Istanbul: Inside Aya Sofia

Istanbul is chalk-full of churches and mosques. They're practically on every block. Seriously. Directly across a large lawn area from the Blue Mosque lays the Aya Sofia, or Hagia Sofia. 

Aya Sofia was built around 500AD by the Roman Emperor Justinian as an Orthodox Basillica. Later it was converted to a Mosque and today, it's a museum. It is nearly 1500 years old and is the world's 4th largest Basilica.

The place is pretty much astonishing. It's HUGE. Walking across the thresholds of the ancient doorways you can't help but notice the well-worn, indented stones, beaten into odd shapes by time and use.

Standing in the large, open space under the dome feels a bit like standing the the center of the massive vertical space between the nave and apse of Notre Dame. You're surrounded by immensity and nothing all at once.

My favorite part of the place was climbing the long series of switch-backed ramps to the upper floor of the building. The ramp walkway reveals glimpses into inner workings and engineering of the building and stands as a testament to the ingenuity of man. On the upper floors you'll find bits of Christian/Byzantine mosaic, inlaid with gold still plastered onto the walls.

Downstairs an ornate "Sultan's box" will take your breath away. It is everything a Westerner would expect from the storybook pages of Arabian nights.

Visiting Aya Sofia costs 20TL/ about 9 Euro (~$14 US).

Thanks

So remember the time it was the week of Thanksgiving and I dropped off the face of the planet? (AKA: I went to North Idaho) Yah, good times.

Last week I flew up to see the 'rents in the frozen North. And, like any good grizzly bear ought to do in the frozen wintery winter, I hibernated. I barely touched my computer all week. I didn't blog (obviously). I cooked. And slept. And spent time with my parents and sibs. And saw the new Twilight movie. (Which I will not review or voice my opinion about.) And played with my awesome Nephew, who is currently obsessed with cars. It was a really great week.

Oh, I occasionally left the house to go running. Here's proof that I saw the outside at least once:

What did you do for Thanksgiving?

Choose Your Own Adventure...

I had a funny kind of affirmation given to me this past Sunday.

I went to a few different Universities. One of my Alma Mater is a small liberal arts school in Northwestern Virginia, named-oddly enough- Southern Virginia University (it started off a LONG time ago as a Women's Seminary called Southern Seminary. Some genius wanted to carry on the name in some way when it became a co-ed college and named it Southern Virginia College... and time marches on...)

It was a lovely school full of fun and wonderful classmates and FANTASTIC teachers. There I met my favorite art professor and mentor: Prof. V. I took several classes from him and spent long hours discussing things with him about art and life and the struggle to become.

Now, years later - more than ten! We are facebook friends and keep in touch. Travel has become a creative outlet for me and a defining part of my person. Sometimes we are so engulfed by the struggled that we forget to periodically stop and check for results. I don't think I'd even stopped to contemplate how engrained travel had become into my soul until recently. Prof. V. posted this on my facebook wall:

It seems that by doing what I love, I have made a name for myself. I have become a world traveler. That my name has become synonymous to a few with travel.

That may seem quite evident to you. But it's very exciting to me. I think of my twenty-year-old self, the self that had just begun my first art class with Professor V. and I could have never known, could never have guessed at the the life I've had for the past decade. It's been a heck of a ride. And it's been amazing.

Thanks Prof. V.

A Familiar Kind of Foreign

I really ought to tell you more about my last big trip. The one to Turkey and Greece. The one I've been home from now for a couple of months.

I've avoided writing about it. I'll admit it. Writing about it would bring a sense of finality and finish-ment that I wasn't ready for.

You see. It was THE.BEST.TRIP.EVER.

Not even kidding.

So today I'll tell you about the beginning.

It all started with the airplane jitters. The excitement of packing and prepping and not sleeping the night before a trip. I love that process! I love leaving work for the last time before a trip and feeling that fabulously freeing sense of having nothing left to do. No responsibilities to take care of. No jobs to finish. Only fun things to think about and adventure on the horizon!

SFO>JFK. Pause for a failed attempt at sleeping on the floor in JFK's American terminal. Big fat FAIL, American, BTW for having the chairs with built in armrests between each seat instead of the big benches late travelers can sleep on.

JFK>LHR (I really love Heathrow airport. I'm not sure why. I just do.) Pause for a good night's rest in the airport Marriott.

LHR>IST... First REAL Destination acquired!

I stayed in a great little hotel called Sarnic Hotel in Sultanhemet, which is located literally a block (as the crow flies) kitty-corner to the Blue Mosque. Great location. The beds were a bit on the hard side, but it was a pleasant place with very friendly staff.

Three nights and three days I spent exploring Istanbul. It's the kind of place that goes on forever. It's the kind of place you could explore and explore and explore until you finally reach the end of it only to have to turn around and explore it all over again because it'll never be the same in two instances. Kind of like New York. With more falafel.

 My favorite part of Istanbul? Topkapi palace. Because it's kind of amazing. And the Byzantine Cistern. So very cool. No wait, maybe it was the Grand Bazaar. Or sailing up and down the Bosporus?

You see, every part of Istanbul is both foreign and grand and comfortable. It is the stuff that Western filmmakers have made their movies and our dreams of since film began. You've seen these places in pictures and movies your whole life, only you didn't know it was Istanbul! Istanbul is an amazing combination of comfortable, foreign and hospitality. It's a wonderfully enriching travel experience.

Visit Istanbul. Trust me on this one. Just go.

This Just In

Occupy Oakland has been evicted from Frank Ogawa plaza in Downtown Oakland.

FINALLY.

My office just opened for the day (at 10:00am) because the Police decided to empty out the plaza starting this morning at 4:00.

