Day 09 - Istanbul

Now that we were done seeing all of the awesome ancient sites, we took a bus to the airport in Izmir and flew to Istanbul to wind down the trip with visits to three sites: Istanbul Archaeological Museum, Hagia Sophia, and the Grand Bazaar. 

Our guide Gokhan walked us through some of the museum and pointed out some interesting historical information about the Turks. I love how excited he is about his country‘s history. Gokhan has been an excellent guide.

One of the displays showed how they buried their important people. There’s even one that still had a preserved skeleton. His name is Tabnit.  The Tabnit sarcophagus is the sarcophagus of the Phoenician King of Sidon Tabnit (ruled c. 549–539 BC). 

In one of my favorite pictures of the trip, Pat finished a little bit early and decided to take advantage of the warming afternoon sun :-)  Ok, maybe I was a little jealous. 

We walked from the museum down to Hagia Sophia. The ladies had to cover their heads as we walked through the mosque (which historically was a church).  I couldn’t help but think that we looked like extras on the set of “The Chosen”. 

Many of the icons and paintings were plastered over when the church was converted to a mosque. Fortunately, some of the mosaics and paintings are still there underneath. 

In the pictures you’ll see a beautiful photo of one of the spirals with the sun and the moon in the picture. Photo credit Mara Fenton!

From there we walked down to the grand bazaar and did some shopping. It was a great way to wrap up the trip as we look forward to flying home tomorrow.

Thank you for doing this journey with us and we hope it inspired you along your own faith journey.  

Randy