Chora Church And Jaw Dropping Mosaics

Today I needed to switch hostels. The one I was staying in was too far away from the conference and it would be silly to commute, so I was going to the Stray Cat Hostel. It's a nice, chill hostel with, yes, stray cats living there. It's up near Taksim Square and there are frankly a ton of stray cats and dogs around the city. They're just everywhere. People even leave bowls of food on the street for them, so I'm sure that exacerbates the problem. The other thing that's different about Taksim is the traffic. There wasn't much in Sultanmahet because there are hardly any roads. But Taksim, it's chaos. Technically there are some stop lights, but most pedestrians ignore them so everybody's darting in and out of the flow of cars, which means there's lots of horn beeping. It's nuts.

Since I got to the hostel early, I just chilled until my room was ready. Then, I went to go see the Chora Church. It's on the outskirts of town and required a bus ride to get there. The bus took a route that went through an aqueduct and then up a major commercial street. I suspect this street was the wedding street because there were a ton of wedding dress shops with their wares shown on manequins in really big windows. Also, we very quickly ended up in a fairly run down part of the city where random lots would be filled with building rubble and lots of people about. The areas of the city are just so different.

Once I found the church and walked in, my jaw hit the floor. The mosaics are incredible. It's a byzantine church with very intricate mosaics and frescos. The pictures were made of such small stones that the scenes almost looked lifelike. Plus, they covered almost every wall and ceiling.

After that, I stopped by a restaurant that serves Ottoman food. Apparently the Ottoman never wrote down recipes because each cooking guild jealously guarded their secrets. So, to make these dishes, the restaurant did research into the palace records and tried to recreate the ancient dishes.The menu can be seen here: http://www.asitanerestaurant.com/English/summer_menu.php. I ordered the almond soup (which was too salty) and the stuffed calamari (which was divine). The most interesting thing on the menu (but I wasn't hungry enough to eat) was:

Kavun Dolması (1539) (Stu fed Melon):
Cored melon stuf ed with minced lamb and beef meat, rice, herbs, almonds, currants and pine nuts and baked in the oven

I'll have to try making it back home.

After eating, I returned to the hostel and mostly relaxed for the evening.