ECIS was held in Istanbul, so I spent five days there. There was a bombing the week before I got there, and the airport was bombed two weeks after I returned. I feel pretty lucky to have been there before the recent coup and its fallout.

The first evening was the conference welcome reception at Boğaziçi University.  Boğaziçi is the Turkish word for Bosphorus.

In a predominantly Muslim country there were the five daily calls to prayer from the minarets. Here’s a video of one. Pretty cool.

I went to the Sultanahmet district and saw the major sights there. First, went to the Hippodrome and saw the Obelisk of Theodosius, two-thirds of an Egyptian obelisk that was taken and erected here in 390.

I kept my scarf handy so I could enter the mosques.

I saw the Million Stone which was the zero point for all measured distances in the Byzantine empire.

Then I went to the Basilica Cistern, a very large unground cistern with 336 marble columns—in Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian styles. I saw two column basis with Medusa heads—purposely put on its side and the other upside down. I got dripped on a bit.

Then I went to the Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya) Museum. It was first built as a church in 360 AD, but was destroyed after rioting. A new church was constructed on the site in 415, but it was also destroyed through rioting and fire. Third version was built in 537. From Wikipedia:

“From the date of its construction in 537 AD, and until 1453, it served as an Orthodox cathedral and seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople,[1] except between 1204 and 1261, when it was converted by the Fourth Crusaders to a Roman Catholic cathedral under the Latin Empire of Constantinople. The building was a mosque from 29 May 1453 until 1931. It was then secularized and opened as a museum on 1 February 1935.”

Besides being very large and beautiful, the Hagia Sofia was interesting because it contained Christian and Islamic iconography side by side, after many of the the Christian symbols and artwork (such as mosaics) were uncovered. We listened to an audio tour and spent perhaps two hours there. Much of the interior was covered due to repairs, but it was still beautiful and interesting to see.

Then I saw tombs of several sultans (such as Sultan Mehmed III) and their families. The caskets were draped in green cloth, with the largest caskets for the the sultan and prominent family member. Many small caskets for children. The caskets had interesting white turbans on a pole above at the end.

 

We also got a tour of the harem where the wives, concubines, and eunuchs lived. More elaborate domes and tiled walls, but probably not the best life.

We went to the Çemberlitaş Hamami (Turkish bath) built in 1584 by Mimar Sinan (architect of the Suleymaniye Mosque. Segregated by gender. Hot stone in sauna area (with big dome), scrubbing with really fluffy soap, rinse and relax again on the hot stone. Relaxing experience. No photos allowed inside.

The next morning I went to Galata Tower, originally built of wood in 528, rebuilt in its current form in 1348. Great views of Istanbul. Walked across Galata Bridge. Lots of people fishing.

Then went on Bosphorus Straight boat cruise for 90 minutes. Went up and down the Asian and European banks of the Bosphorus between the Bosphorus and the Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridges.

Dolmabahçe Palace—a baroque/rococo style palace built for the Sultan in 1856. “Jaw-dropping” 4 ton chandelier.

We visited the Dolmabahçe Mosque next door—also interesting because of the baroque style of architecture.

We took the ferry across the Bosphorus Strait to the Üsküdar district on the Asian side. We passed the Maiden’s Tower.

We eventually were able to catch the 9UD bus to take us most of the way to Çamlıca Park.  It’s the highest point in Istanbul and provides great views of both sides of Istanbul.

We went inside the Mihrimah Sultan Mosque in Üsküdar.

It was an amazing city to see.

In between Athens and Istanbul I got to spend two days in Santorini. It is famous for the whitewashed buildings with blue domes built on the cliff’s edge. These islands are the remains of a collapsed caldera from a volcano.

They have donkeys that help take people up and down the cliffside between the harbor and the town of Fira.

We went scuba diving–3 dives. Usually great visibility, but not for us this day. We were hoping to dive some shipwrecks, but the dive shop’s boat had a hole in it. One of the dives was along a sheer cliff wall. Another was a reef and the final dive was closer to shore. We saw fire worms and dotted sea slugs as well as lots of fish. Our dive master was Orpheus.

Orpheus

We did a horseback ride tour of the island that went down to the ocean and back up around the cliffs for sunset.

The next morning we hiked the trail from Fira to Oia. We hiked out to the monestary and Skaros Rock.

We took a boat tour out to some hot springs (iron oxide and sulfur) and the Nea Kameni volcano.

The main ways to get around the island are four-wheelers or the public buses (which are tour buses). We took the bus.

I spent a few days in Athens. We started at Hadrian’s library and got an Athens museum pass that let us into the major archaeological sites. From there we went to the Acropolis, saw the Parthenon, Ancient Temple of Athena, Temple of Athena Nike, Odeon of Herodes Atticus, etc. From there went to Aeropagus (Mars’ Hill) and read Acts 17. Saw the sights at the ancient Agora, such as the Temple of Haphaestus, the Stoa of Attalos. Then went to the lower Acropolis, including the Theater of Dionysus.

The Parthenon

Hadrian’s Library at the base of the Acropolis

Roman Agora

Amphitheater–The “Odeion of Herodes Atticus.” They still do concerts here.

Temple of Athena Nike

Parthenon

Erechtheion

Mars’ Hill or Areopagus

Ancient Agora and Temple of Hephaistos

We saw several more ruins and an open air museum.

The Acropolis Museum is a new museum that featured lots of antiquities associated with the Acropolis. A standout feature of the museum is a full-size layout of the Parthenon, with recovered stones and carvings in their correct positions. for many of the replicas, they listed which museums in which countries currently possess the original, perhaps to put pressure on those museums to return the artifacts.

Lego model

Pieces of the pediment

A few blocks away is the Arch of Hadrian.

Temple of Olympian Zeus

National Archaeological Museum with the Antikythera Mechanism, a 150 BC astronomical device that many call the world’s first analog computer.

We took an Uber to get to the top of Mount Lycabettus–the highest point in Athens and provides great views of the city.

We hiked down the mountain and went to the Byzantine and Christian Museum. These pieces reminded me of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

We went to an ancient cemetery called Keramikos.

Church was great. It was a little tricky to find because there’s only a tiny plaque in gold with the name of the church next to the graffiti covered roll-down screens. On Sunday morning they opened one of the screens to reveal the entrance to the building. Apparently they had repainted the panels a month earlier and within two weeks it was covered again with graffiti.

These nice missionaries translated the sacrament meeting from Greek for us. Here’s a photo of the sacrament hymn.