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ISTANBUL... We came through the Dardanelles yesterday and last night and approached Istanbul just as the sun was rising. Wow! The Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia on the European side of the Bosporus Strait are as magnificent in reality as they seemed to me in all the photographs I’ve seen. They glow as the first morning light strikes them. From the middle of the waterway separating Europe from Asia here, they seem large, but it isn’t until I saw automobiles on the streets below them that they seemed outsized, bigger than life. Hagia Sophia was first a great church...for many years the very largest Christian church in the world. The name isn't a reference to a person. "Hagia" is "holy," and "Sophia" is "wisdom." It was the church of holy wisdom. When Islam overran the country, the Turks couldn’t bring themselves to destroy such a building, so they turned it into a mosque... no small feat. All of the mosaics had to be covered over so no trace of icons could be seen. Since sometime in the 1930s the mosque was turned into a museum and what was left of the mosaics were uncovered. The dome of what was built as a sixty century church was the largest in world at the time it was built. From inside and outside it is awesome.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what religions have provided for people since history was first recorded. We have amazing buildings and monuments scattered all around the world; but sadly, there are reminders too that in every century of the damage tone by religion. I’m beginning to doubt that people will ever get it right.

We leave the ship tomorrow and go to a hotel here for a couple of nights before starting the long set of flights to get home. Tomorrow we go to Blue Mosque for a look inside. In the photograph above Hagia Sophia is the one on the right.