Been so busy arriving and touring haven't had a chance to write. Just left Istanbul and arrived in Ankara.
Istanbul - the name conjures up many thoughts of intrigue, the past, from Europe to the Orient. I stayed in the old city with some incredible historic Mosques and sites covering three empires of time. The Roman, the Byzantium, and the Ottoman empires. Spanning some 2500 years in time, it's so hard to comprehend these long terms of history judging from our North American history stretching only 400 years since Columbus.
Istanbul is the only city that was the capital of both a Christian and Islamic empire.
Istanbul lies on the Marmara sea with the Bosphorus Straits connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. If you cross the Straits you can literally be in two continents on the same day - Europe and Asia.
One of the most amazing structures I visited in Istanbul was the Hagia Sofia. Following a couple of destroyed versions earlier, the structure you see today was built in 537 AD by emperor Justinian. At the time it was the largest man made structure in the world except for the Wall of China! The dome alone could house the entire Notre Dame Cathedral. Originally a church in the Byzantine period it was converted in to a Mosque when the Ottoman Turks took it over in1453. Today it is a museum. It certainly deserves its World Heritage Site status. See for yourself:
I'll be back to Istanbul at the end of the trip, now on to the Cappadocia region in central Turkey.
