Randy joined us on Monday. Bahar stayed at home with her family as they spent all day preparing a feast for us that evening. We worked hard to stay hungry. We decided to take a tour of some of the famous Mosques around town. Randy has lived in Istanbul for just a couple of years and yet his knowledge of its history and traditions is impressive. He recommended a book for us to read before we came, to enhance our visit, but honestly, just rearranging our lives to be gone for 7 days took most of our spare time. So, he gave us a brief history lesson upon arrival :) Then we went a touring!
The Blue Mosque and lots of friendly Americanos!
Couldn't get enough of the minarets...stunning!
We may or may not have been evacuated from an area after a backpack was spotted unattended on a bench. The officer was kind enough to wait for us to finish our picture taking before ushering us away from the dangerous back pack :)
Bros....
Family, family, family....
More minaret love.
Our cousin Troy, who lives in Montreal, came to the wedding as well. I hadn't seen him for at least 20 years...good times.
Randy, tour guiding.
Angie and Julie, touristing....
Breathtaking interiors...
Beautiful sisters....
More beauty....
This particular Mosque used to be a church. You can see the remains of crosses that have been chiseled out. Just what ISIS is doing currently....
Though the Blue Mosque is now a museum, we actually were able to go into a real and functioning mosque. It obviously catered to visitors and so it allowed us in as long as we complied to their guidelines...
...which we happily did.
We toured a cistern which was supremely cool. It reminded me of searching for Horcruxes.
What we really were supposed to find were two sisters' heads.
(Bad pic due to dark, dark, cavern)
After a lengthy search we found them. Upside down. Yay for us, ouch for them.
After all of this touring, we just had two things left on the agenda for the day: experiencing Randy's favorite hand-made Turkish Delight, and sharing a home cooked meal with Bahar's family.
THEY DID NOT DISAPPOINT.
More on that tomorrow :)
Shabbat Shalom.
