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Istanbul, Turkey

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We also had a private tour with Nejat in Istanbul and we actually went with him this time!  It was only 5 of us including Nejat and we had a busy day in Istanbul ahead of us.  We first went to Topkapi Palace, built in 1465.  It was a giant palace divided up into many areas, kitchens (that cooked for 10,000 daily!), armory, military base, living quarters and museums.  In one of the museums we were able to see giant jewels, we even saw a 82 carat diamond!  Amazing.

We then went to Hagia Sophia (Church of Holy Wisdom), now known as the Ayasofya Museum, it is a former Eastern Orthodox church converted to a mosque in 1453, converted into a museum in 1935, in the Turkish city of Istanbul. It is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest buildings of the world and sometimes considered the Eighth Wonder of the World.  The candles and the paintings and the marble all together created a beautiful atmosphere.  It was also neat to see the transition from a Christian Church to a mosque and how they did preserve some mosaics with Christian references but you could see other things like crosses shaved down to only be lines.

After Hagia Sophia we went to lunch at a great restaurant that Nejat took us to.  It had wonderful views and really good food.  I had a steak kabob with pistachios and of course, baklava (pistachio AND walnut), mmmm!  After lunch we headed to the Blue Mosque.  This is a active mosque, therefore requiring shoe removal, heads, knees and shoe removal.  It was very beautiful and surprisingly not very blue (The mosque became known in the west as the Blue Mosque because of the predominantly blue coloring of paintwork of the interior. However this blue paint was not part of the mosque's original decor so it is being removed).  My pictures don't do it justice, my camera didn't like the lighting. 

Lastly we visited The Basilica Cistern.  It is the largest of several hundred ancient cisterns that still lie beneath the city of Istanbul. The cistern is surrounded by a firebrick wall with a thickness of 4 meters and coated with a special mortar for insulation against water.  It doesn't sound like much, but this giant underground cistern built by Justinian in 532 to provide water to the city in cases of siege, and later consecrated as a basilica.  The cistern was discovered when people were 'fishing' from their holes cut in their floor! 

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