Aya Sofya...also guess who we bumped into?!

Called Sancta Sophia in Latin, Haghia Sofia in Greek and the Church of the Divine Wisdom in English. It is Istanbul's most famous monument. Thankfully we arrived early to avoid the massive crowds that were lining up as we were exiting. There is no way we could queue in the heat!

It really was an experience walking inside what I believe to be one of the worlds truly great buildings. It was an awe inspiring experience! The guide book tells us that on entering his great creation for the first time almost 1500years ago, Justinian exclaimed, 'Glory to God that I have been judged worthy of such work. Oh Soloman! I have outdone you!' I could understand today his self congratulatory tone!

As we were making our way to Aya Sofya, we heard a voice call out "Henry", can you believe in a city of 20 million people we bumped into Sam and Paul deMello from Nelson!! We planned to meet up tonight but after they tried to find our place for 2hrs this evening they gave up. We will try again tomorrow. Both families really disappointed, fingers crossed we can find each other tomorrow, this city is not easy to navigate your way around.

Its not surprising that many visitors to Istanbul never make it out of Sultanahmet ( 'Old Istanbul'), its so packed with a concentration of sites, shops, all within easy walking distance. This was the case for us today, just as we left the Aya Sofya and crossed the road we were at the Basilica Cistern. This is basically a massive underground reservoir. When those Byzantine emperors built something, they certainly did it properly! Its was nice and cool and was a great place for fish, there were some really over weight ones swimming around. The cistern is 65m wide and 143m long. It once held 80,000 cubic metres of water, pumped and delivered through nearly 20km of aqueducts. It was rediscovered when locals were claiming to gather water through a hole in their floor and occasionally fish!!

Two of the columns supported upside-down Medusa heads, quite intriguing.

In the cistern we also had the opportunity to do the tourist thing and dressed up as Sultans to have our picture taken. The kids loved it.

Later we had a really funny market experience after re-entering the Bazaar. We were at a shop and looking for shoes for Sophia. The seller kept bringing us pink shoes. I had to say "boy boy", he looked at me strangely and showed me some boys shoes. He then pointed to Julia and said "boy too?", I said yes, then Holly needed shoes and we had to say "girl, girl", she only wears pink. Finally he pointed at Sue and said "boy also?"