Is this the fourth or fifth post.  I honestly can't remember.  Anyway, it will be the last one this evening.  Cenk's gave me some of his pictures.  I hope I label them correctly.

Hagia Sophia in the summer

The Blue Mosque with its six minarets.

One of the many, many, old streets.

It seems like there is a mosque on every block.

The Blue Mosque from a distance.  Istanbul is surrounded by water.

It is also an enormous city.  15 to 17 million folks.

A little picturesque stair way.

More Blue Mosque.

More Hagia Sophia with flowers.

Candy, ready to be made into suckers.

Ceramics by the bazillion.  I think this is at the Grand Bazaar, but it could have been the Spice Bazaar, or any of the streets around the Spice Bazaar.

Here is the third post for the evening.

We ate in some very interesting restaurants each evening.  This is a kitchen in which the Sultan used to feed the poor folks.  This is the Daruzziyafe Restaurant.

We have returned to the hippodrome.  The Romans, of course, moved some obelisks around.   This one came from the Karnak temple in Egypt of course.  (We have been there.)  It was cut in thirds because it was otherwise too large to ship.

We broke the large group into thirds for our tour of the Blue Mosque.  We are on our way into the inner court yard.

Here is the Blue Mosque with its interesting domes.

One of the Women's praying areas.  I think they were also welcome on the 2nd floor balcony.

The interior of the dome.

This is the main meeting/praying area.  The dark lines in the carpet are designed so the men know where to stand in the lines one sees when they are worshiping.

One of the entries into the Hagia Sophia.

The interior of the cathedral.  The lights hang from the ceiling and are about 9 or 10 feet from the floor.

The interior of the dome.  Very impressive.

We have made our way to the balcony that surrounds the main floor meeting area.

The view from the balcony.  Remember this dates from about 400 A.D.  Vulkan says 200,000 workers did this in five years.

Vulkan is pointing out that the dome's weight is pressing constantly on the supporting structures.  That iron ring is failing to keep the column on the pedestal.

Some of the ladies in the Grand Bazaar.

On our last night we ate at the Sarnic restaurant.  It is a former Roman cistern dating from around 500 a.d.  Constantinople was able to withstand the 14 times it was besieged, until 1453, by virtue of its defensive walls and its extensive series of cisterns that held millions of gallons of water.  That is Bob Lochhead to my right.  He is the Area's legal counsel.

We are entering one of the buildings in the Topkapi palace complex.  It covers about 750 acres and was the administrative center of the city and the Sultan's home.  I would like to watch the movie "Topkapi" sometime.  I think it is about stealing some of the treasures we were not allowed to photograph.

Vulkan is explaining the rise and fall of the Ottoman empire.

This is a room in which the Sultan's counselors would periodically meet.  Although he was the ultimate ruler he found it useful to create a counsel of various tribes and give them perceived, and perhaps authentic, opportunities to give him counsel.

Here is the second of my efforts this evening, 2/28/2012.  I have to apologize in that the pictures will not all be chronological.  We had two or three cameras and we returned to both the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia.  Sorry.  Hagia Sophia = Holy Wisdom.

I don't think I previously mentioned that we were in Istanbul for the Mission Presidents' Seminar.  We had the 14 mission presidents from the Area, their wives, the five Area Authority Seventy, their wives, the Area Presidency, their wives, three translators (two Russian, one Spanish) and assorted Area staff people.  At the maximum count we were at 65.

One of two enormous vases at the back of the open area in the Hagia Sophia.

When the Muslim conquerors took over in Constantinople they did not destroy the images they found, but rather white washed over them.  They were restored by removing the white wash.  This is an ongoing project in this very large building.  This mosaic is of Mary and Jesus being given gifts of the Hagia Sophia (on the left) and I think the city on the right. 

Once Constantinople became the capital of the empire they began to measure distances from here to every part of the empire.  The stone pillar to the left of the man waking away from us is mile marker zero.

We are shopping as we wait for dinner to start.  Tons of little shops selling spices, trinkets, clothing, etc.

On the last day of the meeting, Friday, we were standing, singing "Called to Serve" when the first four Turkish missionaries unexpectedly came to the front of the room and joined the singing.  It was a very tender moment.

Vulkan seemed to know everyone in town.  On our last Saturday we had a small group touring the afternoon away.  He asked if we would like to eat some of the food the Sultan's had eaten in their day.  We said we would, as long as it was made fresh.  So we entered this quaint little hotel that is just off the front of Hagia Sophia, and wound our way to a 2nd floor restaurant.

Their deal is to fix dishes that only the Sultans and his royals would eat.  The recipes are slightly altered to be less fatty and salty, but otherwise they have tried to preserve the recipes as they would have been served from about 1500 to 1700.  Vulkan ordered five appetizers and four entrees for all of us to split.  I can't remember all we had but here's a sample:  rice with pine nuts and brown sugar; a little shrimp bowl with vegetables; grape leaves stuffed with ground beef and some other meat; a pastry with nuts and brown sugar; goose in a crepe; and finally a small dish of rose water with pomegranate, pudding squares, and nuts.  It was all very good.  Opposite Marlene are the Boswell's.  He is the MP in the Baltic states.  He bought lunch.  To the right of Marlene are the Senkans.  He is one of the Area Authority Seventies.

