Istanbul

So...I've been to Istanbul three times now and I've yet to give you a look. Here goes. This is a tourist blog... I'll be back in my city late Friday night and later this week will give you a peek at the place I'm staying now in the mountains for the conference I'm at. It's been a really great week of rest and recharge. But for now, Welcome to a bit of Istanbul...
p.s. Istanbul is absolutely gigantic, no wonder you can actually (and I did) traverse two continents in one day...this city has roughly 15 million people living in and around it

Shopping in the Grand Bazaar (it was pretty grand on many accounts) is always a fun thing to do. It's a huge indoor bazaar with just about anything Turkey touristy and any name brand knock off thing you could ever want or well, just not want! I've gotten some gifts here in the past and this trip, I got a few happies for myself to remember my Turkey by later on. Shopping is never dull. Almost all of the vendors speak Turkish and English and some even speak French, Spanish, or Chinese to draw a customer...Here are a few of my favorite lines: 'Shakira, I love you. For you, I give big discount' (if you don't know who Shakira is, you'll have to Google her, i don't resemble her in the slightest, but thanks...more comments: 'Angels, come back, everything is free!' Now, flattery just may be one of the ways to my heart, cause I was tempted to turn around and make a little purchase after those comments, but my hands were already full...

Here are some pictures of the Blue Mosque below. A bit of history: The builder of this mosque originally wanted the minarets to be built of gold, which in Turkish sounds very similar to the name for the number six...The mosque ended up being built with six minarets that were not gold--which at the time, no other mosque had six minarets. (To be noted, we have a mosque in our city with six minarets also). The inside of the mosque is full of such intricate tilings practically from the floors to the ceilings (the very high vaulted ceilings).

Below are some pictures of the Hagia Sophia, (prounouced the Eye 'a Sophia, which don't worry did cause me some confusion as to what people were actually calling it before I became more cultured and learned a bit of Turkish!) This now museum was formerly three times over an Orthodox church until it was burned down once by riots and then later destroyed by fires and an earthquake before it was rebuilt and turned into a mosque and then later into a museum. The walls still bear artwork from former times when the building's purpose was to be a church.