What a chilly rainy day here in Istanbul. Not the same weather I was lucky enough to be treated with during my other Istanbul posts. I had some plans that I hope will be in Part 7 of my series but for today I decided to backtrack to my https://martin.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/jazzyearl/blog/2023/04/21/3135078401 outing and try to go inside a bit.

Hagia Sophia

I met my guide just down the street from the Hagia Sophia and didn’t notice it was cold until I stopped moving from my 45-minute commute on foot, subway, and tram. I did feel good getting around on my own recently in this huge city’s mass transit system as you can read about in my https://twitter.com/EarlsOfWisdom/status/1650752208277848064.

Open

Heading over, I got some more good pictures of the Blue Mosque from across the park.

Open

While in the looooooooong line to get into the Hagia Sophia I found out that during the COVID lockdowns, Turkey stopped it from being a museum and returned it to a functioning mosque.

This brick & mortar structure was build 1500 years ago and is probably the oldest/biggest building of its kind anywhere. There actually were two other churches built here by the Romans prior to this structure. Not much left of the first church, but some old pillars.

And the base of the second church was literally built upon by the church that is here now. You can see some of the steps and foundation that have been uncovered just outside the entrance.

Our guide was full of information and I would say definitely take a guided tour if you are lucky enough to visit as there is TONS of history of this incredibly old place of worship. Plenty of changing hands (and religions) in those last 1500 years. But, hey… let’s go in!!

Nice foyer, but take your shoes off and go into the main chamber and WOW!

Pretty amazing place with LOTS of history, but eventually we exited and went around the back side of it.

Topkapi Palace

That took us to the Topkapi Palace which is basically the precursor to the palace I blogged about in https://martin.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/jazzyearl/blog/2023/04/22/3135438936.

I opted to skip all the inside tour stuff as I really just wanted to make sure the day wasn’t wasted and I had a bit of fun wandering around.

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