Istanbul was Constantinople....

...now its Istanbul not Constantinople.Why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks...

Do you know that song? Any time anyone even says the word 'Istanbul' that song immediately pops into my head. You can imagine what I was singing the whole day we were in Istanbul. If you haven't had the pleasure of listening to this song, I've put a link to it below. Trust me, it's worth the two and half minutes :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vankaSlfSr0

Istanbul was hands down one of the coolest cities I've ever been too. Everything is soooooooo old and sooo interesting. I really don't have a lot of knowledge about the Muslim religion or why the do what they do or even how they do it. This trip was eye opening and cool to hear the history of how it came to be. It doesn't hurt that we had one of the best tour guides ever. He was funny and witty and was out to educate us Americans about Muslims and the culture surrounding it. A lot of things he said actually reminded me of being a Mormon and trying to get people to understand and overcome common misconceptions about us. Very interesting day.

I was also the hottest I've ever been in my life that day. Just covered in sweat all day- and our bus didn't have any type of air conditioning. In fact, what they called air conditioning was just hot air blowing and you couldn't even really feel it. Mike coined the term "Compressed Humidity" to describe how it felt! Even with being super hot we had such an fun time in this city and saw and learned about so many interesting things.

We got to visit the Topkapi palace, one of the Sultan's many palaces. It was huge and chock full of treasures. Seriously everything was just dripping in diamonds, emeralds, rubies- you name it it was there. The jewels were interesting though, they weren't the shiny beautifully cut stones of today- they were rough and simply cut. If someone on the street had tried to convince me these stones were precious I wouldn't have believed them. The locked jewel cases and security guards helped me believe :)

This was at one of the mosques we went to see. Apparently, before Muslims took over Turkey, Christianity was the norm. They had painted these beautiful frescoes all over the churches. However, in the Muslim religion art is not allowed to have people's faces in it (if I remember correctly). So all of these paintings were covered up with different types of art like mosaics. Just recently, they have begun uncovering all of this other art underneath what they thought was the 'original' artwork of the mosque. Cool eh?

The foundations of the Agia Sophia, built in 532. You can see some remains of the original church that was build in 302 a.d.!!!! Holy moly, it was crazy to even think about a church being that old.

We took a boat ride in the Bosphorus, the channel that splits Istanbul into two continents- the European side and the Asian Side.

On the boat ride we were served an authentic Turkish meal- Just after another boat slammed into our boat and spilled water all over the table. The crazy thing was, no one really seemed affected by the whole thing. The boat crew went out to make sure there was no holes or that we wouldn't sink and that was the end! Ha. Just another day in Istanbul I suppose.

We also had a little bit to stop in the Grand Bazaar. A HUGE indoor shopping center for locals to pedal 'authentic fake watches' and other designer rip off''s. I bought a 'Prada' wallet for $20 bucks. I tried to get a leather Dolce and Gabbana purse for the same price but was shot down immediately :)

Grounds of the Agia Sophia

Topkapi Palace

Inside the Agia Sophia

This is the Obelisk of Thutmose... it was imported to Turkey from Egypt in 390 a.d. however, was built in Egypt in 1490 b.c. That thing is 3,500 years old and still looked great!

This hole is famous in Istanbul- I think it's similar to the Blarney stone. Its found in one of the columns in the Agia Sophia. There are a thousand legends about it that all go back to some drops of water coming out of it. Our guide told us to go do it but to just remember that millions of people stick their grubby hands in the same hole- we all opted to observe from a distance :)