Day 6 Fri Jun 11

Day Six - Friday June 11

Today we spent hitting the major sites in Istanbul. The majority of them are within walking distance of each other.

First stop, the Blue Mosque. First we looked at some monuments in the area outside of the Blue Mosque. This included several items

Hagia Sophia (St. Sophia)

Pastor Wayne teaching - in ~500 AD Emporer Justin made three important edicts/decisions:
1. He codified the various laws into a law code, which is still the basis for many laws today.
2. He struggled with the "nature of humans" - what is humanity?
3. What is the nature of Jesus?

We toured Hagia Sophia, had some free time to wander on our own, and then met up for lunch. Lunch was at a cafe a couple of blocks from Hagia Sophia.

After lunch, we walked about 5 minutes to the Topkapi Palace. This is the palace of the Ottoman Sultans, and was very opulent. We went through two archways, then a security checkpoint, and got into some massive garden grounds. On the grounds, we sat under some shade while Pastor Wayne taught about Logos - the Word. Scriptural references: Prov 30:5, 2 Cor 4:1-2. Wayne made the point that Constantine had 50 copies of the Bible made in 357 AD and this was the equivalent in today's dollars of the budget for establishing a local library such as Frisco Public Library. The next emporer after Constantine then established an edict that other items besides the Bible would be copied and stored, becoming a scriptorium of all knowledge. This was when books started becoming reference items instead of just reading items, and some brilliant guy had the idea to cut them into pages and bind them into books.

Pastor Wayne's best book in 2009: The Archimedes Codex.

After that, we had some free time to wander the Topkapi Palace. Rooms with Sultans's robes, crown jewels (including an 86 carat clear diamond), rooms with the Sultan's couches, etc.

From there, we got on the bus and drove to the Grand Bazaar. This is one of, if not the, world's oldest indoors mall, and also one of the largest. 4000 individual shops. A madhouse of humanity. We had about 30 minutes, and a few people bought some souvenirs.

Next we got back on the bus and headed to the waterfront where some of us took an hour-long cruise from the Golden Horn north along the European side of Istanbul into the narrows of the Bosphorus Straits, and back south along the Asian side of Istanbul. A nice relaxing time.

Back to the Hotel Feronya for dinner and packing.

*Dale*