We did so much on our recent trip to Turkey that it will be difficult to condense it all into blogs but I'm going to give it my best shot. We spent 3 nights in Istanbul and 4 in Bodrum which is on the southwestern coast of Turkey. We hired a private guide to take us to all the sites in Istanbul and we managed to pack almost everything we wanted to see into two very full and exhausting days.
Our first stop was the Hagia Sophia. Hagia Sophia is currently a museum that used to be a mosque that used to be a church. So it has elements of two religions in it which is neat. It was built in the 4th century so it has amazingly stood for hundreds of years through many earthquakes.
Let's start with the most important thing, the cat hanging out in Hagia Sophia:
A view of the front of the church. The big circles with arabic writing in them spell Allah and Muhammed ... other prophets are on the other circles but I forget the other names. In the ceiling in the front of the church is a picture of the virgin mary though it's hard to see in this picture.
The main dome in the ceiling:
A view from the second floor:
A view out the window of the second floor looking towards the Blue Mosque:
Mosaics:
A cat sitting on a bench outside Hagia Sophia:
And here are some views of Hagia Sophia from a distance. This one is from our hotel roof. It is quite impressive:
Lit up at dusk:
And at night:
On our last night in Istanbul we ate dinner on top of a hotel with a 360-degree view of Istanbul and we could see all the mosques lit up at night. It was amazing.
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