Hi everybody,
A recap of our visit to Turkey and in particular Istanbul. We spent a total of 5 days there. Flew out from Zaventem ( Brussels) Airport early on the 10th of Sept. and returned in the evening of the 14th. Had to do the blog about this part of our holiday in stages, too many photos of interest! Admittedly , some pictures are better then others, but we hoped to capture the essence of our visit! We spent one day traveling through the country side, of interest to us was the peninsula of Gallipoli. Left early ( up at 6 am) and arrived back in Istanbul late at night. Approx 750 km. round trip. Not that unusual for us Aussies.......! Hope you will enjoy our photos.
Statue of Tintin ( famous strip figure of Belgian origin) at the entrance of Zaventem airport.
Arrival at our hotel in Istanbul.
Street vendor selling sweet bakery goods.
Street vendor with lovely corn cobs for sale.
Repairing a carpet, or may be finishing one off?
A silk carpet in the making.. See the intricate patter above, it takes at least a year to complete such a carpet. This one was displayed in one of the shops in the street we passed daily. We hardly saw it grow in the 5 days we were there, although the woman was working on it every day!
Street scene, where one could relax and smoke some....? After a hard days work!
We had a lovely dinner in one of the street restaurants opposite our hotel, the first evening.
Food ( beef, lamb, chicken) prepared in a clay pot . Yummy!
Breaking the clay pot to release the contents.
A real tourist attraction and the waiters made a fantastic display, every time they had to serve a clay pot dish.
The following morning. Ready to go sight seeing.
Entrance to the Hagia Sophia Museum, located at the Sultanahmet Square,Hagia Sophia served 916 years as a church and 481 years as a mosque. Now it is a museum. Hagia Sophia means Holy Wisdom.
The first church , The Great Church,burnt down due to riots and no buildings survived. The second church was built and during the excavations of 1936 many remains were discovered. Us in front of one of them, displayed in the garden at the entrance of the Hagia Sophia.
Remains from the excavation; embellishment on a frieze.
Face stone? Entrance step? Remains of the excavation. The second church was also burnt down completely during the Nike Riot, which started in the Hippodrome. The Emperor Iustinianus I ( 527 -565 ), built a third and entirely different basilicum, the Hagia Sophia. The construction started in 532 and it opened for worship in 537. The building, according historical sources, was in a dilapidated condition when Istanbul was conquered. Sultan Mehmed II , the Conqueror ordered its clean up and conversion to a mosque.
The Hagia Sophia is a great example of early Byzantine architecture and bears traces of the traditional Roman architecture and Eastern Art. Here we are in the main hall.
Looking up from the main hall, in to the domed ceiling, magnificent!
Detail of the dome of the Hagia Sophia Museum.
View of the main hall from one of the upper galleries.
Ottoman oil lamps.
Our guide pointing out one of the details on the wall.
Beautiful mosaics decorate the walls.
Window detail.
Deisis Mosaic : Pantocrator Jesus in the middle, Virgin Mary, Johannesburg the Baptist.
Mosaics depicting Christian themes were covered when the Hagia Sophia became a mosque. Now that it has become a museum, the coverings have been partly removed. It reminded me a of the wall paintings I saw in the Kimberleys, the early " Bradshaw" drawings of " stick figures" were covered up or damaged by aboriginal tribes.
The end of the first part . More to follow. (All photos don't fit on one blog , there are too many...!
Greeting, till next time, L&S .
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