Istanbul, Part 2: Sights and Wonders

I thought it would be good to get out of Greece for a few days. Turns out, leaving one non-English-speaking country and going to another non-English-speaking country isn't really much of a change. I remembered some words and phrases from my time there several years ago, and much of the city planning, architecture, and sights and sounds reminded me of, well, Turkey.

Wednesday morning we hit three of the major tourist sites: the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and the Basilica Cistern. The Blue Mosque was built in the 1500s. Impressive from the outside,

a mosque on the inside. :)

The Hagia Sophia, not as impressive on the outside (except in this photo, which I did not take),

but pretty amazing on the inside.It was a church, built by Justinian in the 530s, and later converted to a mosque in the 1400s during Ottoman rule, and was destroyed and rebuilt several times in between. There are many mosaics from the early church period that were preserved when the Muslims plastered over them. And of course, no European historical site would be complete without scaffolding.

Last, I wanted to go into this cistern, built in 532. If you remember my obsession with caves and tunnels in Israel last year, you will know why I wanted to see this. :) There are 336 columns in here, canibalized from other buildings. It's huge...

Complete with a creepy Medusa head (two, actually), at the base of two of the columns: