The Blue Mosque, ancient Byzantine art, and a little rain

We had a somewhat rainy day today, but a $4 umbrella from a street vendor and some incredible sights made up for it.
We started out at The Blue Mosque, a 5 minute walk from our hotel. The intricate mosaics and beautiful frescos covered every inch of the walls and domes. With the predominat color weaving everything together being blue, the fav color of the Sultan who built the mosque in the erly 17th century. It's the "young" mosque in our neighborhood! Tomorrow we visit the OLD mosque, Hagia Sofia, originally a church of Constantinople, built in the the 6th century, and way later was converted to a mosque by the Turks (shout out to Mrs. Fender!). Tomorrow we will visit Hagia Sofia right when it opens because today by around 11 the place was packed. We also visited the Grand Bazaar today, and we plan to go back later to make a few purchases! We also made our way by public bus (yay us for figuring that out!) to the Kariye Museum, which has really incredibly preserved mosaics and frescos from the 14th century. Ironically the reason for how well they've held up stems from the church's conversion to a mosque. All the scenes from the New Testament were plastered over and thus protected until they were uncovered in the 1940's!!! They are (according to Fodor's) some of the finest examples of original Byzantine mosaics and frescos in the world. That's all I can report tonight because my thumbs are tired! These entries are coming to you from my blackberry courtesy of the free wireless at the Hotel Cosmopolitan. Love, besos y abrazos! Meagan