istanbul,TURKEY
 

yeah İstanbul...the bridge of asia and europe. the wonderful city i have ever seen.always action and passion.look at these photos.

beautiful. Now I have to add it to my list of places to see before I die.

or turn 30.

same dif.

There are some historically significant Cathedrals and Mosques in Istanbul.

Here's a pic of The Blue Mosque
http://www.islamicity.com/Culture/Mo...pe/TMp145a.jpg

And, of course, the mother of all Cathedrals, The Highia Sophia:

http://stat.ethz.ch/~jaggi/photos/Is...3-istanbul.jpg

And here is an interesting shot showing just how close the two monuments are:

http://stat.ethz.ch/~jaggi/photos/Istanbul/Istanbul.JPG

Highia Sophia was built around 600 AD and converted around 1400 AD to a mosque. 200 years later, they built The Blue Mosque not a quarter of a mile away. I can think of two reasons why they built the new mosque but I'm not interested enough to track down the answer. One reason could be that the Highia Sophia does not "point" to Mecca and so the prayers, instead of landing within earshot of Allah, just go flying off into space somewhere; and the second might be that a converted Christian cathedral was just not good enough.

For the record, I believe the mosque in the original post is the Mosque of Solomon.

thanks your addition.we love istanbul .don't we?

Beautiful! I wonder if at prayer time there's someone in every one of those minarets? :)

Surely there was. I used to live in Indonesia and every evening around dusk, the loudspeakers would blare out their calls to prayer. I think it's pretty much a norm in Muslim countries?

I didn't think it was ever annoying though. The person just kind of sings his call. It's something to be nostalgic about (I left Indonesia 8 years ago *tear*)...

Oh, loudspeakers...of course. :smack:

My brother taught in Turkey a while back. He couldn't say enough about how decent the people are. I'd love to get over there. There was an article in Adventure Cycling (I think) about a guy touring the area... freaking rugged and he lacked good maps.

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TRIP DOWN THE BOSPHOROUS