Istanbul

We went to Turkey on a G.A.P. tour but got there early to see more of Istanbul. We arrived in the beginning of tulip season and when we returned two weeks later, they were still beautifully in bloom. The city is big (14 million people), bustling, has beautiful buildings (in a different way than Paris and Prague.) There were people everywhere we went and always very nice. We’ve found most of the European cities we’ve visited, including Cluj, Romania, are much more densely populated than we are used to in the United States.

We ate breakfasts of a round bagel like bread with sesame seeds, and fresh pomegranate juice (delicious!) We snacked on a sticky ice cream served by an entertaining man who stole a customer’s cone out of his hand with the whole glob of vanilla ice cream.

We saw Haghia Sofya, a church turned mosque—Turkey is 96% Muslim but is a secular country. The rural or older women wear scarves, but you see VERY few face and body coverings— It is huge…large enough to put Notre Dame inside of it. When a church, it had beautiful mosaics and paintings on every inch. As a Mosque, the faces had to be removed or covered, and they added the large wooden discs with writing on them. To give you a bit of the scale, the second picture is standing on the bottom floor. The third picture is workers renovating one of the wooden discs that you can see in the second picture.

We went to the Basilica Cistern, also incredibly large…and wet. It is larger than two football fields. It was built in the 6th century CE and has 336 columns.

We met fellow tour goers, Nina and her grown daughter, Kath a day before the tour and saw Topkapi Palace and the Grand Bazaar. Both were wonderlands. The palace and its grounds were beautiful, as shown in the picture below of Kath in the flower garden. Besides the splendor, we saw land deeds (2nd picture) and many relics (Chuck was delighted) like Joseph’s turban, Moses’ staff, Abraham’s pot, St. John’s arm, Mohamed’s beard.

We were listening to a concert on a small outdoor stage when this guy on his motor cycle drove up to listen. Jan took these pictures as he was driving away.

We saw the Blue Mosque, the only Mosque in the world with 6 minarets. The Mosque in Mecca had 6, but when Sultan Ahmet I commissioned the Blue Mosque and recognized the problem, he paid to have a 7th minaret added to the Mosque in Mecca. The other picture is of a Muslim man washing his feet, lower legs, arms, hands and face before he goes into the mosque to pray. The faucets and benches were on the side of the mosque.

This is a brief description of our time in Istanbul.  We will write about the rest of our Turkey trip soon.