Turkey, day four

Good news: I feel mostly better! Bad news: the weather is not better! Today we decided that this didn't actually matter and ventured off to the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia in the snow. Because especially the Blue Mosque features of lots of marble in its stairs and courtyard, I cannot entirely recommend this approach. 

Not pictured: people falling all over the place.

Of course, once inside, the snow doesn't matter (though it's still cold). The Blue Mosque is gorgeous. Iznik tiles adorn many surfaces, and the dome and sub-domes are a sight to behold. Everything has a pleasant blueish tint (natch) from the tiles and the paint. Unlike Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque is still used as a place of worship, meaning we followed appropriate mosque clothing etiquette before entering and tried to be as respectful and quiet as possible once inside. It was built by the Ottoman ruler Ahmed I--and I think technically called Sultan Ahmed Mosque--and is about four hundred years old. Although interesting, the history of this mosque (by nature of its age) is a bit less compelling than its neighbor down the road that we battled the snow to visit next.

As everybody knows, Hagia Sophia is OLD. Like, 1500 years old. In its many years of existence, it has been an Eastern Orthodox Cathedral, a Catholic Cathedral, an Eastern Orthodox Cathedral (again), an Imperial Mosque, and a secular museum. Despite rampant iconoclasm when the building was converted into a mosque upon the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, there are lots of later-uncovered Byzantine mosaics inside. This is awesome because early (relatively) Christian icons are some of my favorite things! And since Hagia Sophia is a museum, there are also lots of plaques--my other favorite thing! It's a match made in heaven. This building also makes me wish I were more of an architecture person because the dome is magnificent and has a long and interesting history. The fact that it is still all the way up there and in decent shape (though it has undergone restoration) is just so, so, incredible. The detailed mosaic work, in varying states, is breathtaking.

Deesis: Judgement Day

An Empress Zoe mosaic from the 11th (!!!) century

There is something singularly spectacular about being inside a building that is (at its core, at least) as ancient as Hagia Sophia is. People used this space almost a thousand years before the European discovery of the Americas. People constructed these intricate mosaics before using glass magnification to see was really a thing! There was this mural in my elementary school about how the water cycle, and I always thought this part where it illustrated that the water you drink could have been the beverage of dinosaurs was way cool. I feel the same way with old buildings--the stone you're walking on was walked on by Ottoman leaders! 

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

We also had a nice lunch today with an old friend of my grandmother and grandfather, a professor at Istanbul Bilgi University and a '60s graduate of my college. Though I promised not to blog about my lunch today, I must share this pudding that is made out of chicken (among other things). Since it has meat in it, I will not be sampling this particular dessert, but I will admit to being very, very curious.