Day 4

Wednesday, May 7, 2008: We started the day with breakfast at the hotel. column sat in the middle of Hippodrome We headed to the ancient site of the hippodrome first. There is not much left of the original hippodrome, mainly a few columns and obelisks in the middle. In its prime days it would hold around 100,000 people for the races and other events that were held there.

Blue MasqueFrom there we walked across the street to the Blue Masque. This is an active mask and is one of the largest around. There are wonderful Turkish carpet all through the masque, I think that is why they make you take your shoes off to go in.

After that we walked over to the AyaSofya. This was originally built as a church, this lasted several hundred years and then was converted to a masque when the ottoman empire took over. It was a masque fore several hundred years also. When it was converted all the religious mosaics and paintings were plastered over to cover them up. Some years back it was converted to a museum. Much of that plaster has been removed and it actually helped to preserve many of the original mosaics from the 6th century. It is a large building. The dome in it is the second largest in the world, not bad for being around 1400 years old.

Topkapi Palace After this, we walked to the Topkapi Palace. This was home to the Sultans for over 700 years of the Ottoman empire. Here we ate lunch overlooking the Bospherus and toured through several of the palace rooms with clothing, armament, treasures and other items of the Sultans reign.

From the palace we went to the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. This was a wonderful place with lots of interesting historical items. Ferrell took us to 4 specific items with biblical interest. A stone from the Jerusalem temple with inscription for no gentiles to come past this point. A farmers calendard with matching farmer dates to the biblical record. A cylinder with inscriptions of a nebu... name from the book of Jeremiah, and most interesting to me the reliefs from the gates and walls of Babylon that Daniel would have seen during his time there. To this day they are still very vivid in their color.

On our way out Jack and Dj stopped to pick a nose after this we went to the Grand Bazaar and then on a boat tour of the Bosphorus. After the tour we returned to the hotel for dinner and a good night's rest.