Hagia Sophia and Chora Church, Istanbul

We take off our shoes and go in to the Blue Mosque.  And the

 entire dome is under construction with a tarp covering the whole thing.  There are a few Iznik tiles on the sides that you can see, but for the most part, you can see nothing that you are expecting to see in the Blue Mosque.  Nothing.  John is a little annoyed with how fast 

Oscar and I are ready to leave because he’s gaining something from the experience, but I’m too irritated to stay.   We head over to Hagia Sophia and it’s amazing.  It is a lot less kept up outside than I expected, but is without a doubt an amazing space.  To think that this huge  place was built when it was is incredible.  There were plenty of people in there and it didn’t feel full or crowded at all.  The ramp leading up to

 the upper gallery so that you could be carried up when you were the Emperor was nice.  Justinian probably ordered that custom made.  The few mosaics that were on view were amazing and makes me more inclined to visit Chora Church on the outskirts of town.  I am honestly at a loss

 about what to say about this place, none of the superlatives seem super enough.  It’s not the greatest church I’ve been in, but the history just hits you in this place.  I think it being converted into a mosque actually adds to the mystique.  It’s like this site was 

sacred for everyone to the point that the conquerors didn’t destroy it, they just changed it a little.  We head out into the cold and windy day and find the McDonalds that we knew was near here and take Oscar’s happy meal over to the Cozy Pub to have our dinner.  John and I get a salad that is amazing and then there is atmosphere.  Everyone loves Oscar around here.

  He’s the perfect size to touch on the head and he stands out here in a way that he doesn’t everywhere else.  He’s blonde haired and blue eyed and every Turkish person can’t seem to resist touching him, teasing him, hugging him, which he mainly handles well.  The owner of the pub tells him to come back in a few years with his girlfriend and gives him a card.

  Oscar thinks that this is a “license” to cook for them.  Sure kid.  He loves the trams that are going past and we hop on one to ride our way along the line to get the lay of the land.  We’re not walking today in this weather.  We head over the Galata Bridge across the Golden Horn, go almost to the end of the line and then head back the other way and decide to get

off outside the old walls to lay eyes on them.  This gives me the bright idea, that since we’re up there, we might as well see Chora Church.  The guidebook makes it sound easy and it probably would have been if we had had our Istanbul Karts with money on them and it was not raining and 33 degrees.  But

we managed to make it there 40 minutes before closing asking some people how to get there.  We only needed the 30 minutes because more than half of the church is closed off for renovations.  I understand that it’s winter, but damn people.  Open at least half of the dome 

 in the Blue Mosque and a little more of the mosaics in Chora, you can’t be working on it all at once.  We head back to the train and I screw up in thinking that our ticket gets us a transfer to the tram, so Oscar and I are in the station, waiting for John to go buy something so that he 

can break a 50 Lira note to get a ticket.  Oh, well.  This feels like a far cry from Athens experiences and was the second night that I told John that I didn’t want to blog.