We spent our second day in Istanbul immersed in the sights of Old Town, specifically within the Sultanahmet district: the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sofia, the Hippodrome and the Istanbul Archeological Museum. Both the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia are huge, impressive spaces. The Hagia Sofia was originally built as an Eastern Orthodox church by the Holy Roman Emperor Justinian. When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) in the 15th century they converted it to a mosque and obliterated all vestiges of figurative images. This means all paintings of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints were whitewashed over. The Hagia Sofia is now a museum and some of these paintings have been semi-restored, but most have been lost forever.
The weather here has been warm, making the evenings nice and balmy. We had dinner tonight on the upper terrace of a small restaurant overlooking the sea and had our first taste of Turkish pizza, called pide. It was excellent! I don't think this is going to be a calorie-neutral trip. Maybe when we get to Sicily and start riding all those hills, I'll burn some of this off, but for now, I'm going to sample as many different dishes as I can.
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