I went to Turkey for two weeks in 199 for a short term missions trip. We took a team of 6 adults and our baby daughter. I'm going to give you some brief observations from my memories of our time there.
- We spent a majority of our time in Istanbul, which is a city on two continents (Asia and Europe)
- People on the streets of Instanbul would take our baby daughter out of our hands hold her for awhile and give her back. We were warned about this in advance so it would not freak us out.
- In 1998 cell phones while common in the U.S. had not yet exploded to their current popularity. In Istanbul, everybody had a cell phone and were constantly on them. Again, this seems commonplace in the US now but it wasn't at the time.
- Istanbul has a rich heritage and was the capitol of the Byzantine Empire when the city was known as Constantinople.
- Turkey is the home of some ancient biblical places like Ephesus.
Let me show you 3 visual highpoints of Istanbul, The Blue Mosque, The Hagia Sophia and the Grand Bazaar. All places that we visited.
The Grand Bazaar is one of the oldest and largest covered markets in the world. It marks it's beginnings from 1445.
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The Hagia Sophia was built under the direction of the emperor Justinian in the 6yh century. It was an Eastern Orthodox cathedral from 537 to 1453. In the 15th century when Constantinople was invaded by the Ottoman Turks the cathedral was turned into a mosque. It remained a mosque from 1453 until 1931 when it was converted into a museum.
The Sultan Ahmed Mosques known as the Blue Mosque because of the blue tiles on the inner walls of the mosque ws built 500 years ago.
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