Blue Mosque

Our second stop on our first morning in Istanbul, we visited the Blue Mosque. It is located just across a large courtyard from the Hagia Sophia.  Since the blue mask is still an operating place of worship, we brought along clothing to comply with the dress code they're in.  After a few wardrobe adjustments, we found the visitor entrance and entered the mosque.  Most surprisingly, at the door, we were provided with small plastic bags in which to carry our shoes while visiting. 

We expected to see interesting blue tiles at Mosque, with a variety of elegant rooms to view. We were both disappointed. Wifey did find the women's prayer room tucked in the back of the facility interesting.

In addition, the visitor section is separated by a bar of sorts from the active worship section. It reminded wifey of the bar separating the judge and attorneys from the non-participants in a courtroom.

Sweet that they provided plastic bags for our shoes!  We kept the bags and were able to repurpose them later during a shopping experience.  

Here you can see half a ceiling and a sheet printed to mimic the view that would be behind it.  We're guessing renovations?  

If in Istanbul, should you visit the Blue Mosque?  Absolutely.  It's practically next door to the Underground Cistern and the Hagia Sophia so the marginal cost is very low.  But have realistic expectations :) 

--

Haigia Sophia

The first sight we explored in Istanbul is The Hagia Sophia. This is an ancient church - turned mosque - turned museum. It was initially built in the 530s in Constantinople. In the 1400s, it was converted to a Mosque with the Turkish conquest of Constantinople.

Exploring Hagia Sophia costs 40 tl per person, and it an exercise in very hard floors and crowds. We enjoyed the intricate mosaics, and Hubby found the areas where mosaics appeared to be partially covered by colored plaster to be particularly intriguing.  If the mosaics were covered, why were they now partly uncovered? 

See here plaster next to original mosiac decoration

Another part of the Hagia Sophia we particularly enjoyed was the lighting system.  The building is lit by a relatively large number of simple chandeliers.  As best we can tell, these could be raised or lowered to allow for lighting of the original candles. 

During the time Hagia Sophia was used as a Mosque, Arabic script was added as decor.  These large circular discs adorn the upper portions of the walls.  Wifey particularly found it interesting while walking around the upper levels, seeing the back of the discs.  They're made of wood (which, considering their age, makes sense).  

All in all, we'd recommend visiting the Hagia Sophia to anyone coming to Istanbul.  We choose to tour on our own using a book we brought along from the Library for reference.  You might consider hiring one of the local tour guides to walk you through the space in order to learn a bit more about its history and usage.  

Old Town Istanbul - Overview

Our first morning in Istanbul we set out to visit the "Old Town" which is home to some of the city's most famous landmarks.  We had slept about 3.5 hours the night before, and really none the 'night' of flying before that so we weren't running on our best level of functionality.  Our first destination was the Hagia Sophia.  (Blog Post to follow)

After the Hagia Sophia, we visited the Blue Mosque.  It was a bit more of a fashion adventure since modesty is highly valued by the Islamic faith.  Luckily, we planned ahead, dressed appropriately and bring a scarf to finalize the compliance.  For anyone interested in visiting but who doesn't want to wear pants, modest skirt, or a headscarf all day - the Mosque does have ones you can borrow for free in order to tour.  

Our selfie attempt included a bit of a photo-bomb ... "Hi Man-in-sunglasses".  

To be honest, the Blue Mosque was a bit anticlimactic.  We've had the opportunity to see various houses or worship around the world from varying religious traditions.  If, however, you're already in the area of old town, we encourage you to stop by and check this destination out.  (Blog Post to follow)

The last destination we wanted to see in the Old Town was the underground cistern.  This underground water supply was lost for many years and rediscovered in the 1500's.  It is an architectural wonder ... but is closed for renovations :(  SAD!  

Food and Water

Wifey gets pretty grumpy without ample water.  You cant drink the tap water in Turkey, and we'd just left a flight where the drink service was ... lacking.  So first thing on the to-do list for Wednesday night was ... find a grocery store and stock up on large bottled water.  Luckily, wifey had studied the neighborhood around our hotel in her planning phase, located one, and saved it to our offline google maps.  

We did not find that grocery store.  We did, however, find an alternative that sold us 5 liters of bottled water for 2.5 TL.  That's about $0.50.  Success. 

Hubby was hungry, as its about 9 pm at this point.  We considered a few shops along our walk 'home' before stopping in at Fetih Cafe.  

