On Friday, Turkey celebrated the holiday of Mohammed’s birth, thus there were no performances. As such the festival organized a tour for all the participants. With getting back early to the hotel on Thursday, and not having any shows, a few people let loose, and were a little worse for wear in the morning. We first started at Panorama 1453, which is a large painted dome, depicting a panorama of the fall of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine Empire, founding the Ottoman Empire. This happened in 1453, thus the name.
From there, we went to Miniaturk. It is an open air area that has scale models of many of Turkey’s landmarks and historical sites.
Next we went down to Sultanahmet and went into the Hagia Sofia. It was built from 532-537, and sat as the orthodox patriarchal basilica until 1453. Then it was converted into a mosque, until 1931 when it was secularized, and in 1935 it opened as a museum. They did their best to show both of its histories as a church and a mosque. It was quite exquisite inside, and the thing that blew me away is that they built it in only 5 years.
Our next stop was to Topkapı Palace where the sultan ruled from during the Ottoman Empire. There were lots of interesting relics there, and some different styles of architecture. The biggest disappointment was not getting in there until 5:10, and the Harem Quarters (which have some areas with unique styling and architecture) closed at 5:00.
Our last stop of the day was to the Blue Mosque (known as Sultanahmet) which was quite interesting for some that hadn’t been into a mosque before. There are over 20,000 hand-painted tiles that are blue, giving it the name. After being in the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, I was a bit dissapointed, as the Blue Mosque is far smaller and less grandiose, despite being more decorated. However, it was quite interesting for all the girls to have to cover their head and legs.
Finally after all of that we headed back to the hotel. Quite a long exhausting day. A few of us went for a walk to get some donairs for dinner as the hotel buffet was getting a bit repetitive. We found our way to a stand, got some and started walking. When we finished, we were right in front of a different stand and ready for another. We packed up all of our costumes that we weren’t using for the final night, but then got word that they were cancelling the final show similar to Thursday night. They moved the closing ceremonies and such to the hotel ballroom, but it was kind of disappointing to not be dancing.
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