This time it was peaceful. Thank goodness. I guess over a month of illegal camping in the city center, illegal drug use in the camp, riots, marches, broken offices, business closures and a shooting (& resulting death), piled on top of the over $700,000 per week cost for extra police enforcement this madness was costing the city finally brought Oakland's moronic mayor to her senses.

Walking from the parking garage to my building this morning I took this photo (and then had fun embellishing it with red):

Just another day at work in Oakland...

Girls' Weekend

I kinda like my little sister. It wasn't always so. As children we fought often. As teenagers we started to get along. Now that we're adults (maybe) I can say that I don't know what I'd do without my little sis. Sometimes she even surprises me by acting like my big sis. I guess that's bound to happen in some circumstances because she's married with a baby (my adorable nephew) and I'm still living the single life. We've always walked different paths and our paths usually complement each others' very well.

This past weekend we took the same path. We jumped into the car for a girls' getaway. Just the two of us.

It.Was.Divine.


We'd talked about doing a girls' weekend for about a year prior to actually going for it. Jobs, babies, life happened and time passed quickly.

But this past weekend was it! Finally!

We booked a room down in Monterey at the Portola Hotel & Spa. I chose that hotel in particular for it's location, and also because as kids we'd stayed there while my Dad attended at Chiropractic Convention. (It was the Doubletree Inn back then.) Little Sis doesn't remember much about that first stay, back in the eighties, but I do. We played elevator tag and swam in the fun, round pool for hours and hours. My Mom took us down to the pier and the beach and we ordered room service to the pool. One evening room service brought us up a delectable treat that we'll always remember: Strawberries with sour cream and brown sugar. YUM. We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for the first time. Yes, Monterey holds a lovely little corner of my heart and is the stage for some of my fondest childhood memories.

The Portola hotel did not disappoint us on this girls' getaway. Though it did seem a lot smaller than it had in my childhood memories...

When we checked in we were handed massive, warm chocolate chip cookies and then given our room keys. We were already in heaven!

We took our bags and our cookies, went to the elevator bank, (where I was THRILLED when Kelly asked "Hey, is this where we played elevator tag?" Yes! She did remember!) and shuffled to our room, which didn't have a sea-view, but it did have a balcony and two of the comfiest hotel beds I've ever stayed in. Heaven! Again!

 (Photos of the Portola from http://www.portolahotel.com/about/photos.php)

 The next two days were a blur of naps, beautiful coastal drives, gorgeous houses, a California Mission and delectable food...

Airfare Newsflash!

British Air is having a fabulous sale right now! One way flights from $225. Book now and travel until the end of April.

Paris, Amsterdam, Prague, Barcelona, Rome... all on sale! AND your booking includes two nights in a hotel.

I'm thinking of Barcelona in March... Renting a car and driving down the coast. Taking a ferry to Ibiza and Majorca. Hopping over to Morocco. Seeing Andalusian horses and trying Paella. Listening to Spanish Guitar players and watching Flamenco dancing! Ah, Spain is calling!!


Just go to: British Air's website for details.



Where will you go?

Moving on Over...

Today I moved into a new office at work. An office of my very own. Pretty exciting, no?

Tah dah!

Solidarity?

Yesterday I bought lunch at one of my favorite sandwich shops in downtown Oakland. If you didn't know, I work in downtown Oakland, California. The very same Oakland which has been home to the Occupy Oakland movement, and, more recently, the protests (which are growing more and more violent) in Oakland. The action is all happening literally one block from my building.

Yesterday at the lunch counter I happened on a flyer being distributed there, calling for a city-wide strike to bring about these things (among others):

-Free Healthcare
-Free Education
-Redistribution of all wealth (equally)

I was positively FLOORED. And not in a good way.

I happen to agree that, yes, America is spiraling out of control and that things are going very, very wrong politically, economically and socially. I'll be doing what I can to end this ridiculousness by voting in the next election. That's how our system works.

Today, a Wednesday, I sit at home, not because I don't have a job. Not because I'm uneducated or incapable of holding a job. Today I can't go to work and make a living for myself because an Angry Mob has threatened violence against businesses who dare to open their doors for business. I for one do NOT support angry mobs that prevent businesses from functioning with a lynch-mob communist agenda.

The "Occupy" movement, in my humble opinion, is officially out of control.

I found this fantastically penned article via a friend:

Some Belated Parental Advice to Protesters
by Marybeth Hicks
Columnist, Townhall
October 20, 2011

Call it an occupational hazard, but I can’t look at the Occupy Wall Street protesters without thinking, “Who parented these people?”

As a culture columnist, I’ve commented on the social and political ramifications of the “movement” - now known as “OWS” - whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by one of their placards: “Everything for everybody.”

Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it’s clear there are people with serious designs on “transformational” change in America who are using the protesters like bed springs in a brothel.

Yet it’s not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting question, but rather the fact that I’m the mother of four teens and young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters’ moms clearly have not passed along.

Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters’ mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn’t, so I will:

• Life isn’t fair. The concept of justice - that everyone should be treated fairly - is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, “You can’t always get what you want.”

No matter how you try to “level the playing field,” some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they’re dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons. Is it fair? Stupid question.

• Nothing is “free.” Protesting with signs that seek “free” college degrees and “free” health care make you look like idiots, because colleges and hospitals don’t operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and “slow paths” to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.

While I’m pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.

• Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don’t require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It’s a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for - literally.

• A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn’t evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don’t dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don’t seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.

• There are reasons you haven’t found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gouged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn’t a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It’s not them. It’s you.

 

 Photos from: http://www.good.is/post/photos-at-occupy-oakland-a-night-of-protests-and-tear-gas/