We google translated the menu and ordered.  French Toast and Dim Sum.  Aryan and Fruit Soda.  

French Toast - It's a grilled Cheese with Sausage.  The tomatoes were excellent.  

Dim Sum - way too many peppers per Wifey.  Hubby seemed to enjoy it though.  The French Fries were fine. 

I have no idea what this #selfiestick moment turned into

Fun little cafe, just a few minutes from our hotel!  The food was so-so but acceptable considering.  Would return out of proximity and hunger, probably not otherwise.  

Ataturk Airport and Hotel Transfer

 Wifey plans ahead.  She overanalyzes (and is writing this so it's all good) and decides on the best possible route or solution and then emails it to herself for safe keeping.  These qualities failed her today.  We planned to take a subway to a bus to our hotel.  Luckily we landed around 4:30 pm, so there was plenty of daylight.  The whole effort should have taken about 45 minutes. 

But first, Starbucks!  Wifey was super impressed by the two variations on spelling her name, below: 

We used the complimentary WiFi at Ataturk airport while we enjoyed our Frappunchinos to screenshot our route to the hotel.  Google Maps' offline functionality doesn't include mass transit.  

Easy peasy - one metro ride and one bus ride and we're there! 

On our way down to the in-airport Metro Station!  Hubby was a trooper with our bags!

Metro to the Right!

We purchased an IstanbulKart!  It's a prepaid transit card!  Between the two of us, we figured out the machine below to make our purchase.  

On the subway! Life is good, we've got this!  

Wait, which bus do we take?!  Why are there different styles?  We don't understand.

Fast forward 2 hours, we took the wrong bus after 3 different people told us it was right.  It got closeish to our area then started going in the opposite direction.  We disembarked.  Then we asked some police officers for help.  They sorta spoke English.  They told us to take a tram and pointed.  We never found the tram.  We used a small data infusion to re-route, walked 15 minutes, took another subway, then walked another 5 minutes to our hotel.  We arrived at our hotel just shy of 4 hours after touching down.  

And lost our Istanbul Kart.  

Arrival In Turkey

23 hours ago we were excited and fresh as we left home for the airport.

Now ... we're a bit tired as we try and get to sleep at our hotel in Istanbul!

We'll have to give the the deets later.  For now, sleep calls! 

  

British Airlines & Heathrow

We sat next to each other on our first flight, from home to DFW.  

While waiting for our connecting flight, we heard our names over the loudspeaker and had to come to the departure gate for "documents check".  This was our 2nd passport inspection in what would become a depressingly long list for the day.  

Us?  To the check-in?  

Three more passport checks later ... seriously, we must've ended up on some sort of watch list!  we found our opposite aisle seats.  We had gambled a bit choosing seats on opposite aisle's with two open in between. 

The gamble paid off.  Noone signed up for the middle seats between us, so we enjoyed a row of four seats for our 9-hour flight to Heathrow!

Do note, the top bun is an important hairstyle to allow for optimal sleeping on an airplane.  Below is also likely the last photo of WIfey's Bluetooth headphones before they were forever lost in security.    

British Airlines served us Chicken Curry on the flight over.  It was decent and actually the first time Wifey ate curry.  Ever.  

Breakfast was simple but good ... who can go wrong with Cream Cheese?  

And what British breakfast would be complete without hot black tea?  

Along our flight, we passed over Cardiff.  Hopefully, no lasting damage will result from exposure to the energy from the rift.  

Our arrival at Heathrow was dis pleasant.  We waited to disembark our plane forever.  Seriously probably a solid 30 minutes of a 1.5-hour layover.  We eventually discovered this was because the entire 747 was being transferred to buses for transport to the 'main terminal' and security.  

Once we reached the main terminal, we determined which terminal we would fly out of, and proceeded in that direction.  Heathrow does not correspond their gate numbers (such as A15 with their terminal identifiers such as 5).  This led to some confusion and us becoming separated for a while ... and another passport check.  We did make our flight to Istanbul ... as the gate staff was making the last call!  Wifey's headphones did not.  

Only 3.5 hours of flying to go for the day!  We didn't sit together for the last flight, having prioritized quick exits and aisle seats over more proximity.  

 Our final flight was also British Airways.  It did not include a meal, nor complimentary beverage service.  Wifey was not impressed.  None the less, we did arrive, several hours later, at Istanbul's Ataturk airport!!!