Istanbul, Turkey; Day 2
Trip Start
Apr 06, 2009
1
32
36
Trip End
May 11, 2009
Istanbul, Turkey
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Day 32
4/7/09
Istanbul, Turkey
Today is a church day we are going to the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, also the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar more about that later. The Hagia Sophia is the biggest mosque in the world. It was a church for about 900 years then a mosque for about 200 years and now it is a Museum. It was crowded and there were lots of kids in it, though there were beautiful mosaics in the upper floors but to tell you the truth it was not that interesting
Mosaics in the Hagia Sophia
. The next place was the Blue Mosque; the blue mosque is still in use so you had to be quit and respectful to the people praying. You have to take off your shoes so its really stinky in there though the carpet felt really nice. There's a legend about how the Blue mosque got its six minarets (Minarets are towers). The Muezzin who is the man who sings the call to prayer asked the leader of the mosque for a gold minaret and the leader thought he said six so instead of gold he got six minarets. Also the big mosque in Mecca had six minarets so when the blue mosque got six minarets the Mecca mosque had to add a seventh. After the Blue Mosque we went to the Grand Bazaar. You would think it would be really crowded but it was not, at all. There were very few people in it. My favorite thing about the Grand Bazaar was at one point there were like 20 guys on their cell's trading stocks some guy would yell out a number and all the other guys would start screaming again. The only good thing about it is that everything was CHEEP!!!!!!! Next stop Spice Market. Again this bazaar is not what you would have thought it would be like there were just normal stores and some spices. The one good thing we got out of that was we got Turkish delight. It was gross!!!! For dinner we went to a restaurant called Amedros! It was the number one restaurant in all of Istanbul on trip adviser. We got this really ummy thing called a clay pot dish a man would come out with a clay pot and he would take a knife tap it on the side of the pot then WABAAM he would break it open. It was really ummy. GOOD NIGHT!!!Esther
