Istanbul

     Okay, I’m ready to do this – share stories from my latest trip to Africa. I want to open with the disclaimer I’ve been sharing in the fine print any time I talk about this trip: we did not do any volunteering, this was strictly vacation.

With that in mind, we thought we’d start vacation before even getting to Kenya. When we booked our flights, we purposely chose one with a long layover on the way over, so we could take a couple hours to tour a city we might not otherwise visit.  

I’d never thought of Istanbul, Turkey, as a place to tour. It just worked out that we would be there for fourteen hours and that my friend who went with has been there twice before. It was a bit of a whirlwind. And we didn’t see all that much, but I thought it was still super cool. But you know me; I’m content to just wander around or even sit in one place and watch life walk by.

We had to take an Uber to the area my friend thought we should see. Unfortunately, that meant zooming by some other cool places. Like what I think is called the Marble Tower. Information I found about it on the internet confused me, so I’m not going to share any more about it.

 I was actually more fascinated by the ships out on the sea. Unfortunately, there we were still zooming down the highway, and our Uber driver didn’t even speak English, so it wasn’t like he could plop his tour guide hat on his head.

Istanbul is the largest city in Turkey and reportedly the seventh largest city in the world. Also one of the oldest.

Though the area has been inhabited since 3000 B.C., it wasn’t until sometime in 700 B.C. that the Greek’s established the city of Byzantium. A thousand years later, the Romans took over and renamed it Constantinople.

Lots of stuff happened – wars and takeovers and it was too much for me to study after that. But at some point, in the twentieth century, the city acquired its current name. 

Inside the Sultan Ahmet Tomb, which contains the tomb of Sultan Ahmet and 36 of his family members. 

The bodies are buried under the floor and the tombs are just decorative. Quite decorative. 

Sultan Ahmet park.

The Blue Mosque, which was being renovated. We went inside, but there was too much scaffolding to get any good pictures.  

Hagia Sophia. This complex has really a lot of history.  

Also, a lot of people wanted to get inside. We were wandering the area for several hours and the line was never shorter than probably three city blocks. We just didn’t have the time for that.  

A nice park and the weather was nice. I haven’t figured out the name of it. 

Just three Wisconsin girls making the most of our stay in this exotic city.