Saturday, July 6: Istanbul

At about 10:38 this evening the final Call to Prayer of the day sounded.  The Arcadia Hotel is very close to both the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, but it doesn't seem (to me at least) that the calls to prayer are dueling with one another; they seem more sequenced.  (I'll pay closer attention in the days ahead.)  You can see both of these mosques from the restaurant on the ninth floor of this hotel.  It's quite beautiful at night, although there were quite a few seagulls flying around last night -- a good reason to eat inside, rather than at one of the outside tables. 

At the restaurant, I ordered a lamb dish that I almost immediately decided was going to be too much food, but I ended up being served a soup of carrots, potatoes, and ground lamb -- exactly what I should have ordered.  I couldn't figure out (even after asking) if the soup was going to be followed by the lamb dish I thought I was getting, so I enjoyed my tea and the view while two other tables came, ate, and left -- that was my cue that no other food was coming my way and I could ask for the check without offending anyone.

Blue Mosque

http://kufarooq.blogspot.com/2013/03/blue-mosque-istanbul-turkey.html

Hagia Sophia

http://php.scripts.psu.edu/users/b/h/bha5005/assignment7.1.html