Snoop: Istanbul
Today we arrived in Istanbul. We landed at some airport that is far away from the city and it took us hours in traffic to get to our hotel. It was called the Elanaz Hotel. We loved everything about the hotel. The people there were so nice. We had a craving for chocolate chip cookies. We couldn’t find them anywhere. So, Erdem, our host, made us yummy chocolate chip cookies. They told us what to see and do and we had a lot of fun.
My favorite tourist attractions were the Basilica Cistern and the Aya Sophia.
The Cistern was this huge, underground place that used to hold millions of gallons of water. It was bigger than our Costco at home. Its pride and joy was two Medusas. I have to explain that part. The cistern is held up by hundreds of columns. They are 30 or 40 feet tall. The columns were all recycled from old temples. Each column is a little bit different than any other one. When they got most of the water out of the cistern, they found these two huge heads at the bottom of a couple of columns. One is upside down and the other one is on its side. You can see the snakes that make up her hair, even though the columns were underwater for 1000 years.
The Blue Mosque echoed and had good acoustics. It was big and everything, but, for me, it was kind of a letdown. In my opinion, it just wasn’t that cool. The Aya Sophia was huge, and was almost 2000 years old. It started out as a church, then, it became a mosque, and, now it is a museum. My favorite thing about it was these big, cool, circle things on the walls.
Here is my video for the city: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhWrAO5DNhE