After arriving in Istanbul last night, we awoke to the call of prayer. It's quite loud everywhere you are. You can definitely hear it and you instantly realize this is not the west. The blue mosque dazzled with it's tiny decorations adorning the interior walls. It would be an amazing place for prayer and reflection. Hagia Sophia just seemed huge and old. It's a museum now, so the spiritual part of the building isn't there the way it was in the blue mosque (which is still a place where people worship). It was an impressively enormous building, but I prefered seeing the Blue Mosque. In the evening we went to a performance of whirling dervishes (no photos were allowed), and then smoked a hooka together at a bar near our hotel (Hotel Alaturka).
... read more