Istanbul, Turkey – 09/01

(Michelle) On Saturday, we went to check out some more old mosaics from another Church. The Church itself is not impressive, like the Ayasofya, but the mosaics at this church were really amazing. I don’t remember the name of the church, but it was near the old city walls west of Sultanahment. We took the city bus out there and even though we told the bus driver where we were going and he confirmed we were on the right bus, he still decided to skip our stop anyway. So we had to get off at the next stop and walk about 2 kilometers back to the area where the Church is located. Although frustrating at first (and hot), it was an interesting walk through a very run down area of Istanbul.
After that, we went to a modern suburban mall in a totally different area from where the church was, as we were on the hunt for some track suits to wear on the trains in Russia. We didn’t have much luck, but it was an interesting place to see how the average middle class Turkish person shops (not the touristy shops at the Grand Bazaar or the upper class shopping in Taksim). The funniest thing we saw at the mall a very modern looking music store that still sold current popular music on Casette tapes. I can’t remember the last time I have seen that, and we have not seen this in any other country we have been to, only in Turkey.

(TJ) I don’t remember much about this day other than I did not see the mosaics because it cost too much money and we didn’t have enough cash for both of us to go in. Since our bus over shot where we needed to get off we walked along the old city wall for a couple of miles. The area of the wall we were walking had not been restored what so ever, so certain portions looked as if they might fall over at any minute - I guess it is over 2000 years old. Also I’m pretty sure that I had mashed potatoes from KFC for supper at the mall food court and the bathrooms were really hard to find.