Our first stop this morning was to visit the attic "office" of Mike-the-carpet-guru/whisperer/czar. (I don't know how loaded the word "czar" is in Turkey -- perhaps not at all.) Mike gave us truth-and-nothing-but when it comes to carpets. Many of us left Carpets 101 thinking we'd never buy a carpet without Mike...or unless it was from Mike.
Next stop: Hagia Sophia. Currently a secular museum, Hagia Sophia housed Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, then Muslim congregations from 537 until the 1930s.
Camera Crew.
Man camera crew is filming.
Lots of scaffolding.
Contrasting sections of mosaic (left) and plaster (right).
Christian mosaic.
Seismograph: If the piece of glass secured between the stones broke, that meant that an earthquake (or tremor) had damaged the building. These seismographs are all around the building, but are being replaced with modern equipment.
In places, plaster has been removed to reveal Christian mosaics.
Viking graffiti! I'm not kidding. (The lights you see are a reflection in the plexiglass (sp?) that covers the graffiti.
This is the cat that took a liking to President Obama when Obama visited Hagia Sophia. Once a stray, now a fat cat.
Caferaga Medresesi is a Turkish Handicraft Center (http://www.tkhv.org/?p=caferaga-medresesi). They weren't exactly expecting us; but, after some tea or coffee and some time to explore the small classrooms on the lower level, we headed back to street level for a "marbling" demonstration.
Classroom, not operating room.
Summer Syllabus
Student work.
Music classroom.
Classroom.
Artwork by our demonstrator.
Marbling 101 (More like a Master Class.) Our cameras were clicking throughout the demonstration.
The end result!
Wow!
He made many, many sales!
The Book Bazaar near the Grand Bazaar.
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