Sultanahmet Revisited

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I've been busy with school work, friends visiting, and exploring Istanbul more.

This weekend Karen Rogers and Scott Finn, two of our Auburn professors who are presently teaching the group in Rome, flew in for the weekend to see Istanbul.  Tarik was busy yesterday, so Cameron, Amanda (who was also visiting for the week), and I took them to Sultanahmet to see Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, and Basilica Cistern.  Karen Rogers had taught our Architecture History II class in Auburn in which covers mosque architecture.  It was amazing to visit Hagia Sophia with her and listen to all of her knowledge and observations on the building.  For lunch we ate kebabs at a restaurant with wonderful homemade bread.  After we got back Amanda and I did some shopping on Istiklal.  I got four shirts and a sweater for 45 lira (about 27 dollars), two scarves (5 lira each), and a very cool red bag.

We have our first set of reviews on Thursday, so I'm going to get to studio soon to work for the day.  Tonight we're going to one of our Turkish friends' birthday parties.

If you lose your memory...

Today seven of us who will be traveling to Greece together took the metro to the train station to buy our tickets. We will be taking the overnight "Friendship" Express from Istanbul to Thessaloniki Greece. Jamie has a friend who lived in Thessaloniki for five years and sent her a list of many good places to eat and things to do there. We want to travel to Athens for a few days after being in Thessaloniki. Then we will take a train back to Istanbul, stopping in Thessaloniki again because I think we have to transfer trains there to get back to Istanbul.

Walker and I continued on to Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque because they are nearby the train station. We weren't able to go inside Hagia Sophia because its closed on Mondays, but we did go inside the Blue Mosque. It was huge and the ceilings were beautiful.



There are many people selling things who cater towards tourists in the area, speaking the English they need to try to make a sale. A carpet salesman at the Blue Mosque did his best to try to get us to come to his shop and have tea and view his carpets. My favorite salesman we passed was one who was selling camera memory cards among other things. He pointed to them as we passed and said, "If you lose your memory, you can buy memory cards here!"

I'm going to finish packing and trying to lighten my bag now. I just have my over-the-shoulder bag and a small tote bag for the 6 or 7 days we'll be there since we will have to carry everything for a while when we arrive before we can check into a hotel.