First day in Istanbul

Of course, it's not what I expected because I really didn't know what to expect. I thought about a cross between Greece and Italy, and it looks a little like that, but it's truly its own place. First of all, there are 2000 mosques in this city, each with its individual look, some big, some small. Presently we are staying in a hotel (www.hotelararat.com) that is across the street from the famous Blue Mosque, and, although we knew the call to prayer was early, we didn't expect it to be at 5 am and blast through our room. In fact, as I sit writing this blog, the last call to prayer of the day has just begun and will continue for a full 5 minutes. The main call is from the Blue Mosque, and then we hear several others echoing the same chant throughout the city.

After our first breakfast of tomatoes, cucumbers, yogurt with honey, olives, fresh bread (like our Greek bread) and a pizza-like square with feta cheese baked in the middle, we set out for the day. First, we walked around the square by the Blue Mosque and then over to Santa Sophya where we were greeted by a very friendly Turkish man who suggested we visit the Basilica Cistern first since the Santa Sophya was very busy with tour buses. He showed us where it was, and we paid and went in. The underground water supply is beyond imagination. It was a huge square pool about the size of 2 football fields and this was only a quarter of the total area. The rest are not yet restored. There were 350 columns holding up the roof, all lit with mostly red lights, a few green or white. We could walk across the water area between the columns on an elevated walkway. Quite beautiful.

Then we saw the oldest monument in Istanbul, a 3500 year old obelisk from Egypt. the beautiful Kaiser Wilhelm Fountain with its gold painted ceiling, and another obelisk which was believed to be the center of the world in very early times. We next visited the Blue Mosque which was amazingly beautiful with small tiles in all colors, but predominately blue. all over the inside. The ceiling was done in tile and gorgeous with gold paint, but the carpet was magnificent, red with blue flowers.

Speaking of carpets, our friend took us around and then invited us to his carpet shop for a cup of apple tea. I said to Terry, "We've allowed ourselves to be guided into this shop and on the first day, too!" We did convince him that we could not take time to look at carpets, although I was looking plenty hard, and so he showed us where to buy tickets for a ferry ride on the Bosphorus, at the same time extracting a promise from us to return to his shop tonight for a glass of wine.

The Bosphorus boat ride was beautiful, a little cooler than we expected, but with such interesting architecture at every turn that we soon forgot we were freezing. There were many palaces and fabulous homes right on the azure water with about a million jellyfish floating in it, hundreds of boats, both pleasure and oil tankers, and restaurant boats with fish grilling on their decks.
We finished by walking around the corner from our hotel and having a delicious dinner outside, Terry shivering and me wrapped in two purple pashminas. And, yes, we managed to put off our carpet-store-owner friend for another day.