Saturday
İstanbul is engaging
Another long, wonderful, and entertaining day in İstanbul.
After breakfast at the hotel again, we walked over to the Grand Bazaar to beat the crowds. It's over 4000 shops, all covered to allow haggling in all weather. Somehow, we came back with bags we didn't arrive with.
We had a hefty lunch at a busy restaurant, then retired to the hotel for a quick rest.
Out again by 2:30pm, we walked to the nearby Aya Sofya (also known as Sancta Sophia in Latin, Haghia Sofia in Greek, and the Church of the Divine Wisdom in English). This is probably the best sight in İstanbul. The Emperor Justinian had it build in 537, and it was the greatest church in Cchristendom for nearly a thousand years. When the Ottomans conquered İstanbul in 1453, Mehmet had it turned into a mosque, and the Christian paintings and mosaics plastered over. It stayed thusly until 1953 when it was turned into a museum. Now many of the original artworks have been uncovered and restored, and Christian and Muslim imagery exist together inside the colossal building. It was incredible, with many recognizable religious mosaics.
After that, we went underground to the Basilica Cistern. It's an amazing reservoir - 143m long and 65m wide - created in AD 532, forgotten at some point before the Ottoman conquest, and then rediscovered in 1545. It's even got fish in it.
After some tea at an outdoor cafe and another rest, we took a ferry across the Bosphorous Strait for dinner. Technically this means that we left Europe for a few hours and had dinner in Asia, since the continents split İstanbul. We found a great restaurant with only Turks in it. There was a great deal of confusion with our order, and we ended up getting served a meal for 5 people. After some arguing about who made what mistake, they capitulated and charged us the price for what we ordered.
Ferry ride back, a beer at the restaurant around the corner, and a last nightime look at İstanbul from our hotel roof.
This is a truly amazing city. I've described what we've done, but haven't even tried to capture the energy, the people, the friendliness, the sense of age, and the mingling of culture.
