A Mosque is a Mosque.......

Spent the entire day touring parts of Istanbul and two questions are on my mind...
First...how many Mosques can one see in a day? Second....does anybody in Istanbul NOT smoke....cough...choke....wheeeze...Yikes!

So we started off on our tour and headed for a Mosque. Great. It was big. I had to take off my shoes...and it was cold. Interesting to see. Here is a tidbit for ya...all Mosques face Mecca, and to the right side of the front of the Mosque is always the Arabic word for Allah. On the left is Mohamed's name....now you know.

So off we go........to another Mosque....okay fine. Its bigger and its called the Blue Mosque...and its famous...but it's not blue.....and yes we had to take off our shoes and it was still cold.....

Then it's of to yet another Mosque.....only this one is smaller but looks a little nicer than the big ones....but I was all Mosqued out at this point....so we headed to the Hagia Sofia....which was built as a church after some dude conquered the place and then accepted Chrisitanity....then it bacame a mosque again after another dude took over...but they didn't destroy the Christian stuff....so at the front the place looks toward Jerusalem....and there is another window they added just to the left that faces Mecca.....hmmm maybe we can all get along?
The day ended with a trip to Topkoki Palace where the last few Sultans of the Otaman empire lived. For Muslims its cool cuz they have a bunch of stuff Mohamed had...but they also have what they claim is a sword that David(guy who wrote the Psalms) carried. Coolest thing was a wooden staff the is supposed to be the staff Moses carried. If that's true it is very cool........hmmmmmm
My impression of Istanbul is that is is totally cool. I guess I should come back and spend some time here. All they need is a Hard Rock.......