  Very tiny pieces of painted, or sometimes natural, rock, and it was easy to see that detail.

Originally, this was the king, queen and their child.  Mary was added at a later period.

This is a good example of the different colors of layers of marble in the walls throughout.

View of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque from Hagia Sophia - this reminded me of a Star Wars (I- III) city view.

Yerebatan Cistern - 532 A.D. Water for the palace came from the Black Sea.  It was stored in a reservoir and piped to an underground cistern.  It was forgotten about until the 1980s, when an archeologist heard stories of people in Istanbul being able to get water through their basement floors, and sometimes even catching fish.  There are 336 marble columns.

There are two heads of Medusa at the bottom of columns in the back of the cistern.  No one knows why.  One is upside down and the other sideways.

We also went to the Grand Bazarre and watched a Whirling Dervis on this day.  However, I'm going to stop now!