Our first full day in Turkey was complete with tourist events. Kyra, our personal tour guide for the week, took us to start the morning at the Hagia Sophia, a church that was built by the Byzantine Empire around 320 AD. It has been a Christian place of worship for almost a thousand years, then converted into a mosque for nearly 500 years and since 1935 has been a museum for us all. The structure is remarkable; full of mosaics from the Christian period and Ottoman era as well. I marveled over that fact that it was built in simply 5 years without any of the tools we have today. Take a look.
After touring and dropping our jaws in Hagia Sophia, I ventured with a few friends to find lunch. Very quickly we were overwhelmed with the different culture. Finding a restaurant is stressful as it is in foreign land, but when there are men outside every story reaching out and shouting, "I love you. Best friend, come in. Hungry? Come here, beautiful," you can barely think straight. Luckily we finally settled on a spot and ate more meat than we could handle. Little did we know that this was only the beginning of eating meat, meat, and more meat all week long.
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| Blue Mosque casually behind us |
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| Trolly back! |
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And then I took photos of the Hagia Sophia at night...all locked up with only homeless cats and dogs running around through, along with a guard...   |
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