Friday Fun Day!

This last Friday was filled with churches, mosques, prayer time, traffic jams, sightseeing, bar hopping, concert seeing fun! My Friday started off with sunshine and warm weather and Ege, Huma, and I headed out to the Chora Church. Also known as the Church of St. Saviour or the Kariye Church. Chora means country so its assumed that this church used to be concidered in the country which its obviously not anymore. Right smack in the middle of Edirnekapı. A large packed very dense place just inside the old Byzantine city entrance wall. The Chora church dates back to the 11th century. It was first a monastery, then a church, then a mosque which if you have followed my blogs you will see is a huge trend over here. So the inside is the best part, there are mosaics that date back to the 13th century. They COVER the ceilings, literally. The famous ones I have shown below;

This one is of Mary's Last Sleep. It represents her death.

Just Jesus, it was huge

Genealogy of Christ going all the way back to Abraham

Christ sitting above the gates of hell dragging Adam and Eve from their out of their tombs, this depicts the last Judgment day.

So after the Chora church which Ege was an ANGEL in, we went to Sultanahmet for a bite to eat and I was able to not only snap some shots of some neat buildings such as this one....

But I also got to hear the midday Friday prayer from the Blue Mosque which is special, and addresses the public with a message from the Koran. Then we went and explored a Byzantine Palace that was resently discovered. 

It was appropriate to see this museum of this Byzantine Palace since it was ALL one big giant, old Mosaic. The floors where all since millimeter by millimeter squares each placed in a way to make a beautiful picture depicting a piece of time or an event. 

Here are some of my favorites from the Palace. 

  So this is a little update of my Friday out!! Keep reading for my next adventure which I am too lazy to write about now but for a teaser its got another castle in it!