A Trip to Turkey: Day 2 Istanbul

Our day 2 continues in Istanbul where we visited the Blue Mosque, the Hippodrome and the Hagia Sophia. We also visited the Basilica Cistern and the Topkapi Palace. Have I mentioned stray cats and dogs everywhere? I’m pretty sure whenever we ate on a patio, we had guests begging for food.

The Basilica Cistern is located underneath Istanbul and according to wikipedia is 105,000 square feet. It proved to be technically challenging to shoot as it was very dark down there. I ended up placing the camera on the floor and shooting long exposures as a lot of locations charge you an additional fee if you want to use a tripod (which I left at the hotel anyways).

The Hagia Sophia is a massive mosque turned museum. It was undergoing restoration as we visited but that didn’t stop the huge crowds from visiting the site. Its located across the courtyard from the Blue Mosque which was another large structure.

After spending more than 2 hours at the beautiful Topkapi Palace, we took a stroll through Gulhane Park on the way back to our hotel. Day 3 would be taking us to Canakkale and the city of Troy.