Byzantium!

Also Constantinople. Also Istanbul. For Spring Break, I went with six other students to Turkey. Here is a brief series of photos recounting some of our exploits: Our first visit was to an underground Roman cistern. It was quite extensive and reached under even much of the modern city.

Here you can see the sun setting over the city. You can't quite see it here, but minarets cover the horizon, in much the same way steeples cover some European cities. The call to prayer was much the same as it was in Jordan. It is simultaneously quite haunting and beautiful. Maybe "weird" is the best way to describe it. I guess it is sort of like church bells as far as function goes.

This is some apple tea. It tasted really good, sort of like an apple jolly rancher.

The Hagia Sophia, a Byzantine church converted into a mosque converted into a museum.

The Omphalion, or site on which the Byzantine emperor was coronated.

We then took a long trip to Troy. The journey was about 5 hours each way. We rode in 3 cars, 2 ferries, and had 4 different drivers at different parts of the journey. It was an exciting experience. When we finally got to Troy, we almost felt like the Achaeans who had travelled so far from home for the war.

We read selections from Homer while standing on the walls of Troy IX. I can't read Greek, but I did my best and butchered through a line or two.

Here are the walls of Troy as it would have been if/when the Trojan war happened.

On the way to Troy, we saw a CAT. Woohoo!

The Spice Bazaar. While there I bought some honey.