Mosques and Lunch

This morning we were all awoken at around 4:30 by the call to prayer from the near by Blue Mosque.  I was up anyway because of jet-lag. We had breakfast at the restaurant in the hotel (this is the same place that we had dinner the night before but I don't think I mentioned it in my last post), the restaurant is on the top of the building so you can see everything for miles. You can even see into the Asian side of Turkey and into the new part of the city of Istanbul.  We walked down to the Blue Mosque and saw my first mosque. The inside is filled with blue tiles, hence the name.  The floor has a carpet with turquoise tulips (Turkey's flower and color).  The mosque is beautiful and something that I am glad that I was exposed to.  Next we walked over to the Hagia Sofia. This building was originally built as a church but was converted to a mosque.  In Mosque there are no images, they are not allowed. However, because the building was a church there are still mosaics of Christ up around the building. It was really interesting to see the too religious juxtaposed.  We had lunch after the Hagia Sofia. Our tour guide just gave us an hour to eat and we found this little place on a main street near by.  As soon as we walked into the restaurant the people that worked there they changed the music to American pop.  After lunch one of the guys in our group wanted to introduce us to turkish delight. We got a plain flavor, a mint flavor, a rose flavor, and a pistachio flavor along with some baklava.  The plain was my favorite.  More about my day later.