Christian and Muslim symbolism in Aya Sofya
there is a lot of history in Turkey. biblical stuff.
the bible happened here.
and in Sultanahmet, the historic old part of Istanbul on the European side of the Bosphorous river (named after Sultan Ahmet I, the builder of the mosque), there are enough sights and smells to have your head reeling--it's no wonder the Turks love their pistachios and dried apricots and figs--great snacks to keep the energy level up as your neck gets tired from staring up at at the grandeurs of Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque.
after loading up on the traditional Turkish breakfast that is standard fare with your pension stay (hard boiled eggs, olives, goat cheese, tomatoes, cucumber, jam, honey and bread) our first stop was Aya Sofya (former Byzantine church and Ottoman mosque)...
glad we got there early--the place gets bombarded with tour bus after tour bus and as we were leaving the place the line up to get in had doubled in size.
what we quickly discovered in Istanbul was, like other places in Europe we have been to, every-single-thing costs money. if there is some way for money to be made, it will cost money.
even to visit the loo ranged anywhere from 50 kurus to 1 YTL...regardless of whether you were peeing in the hole in the ground and had to bring in your own TP.
so many times we were deciding what we wanted to spend money on to get in to, because really, you can't see everything.
seeing Aya Sofya was money well spent.
arch inlaid with tiny gold mosaics
old marble wash station outside Aya Sofya
Aya Sofya (Turkish), Hagia Sofia, (Greek), Sancta Sofia (Latin) means Church of the Divine Wisdom. it was built in 537 AD as the greatest church in Christendom (and it was, until St Peter's Basilica in Rome was built 1000 years later)...of course, after Mehmet the conquerer's conquest of the city from the Byzantines, he proclaimed it a mosque (Atatürk later turned Aya Sofya into a national historic site)...it's really interesting to see all the old Christian and Muslim symbolism intermingling.
there are 30 million tiny gold mosaic tiles lining the church's interior, and the awe-inspiring flat-domed roof completely freaks me out seeing as it was built in the 6th century.
man in prayer, Blue Mosque / Sultan Ahmet Camii
we figured since we were in to seeing architectural wonders on this particular day, we'd head across the park to the Blue Mosque, which is really called the Sultan Ahmet Camii (Mosque of Sultan Ahmet I)...the blue moniker comes from its interior tiles.
what a beautiful building! it is also a working mosque, so non-worshippers are shut out for about a half hour 5 times a day...we had to return 3 times to finally get in as we seemed to conveniently time our stops there with every call to prayer.
but even that was wonderful to hear and see. the Imam's voice echoes through the marble in courtyard and silences everyone. it is an absolutely tranquil feeling, listening to the soothing voice singing the call to prayer while watching people washing themselves to go into mosque.
Blue Mosque / Sultan Ahmet Camii
women have a separate area to pray in the Blue Mosque; in smaller mosques, there is usually no special room for women--traditionally they stay at home to pray
wash station outside Blue Mosque
in between returning to the Blue Mosque, we wandered the streets of old Istanbul. we found a tiny carpet covered place with miniature chairs and tables to eat spinach and potato gözleme and drink çay for lunch.
spinach gözleme with hot chillies and apple çay @ Cennet
we found the shop of the family of the inventor of Turkish Delight (Ali Muhiddin Haci Bekir) and tried out different flavours like mint, rose, hazelnut, and of course, pistachio. the locals buy the lokum in bulk...and apparently in large quantities because the guy laughed at us when we said we just wanted to buy a couple of pieces. he put a few in a little bag and just gave it to us with the promise that we'd be back in a couple of weeks to buy some to take home (we kept that promise).
mint lokum
my favourite food stuffed with my other favourite food: walnut-stuffed figs from the spice bazaar
we got lost in the crowd at the Spice Bazaar (one of my favourite places in Turkey, probably my favourite place in Istanbul) and stocked up on nuts and dried apricots for a couple of days. i made it a point to remember to return when we were back in Istanbul to buy tea and spices (and obviously more nuts and apricots and figs, some of my favourite foods in the world).
after we had finally gotten in to the Blue Mosque, we were so enthralled with mosque architecture, we wandered around searching out other old mosques. with my trusty scarf to use as a head dress we walked into a few that don't necessarily get any tourists and found a couple of gems...most notably Küçük aya Sofya Camii and Sokollu Mehmet Pasa Camii.
a long day of walking around in Istanbul was overwhelming to say the least, and so we decided over a dinner of goat cheese pide and eggplant stew at Karadeniz Aile Pide ve Kebap Salonu that we would leave old Istanbul in the morning.
we made our plan over beers that night (which became a bit of a tradition on this trip--deciding what to do next while enjoying a couple of Efes Pilsen every night--which, coupled with all the olives, figs, nuts, dried fruit, cheese and bread, might explain the extra bit of paunch i brought home, regardless of the endless hours of walking, the 16 km hike up a mountain and the mountain biking we did).
our plan was to ferry across the Bosphorous in the morning and head over to the station on the Asia side of Istanbul, to figure out a way to get south on an overnight train.
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