Traveling Tolins 2

Today we were again bused into the mosque area to visit St. Sophia and the hippodrome.  Afterwords we headed to the docks to board our cruise ship, the Azamara Onward.  Hagia Sophia  ( lit.  ' Holy Wisdom ' ), officially the  Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque,  is a  mosque  and a major cultural and historical site in  Istanbul ,  Turkey . The last of three church buildings to be successively erected on the site by the  Eastern Roman Empire , it was completed in 537 AD. The site was an  Eastern Orthodox  church from 360 AD to 1204, when it was converted to a  Catholic  church following the  Fourth Crusade .  It was reclaimed in 1261 and remained  Eastern Orthodox  until the  Ottoman conquest of Constantinople  in 1453. It served as a mosque until 1935, when it became a museum. In 2020, the site once again became a mosque. More info:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia The Hippodrome of Constantinople  (today Sultanahmet Square) was the center of social life in the  Byzantine E

After a long three-flight journey from Kansas City through Chicago and Frankfurt on Thursday, October 19, we landed safely in Istanbul, Türkiye at 1 PM local time, Friday October 20.  Diane took two half-hour naps, and I may have dosed 15 minutes during our flights.  No sleep is best when flying east to limit the effects of jet lag. Inside the airport terminal Our first two nights were spent at the Istanbul Sheraton Atakoy Inn View from our hotel room window Concession area beside swim pool; note the "sails" On Saturday, October 21 we bused into Istanbul, the bejeweled capital of Istanbul, which sits between two continents and is home to 450 mosques.  We visited the famous Blue Mosque with its six minarets and sparkling interior.  To say the mosque is massive is an understatement! The  Blue Mosque  in Istanbul, also known by its official name, the  Sultan Ahmed Mosque  ( Turkish :  Sultan Ahmet Camii ), is an  Ottoman-era  historical  imperial mosque  located in  Istanbul ,