Istanbul Layover

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I had a 24 hour (once my flight was delayed) stay in Istanbul so I decided to take advantage of the time and go see the sites!

Turkish Airlines offers a free tour of the city for any passengers with a long layover. I generally am not one for group tours, but I thought I would at least join for the bus right into town. I ended up staying with the group for the first half of the day where I met some interesting travelers from around the world.

I learned that Istanbul is the largest city of Europe with 15 million people beating out Moscow at 12 million people. While it was busy and crowded, I am not sure I would have guessed it to be the largest.

We started the day visiting the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque. It was built as the Christian Cathedral of Constantinople of the Byzantine Empire between 532 and 537. In 1453 it was converted to a mosque after the fall of the Constantinople and was the principal mosque until 1616.

Next we visited the Topkapi Palace which has an amazing view of the waterways. This was the home of the sultans from the 1460s to the 1850s. It was a beautiful setting to walk around, have a cup of Turkish tea and people watch.

The blue mosque or formally the Sultan Ahmed Mosque was under renovations on the inside so we only saw it from the exterior. It is said that the architect misheard the Sultan's request for “altın minareler” (golden minarets) for “altı minareler” (six minarets). At the time only the mosque of the Ka'aba in Mecca had six minarets. Not to be out done, the Ka'aba quickly ordered a 7th minaret to be added to the Mecca mosque.

After this I broke off from the tour group and primarily spent the rest of the day eating an assortment of delicious food, but I did visit the spice market which smelled wonderful!

This was a fun way to spend a day layover instead of sitting in the airport and now off to Dhaka!

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Comments

[Beth]

Incredible beauty, please stay safe and have a wonderful time