Beginning with the city walls....it was a fortified city at one time.
And then there's the mosques...the glorious, wonderful, stupendous, awesome, utterly beautiful mosques!
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| The Blue Mosque As you can tell, I loved those pink flowers! Never did find out what they were, but they were everywhere. |
However, there are the lesser known mosque Cats!
Doesn't everybody take photos of cats while on vacation?!
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| At the entrance of the Blue Mosque. |
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| Hello, Puss! |
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| Blue Mosque |
I should mention here that it was 98 degrees, no breeze, with high humidity; probably warmer inside the mosque. So there I stood in this grandeur, trying to pretend that a torrential sweat was not running down my backside, remaining calm, even striking a thoughtful pose (ha!). One must maintain a sense of decorum afterall. But on the inside....I was jumping for joy, doing cartwheels, exclaiming (oh so thoughtfully, of course): "This is so cool!!!!"
You could pretty much say I felt that way on the entire trip!
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| Inside the Hagia Sofia (Aya Sofya) For a little perspective, those round Arabic discs are 25 feet across. (Isn't that a couple storeys high?) |
The Hagia Sofia deserves an encore because it's just that amazing! (I'll spare you the other 100 or so photos I took of this place! Not kidding!)
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| Can you tell I have a thing about pillars & columns? Later, we went to the Topkapi Palace...where the big-time Sultan lived, with his rather large entourage of servants, family, and of course, the Harem. |
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| Speaking of Harems.... |
Maybe this was a little more along the lines you'd expect to see at a Palace?:
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| I guess I have a thing for domed ceilings, too! |
At one point Mr. Pocketts and I escaped to go to the National Museum of Antiquities. (Still 98 degrees, etc.) Here's what you do when you have a few extra bits laying around:
Any one of these would have been the centerpiece of a museum back where I come from!
And when you blessedly collapse in a chair to have an icy cold Coke (98 degrees...), somebody might be watching you:
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| Why, hello there, you! |
The Turks, or rather the Romans at the time, also made good use of a few leftover Greek bits. During Justinian's reign, ginormous cisterns were built. And what if you had a couple pillars that, for whatever reason, didn't quite meet the specs? Well, you improvise:
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| Finally a good use for those pesky, old Medusa heads. |
Sometimes you have to do that more than once:
After all that, it sure did feel good to get back to our hotel room and lie down in the air-conditioned bliss! We were dead tired!
While we were gone, our hotel was thinking about us. They were kind enough to leave treats for us--every day was a Turkish Delight indeed! (sorry, couldn't resist)
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Ok, so I took photos of my hotel candy--don't judge me!
And as for the cat picture-taking thing....in my defense, I wasn't the only one!
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Join me next as, for some quirky reason, I decide that riding across Bulgaria in a bus sounds like a swell idea!
