Istanbul, Turkey

 Hello! We left Turkey 1 week ago, and now I am in Croatia. In Turkey we visited a Cistern, 2 mosques, and a palace. 

The mosques we visited were called the Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque, which in my opinion is the prettiest one in Turkey. The Blue Mosque is smaller than the Hagia Sofia because it is only 1 floor not 2, but the ceilings are still the same hight, maybe even taller! Because of that, the chandeliers are quite low so that it is bright enough to see. If the chandeliers were close to the roof, the light wouldn’t be bright enough to reach the ground. I think we were quite lucky at the Hagia Sofia, because a tour guide came up to us when the ticket office was about to close and offered us a tour! He said that he already bought the tickets, and we just need to go with him for the tour. We agreed, but it ended up being a little bit rushed because tourists aren’t allowed to be in the mosque during prayers. The Hagia Sofia was originally an Orthodox Church for 30 years, but recently turned into a mosque so there are curtains on the wall covering the mosaics of Mary and Jesus.  

A Cistern is waterproof place for holding liquids, usually water. The Cistern we saw in Istanbul is called the Basilica Cistern, and was underground and very tall. There were lots of pillars holding the ceiling up and most of the pillars are the same, but there are 3 that are different. There is 1 pillar that huge chicken eyes are engraved in, and 2 pillars with medusas head engraved in it. Medusas head is tilted sideways on both pillars so she can’t turn you to stone. It was very cold in the Cistern but the lighting was beautiful and there were lots of decorations everywhere.

Comments

  1. LilianApril 19, 2024 at 7:42 AM

    You said you visited a palace, what palace did you visit?

    ReplyDelete

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