Orientation/Vacation Part 1

As you can all see, I haven't posted in over two weeks. The main reason for that is the fact that I've been traveling for most of that two weeks. We had a three day "orientation" in Istanbul. It was a great time to fellowship with some old friends and to see some of the city. From there I took a few days to tour Cappadocia with an old friend named Yeshu. We also took a day trip down to Tarsus while he was here. I'll try to post some things about the last couple weeks over the next few days to kind of give you an idea of what I saw and did. I'm also working on finding a place to post all these pictures I have of the last few weeks, so keep your eye open for that. We'll start with my time in Istanbul.

Here’s my thoughts on the three major sites I saw in Istanbul in order of when I visited them.

1. Sultan Ahmet Camii or, in English, the Blue Mosque. I was surprised at how it was ran. First of all, I know it’s a mosque. And I know it’s a major tourist area. I guess it just never connected in my mind that it was both at the same time. There were herds of people going in the whole time we were there. Everyone was noisy and just standing around looking at and taking pictures of the beautiful tile work that covers every inch of the walls and ceiling. That I expected. But also, you couldn’t wear your shoes inside. And on top of that, there was a roped off area for people to go pray. Again, I expected that, but the mixing of the two, large groups of foreign tourists and devout, praying Muslims, never occurred to me. Honestly, it didn’t stop me from talking or from taking pictures of anything. But at the same time, my desire to be respectful to the people I am trying to reach made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

I will say that the tiles were magnificent. I had read and seen pictures of the tile work and thought that it looked okay, but wasn’t really impressed. It was only when I saw the scale of it, with thousands of these floral arrangements painted all over the inside of the massive building, that I truly understood the reason everyone praises the place. It really was pretty on the inside and worth the trouble of taking off your shoes to go in and see it.

2. Ayasofia or Haggia Sophia or, in English, known as the Church of the Holy Wisdom. Man what a place. You walk in the huge iron door into what would be the “sanctuary” and it is almost overwhelming. If the Blue Mosque is big, this thing is HUGE. It really was larger than life. It just stopped me in my tracks with the sheer height of the ceiling. And yes, I know there are tall buildings everywhere, but I don’t know too many tall buildings built in 537 AD! It really is an architectural wonder that this massive, domed building could be built as long ago as it was.

But once you recover from the shock of how big it is, it is kind of disappointing after that. Not disappointing because there are no cool things to see, but disappointing because you just know that it was simply out of this world before. But when the Ottomans came, they either destroyed it or plastered over it. Luckily, they didn’t destroy everything, and even the plaster helped preserve some stuff, but it only retains a fraction of the beauty it once had. But overall the place was absolutely stunning. A must see.

3. Kariya Kilise. I’m not sure what that means in English and I’m too lazy to go look it up right now, but it’s another church that was converted to a mosque by the Ottomans and then into what is now, a museum. This was, to me, the coolest of the three. It doesn’t have the size that the first two have, but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in volume. There are more frescoes and mosaics crammed into this small church than there were in the Ayasofia. Much like the Ayasofia, some of these were destroyed and all were plastered over, but thankfully, they have weathered the years much better.

The best thing about this little church is trying to figure out what all the scenes are. There were a few tour groups paying someone to tell them what they were, but the best part of the whole thing to me was trying to remember all those New Testament stories and trying to figure out which ones were being represented in the artwork. The mosaics were absolutely amazing and it gave me my first glance of the frescoes that I would see more of in Cappadocia. An added bonus to this museum was that it was just a few blocks from the old city wall, which I promptly climbed with my buddy Josh. It gave us a nice view of the peninsula. This was the best 10 lira I have spent in this country.