Oh! The Places You'll Go!: Jeeze Louise! Seminar day 2

Today was an amazing day! We had a great lecture about the Christianity in Constantinople, the rise of Islam in Anatolia and the romans fight to protect Constantinople from Islamic threats as well as others... some interesting stuff! After our lecture we went to the Church of Saint Savior of Chora, the ancient city walls and saw some of the Roman emperors abandoned imperial palace.

Church of Saint Savior of Chora was amazing! It was beautiful to look at from the outside as well as from the inside! This Church had some beautiful mosaics that described stories in the bible for people who could not read. The mosaics were so magnificent even though they were built more then 1000 years ago! Compared to the Hagia Sophia the church was rather small but still an amazing place to have visited! I still find it hard to believe that some of these structures I stand in here have had 100's of millions of people in them as well and unbelievably famous people for 100s of years!

Next we walked to the Ancient Walls the protected Constantinople from the predators of the West. Even though this was a wall it was facinating! Just to think that this structure has been here for so long and has kept so many people out ... and you can still walk on it! WOW such an amazing thing! We walked up these stairs to the wall that were very old and made me want to throw up! but when we got to the top it was breath taking! We saw the whole city! Old to New! It really took my breath away!

Near the Imperial Palace of the Roman Emperors we stopped by this market so to speak... our tour guide then told us that it was the largest pegeoun place market in Turkey and that pegeouns were a very hot commodity in Turkey... but not to be carrier pegiouns but to pet... and some did tricks... we saw a pegioun fly in a circle upside down and the man said that this pegioun would cost 2,000 TL!

We next went to the ruins of the impereal palace ... it was quite sad to see that it had completely been destructed! the walls were falling down and the roof was gone... even though the palace had been deteriating you could still see how magnificant it was at the time! there was still a balcony some what intact that the emperor would have been able to walk out on! Again So AMAZING!

After we saw all the sights to see we walked around a non touristy nighborhood... This could possibly be the best part of the day for me! Unfortunetly the city is not the cleanlyist and some houses are falling down but it is still so beautiful! It was really fun to walk the streets and the locals seemed to enjoy us too... you could see as we walked down the streets the old women coming to the streets to check us out. We encountered some children in the streets that were really adorable! These two boys did ask us for money and it turns out that they were gypsies and that they really did not have any money... Along our walk we stopped to get tea at this tea garden that overlooked the city! it was beautiful but the really great part was that the while we were having tea there was a call to prayer... when looking out at the city you saw many minarets, and when the call to prayer came on we were just surrounded with sounds... it was truly amazing! After out tea we stopped at a Greek Orthodox commune that out leaders wanted to show us so that we could understand that even tough the country is 99% muslim that there are still different religions practiced here. It was really nice to see the compound and church and talk to some of the people who lived there!

My friend Dev got some Holy Water there and drank it.... he said it cured his cold...

All I can say is that it was amazing! I loved it!