Saturday in Istanbul

The first real stop of this fall international recruiting trip was Istanbul. On Thursday morning (after a great night sleep in the Ritz-Carlton Istanbul) I met Seaby Rodriguez and Becky Konowicz, my admissions travel companions for the remainder of the trip, and we jumped in a car and started visiting schools on both the Asian and European sides of the Bosporus. For those of you unfamiliar with Istanbul, it is a cosmopolitan city of 12 million people in Turkey on the border between Europe and Asia. It is literally where East meets West. The Bosporus is the river-like body of water dividing the two continents. The Black Sea is just north of Istanbul and from the Black Sea the water flows into the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara, then the Dardanelles into the Aegean Sea which is connected to the Mediterranean. The Bosporus is a strategic location and why Roman emperor Constantine founded his eastern capital (Constantinople) there, known today as Istanbul. Here is a view of the Bosporus:

After two days full of school visits and interviews with prospective students we were ready to spend some fun time in Istanbul on our third and final day in the city. The day started in the Old City, an area of Istanbul with most of the major historical sites, with the Hagia Sophia.

The Hagia Sophia, or Church of Holy Wisdom, is one of the best surviving examples of Byzantine Empire architecture. It was built as a church in Constantinople around 500AD and was the largest cathedral in the world for thousands of years. When the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453 they turned the Hagia Sophia into a mosque and contructed the four minarets. When Turkey became a secular republic in the 1920s the Hagia Sophia became a museum. The interior is just plain vast, and the dome is impressive.

The Hagia Sophia is full of iconic mosaics of the Virgin Mother, Jesus, Saints, and Byzantine emperors. They are gradually being uncovered after being painted over for the hundreds of years the museum was a mosque. For those of you familiar with Alias you will find one symbol below this mosaic especially intriguing:

Just north of the Hagia Sophia is Topkapi Palace, the home of the Ottoman Sultans. Today it is an amazing museum documenting the Ottoman Empire period of history. Topkapi Palace includes four major courtyards with impressive views of the Bosporus (as you have seen) and the Golden Horn, another major waterway on the north side of Old City Istanbul:

One interesting fact we learned at Topkapi Palace is that the Ottoman Empire was well known for it's tulips, they were everywhere, and it where the Dutch got the idea to plant tulips...something we equate with The Netherlands more than Turkey, but there is a big tulip festival in Istanbul too.

All of that was just the morning, so we stopped for a quick lunch of traditional Istanbul cuisine down the street from the Hagia Sophia at Sultanahmet Meatball Restaurant:

Apparently this highly prized (and delicious) speciality is only offered at a few restaurants in the city. The founder was employed by the sultans and when the empire ended in the 1920s he started his own restaurant and it has been a success ever since. After lunch we crossed the street to see the Blue Mosque. The national mosque of Turkey, it was built by the Ottomans in the 1600s, directly across from the Hagia Sophia on the site of the old Byzantine palace. It is called the Blue Mosque because of the many blue tiles covering the interior walls.

After taking in a significant number of historical buildings in a few blocks we headed down the hill to the Grand Bazaar (first pic) where we visited a carpet shop, purchased some ceramic art from the shop our guide owned, and then drove up the Bosporus for some Turkish coffee and an afternoon snack at a coffee shop on the Bosporus (second two pictures).

Later that night we went out to dinner at a great seafood restaurant along the shores of the Bosporus. So, as you can see some amazing sites, great food, and sunny skies with 70 degree weather constituted our free time in Istanbul...a great city.