20.10.2011 – 20.10.2011  16 °C

Got going relatively early this morning with a real day of site seeing planned. I met up again with one of my fellow travellers, Sue, and we headed for the chaos of the Grand Bazaar.

The Bazaar is a few city blocks that is filled with tiny lanes, tiny stalls all housed inside old stables and buildings linked to one of the mosques. The bazaar was first built in the mid 1400s and has been in use ever since! You name it you can pretty much buy it in the bazaar.. Plenty of evil eyes, carpets, jewellery and antiques on offer as well as the obligatory souvenir sellers! We spent a good portion of the morning shopping (my skills at bargaining haven’t diminished.. Like always I’m sure we still got done but I still felt like I had won!!) I was most impressed when we found the Old Bazaar the old part of the Grand Bazaar. Today it is home to the antique and silver wear sellers. We found shop after shop selling full silver wear dinner sets… The type of silver I’ve only ever seen in top royal museums in Europe… I’ve got no idea who can afford the stuff but it is absolutely amazing to see! After scoring a couple of marriage proposals from random sellers we finally left the bazaar feeling totally overwhelmed and stressed out.

We decided to find ourselves some sort of snack for lunch before we accidentally discovered the Blue Mosque! We again got some help from someone looking for us to buy a rug and made our way into the famous mosque. The entrance way is pretty impressive and then you see the interior and WOW is all I can say! The windows are mainly all made out of blue stain glassed so the effect on the floor and walls is really quite amazing! The main draw back in the mosque was the number of tourists.. Holy smokes we could hardly move inside the church. We didn’t actually stay for too long (the crowds just really made you feel like getting out as quickly as possible) before we headed out and down to the Hagia Sofia.

If the Blue Mosque is impressive, the Hagia Sofia is unbelievable. The museum first started out as a Christian Church (mid 300 AD) before it was converted to a mosque after the Ottoman invasion in the 1400s. Today it is undergoing renovation and will remain as a museum from now on. After the conversion to a Muslim mosque, the painted Christian frescos were plastered and painted over before the basilica was dedicated to Allah. Today the frescos have been revealed and renovated so that the splendour of both the Christian and Islamic faiths can be seen (much of the Muslim decoration remains). What is left, is this incredibly amazing church complex which looks more like a palace than any sort of church (no matter the religion). The whole Hagia Sofia is built of marble and some of the marble inside almost resembles pictures.. I can only imagine how the blocks of marble were moved to this location and installed. The pillars that hold up the basilica must be 30-50m high and all marble!! (In fact the name marble comes from ‘marble island’ which is off the shore of Turkey!)

After oggling at the beauty of the Hagia Sofia we went across the street to the Cisterns to see the Byzantine underground water complex. It was built around 600 AD and is this huge underground pillared/ domed area that was used to house the water for the city. Today it is a museum with each of the columns lit up by lights.. Just gorgeous. The Cistern is also home to two carved heads of Medusa which were obviously ransacked from some other place and used as building material for the cistern. What I find incredible about the cistern is the fact that for over a thousand years the columns were surrounded by water yet they still remain in almost pristine condition! Here’s hoping they are still standing in another thousand years!

This was our last adventure for today because at 6pm we had to meet up with our other fellow travellers to get the low down on the trip and also to start out by having some dinner. Dinner was at a Turkish restaurant not far from the hotel that has a beautiful view of the Blue Mosque at night. Our group seems pretty good- 3 american ladies and 4 aussies (2 men and 2 ladies) so far everyone seems to be getting along great so here’s hoping that this trend continues!

Off tomorrow to discover more of the splendour of Istanbul but now with our group!