We stayed at the Doubletree by Hilton in Old Town Istanbul.  The staff were wonderful.  We had a breakfast and lunch buffet each day.  It was all very nice.  I gained back about five of the pounds I had lost in Russia.

Hello again from Moscow.  I have not blogged for several days because we went to Istanbul, Turkey on the 18th and did not return 'home' until Sunday evening the 26th.  I think I will do three of four posts to accommodate the mass of pictures we have.  The system takes forever uploading pictures, so I'll do them in batches.  We had a very nice time and were impressed with Istanbul.  

We are standing on where a Roman hippodrome used to be.  The Blue Mosque is to the right of the picture.  The gentleman in the middle is our guide, Vulkan.  He was wonderful, communicative, friendly, and knew his history.  That's Marlene in the middle, and the lady taking the picture is Marina Sokolova, our trip planner.

Some young men have surrounded us and are trying to sell us books about Istanbul.  They were pleasantly aggressive.  Not too bad.  Istanbul was, as you know, Constantinople.  Constantine, the Roman emperor  who converted to Christianity made Nova Roma his capital in about 350 A.D.  I read somewhere that Rome had become almost uninhabitable at that time--dirty, smelly, etc.  So the emperor decided to start over.  The Greeks had been there first, so the Romans came next, followed in 1453 by the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks.

The Eastern Orthodox church lasted 1,000 years longer than the Roman empire, that was kaput in about 450 A.D.  The church is still around but the empire is gone or course.

Vulkan is explaining to Oleg (our Moscow super duper travel guy), Marina, and Cenk's  (Jenk's, who is Vulkan's boss) something about the Blue Mosque.

These first series of pictures comes from our first day in the city.  We came on Saturday, ahead of the Tuesday start for the meeting so that we could get a sense of how far things were from the hotel, how far it was between venues, etc.  We did not enter any of the attractions on this day, but just got perspective.  We are leaving the Blue Mosque area and are going to walk about a half mile to Hagia Sophia, a Christian cathedral,  started I think in about 400 a.d.  The dome has collapsed about three times in its 1,700 year history, but it may be the oldest functioning cathedral in Christendom.  The minarets you see adjacent to the church were added by the conquering Muslims, but they left the building mostly intact (except for covering most or all of the Christian art in the building.)  Throwing up a few minarets to surround the building was a lot less expensive than starting from scratch.

This is a vendor selling a kind of sweet, hot, milk drink on top of which he sprinkles a little cinnamon.

Vulkan treated all of us to some of it.  The temp was about 40 so we were were glad to get something hot to drink and to warm our hands.

You know how picky I am about food.  I liked this quite a bit.

Here is the Hagia Sophia again.  The Romans invented the unsupported dome.  This building dates from about 400, as I mentioned. The Blue Mosque, behind us now, dates from the 1,500's.  It's dome was copied from this building that is a thousand years older.

This gentleman is a friend of Vulkan's and is one of some small number of artists who are trying to save a painting form called 'marbling.'  They create an image on a pool of water, then place their paper on top of the paint, and then (carefully, I'm sure) pick the paper off of the water.  The effect is quite unique.  He, with amazing skill, is writing in calligraphy 'Istanbul.'  He did this free-hand of course,  I was astonished at his skill.

We had no idea of what was going to happen next but he gave each of the ladies (Marina and Marlene) his work.  We will bring our copy home and show it to you.

On Sunday we headed for the Istanbul branch for church.  We got there too early so Vulcan had his driver take us around the neighborhood and we ended up at this lovely overlook of one of the bodies of water that surround Istanbul.

We made it to church and had a wonderful sacrament meeting.  The four missionaries spoke briefly in Turkish, then Elder Neuenschwander and President Schwitzer spoke.  The missionaries had been in Istanbul since Tuesday.  They are learning 100 words a day and making amazing progress with the language.  These are your typical Primary children and Young Women.

Marlene at the front door of the meeting house.

The chapel is a converted villa.  The branch has about 120 members.  On this day, with all of the guests, missionaries, etc. there were probably 50 people in attendance.

These are the missionaries (probably not in order Christensen, Huish, Redpath , and Seymor) the Cakir's (he is the brand president) the Canfield's (humanitarian missionaries), Sister and President Schwitzer, and Sister and President Nuenschwander.)

The missionaries and the Schwitzer's.

The remains of a 1,700 year old Roman aqueduct.   We drove under it a dozen times

The roof top courtyard of a McDonald's.

We caught a beautiful, sunny afternoon.  

Life is good when one has had a Big Mac in Istanbul.