TURKEY 2026: WALKING AROUND ISTANBUL PART II -- HAGIA SOPHIA MOSQUE AND THEODOSIUS CISTERN

 June 23, 2026

The Hagia Sophia (Greek for "holy wisdom") was built between 532 and 537 by order of Justinian the Great as the cathedral of Constantinople. For more than 500 years, it was the largest church in the world. It was rebuilt after an earthquake in 994 and used as an Eastern Orthodox or a Catholic cathedral until 1453. In 1453 after the Ottoman's conquered Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque and added minarets. It became known as the Aya Sofya. 

The secularist government led by Kemal Ataturk turned the mosque into a museum in 1935. During World War II, the minarets housed machine guns. Over the succeeding decades, the building fell into serious disrepair, but preservationists worked to restore it from 1997 to 2006

This is my photo of the Hagia Sophia taken when we visited Istanbul in 2010 when it was still a museum. I think there were still minarets, but they are outside the boundaries of this photo.

By 2010 they had uncovered many of the early Christian mosaics on the wall that had been stuccoed over during the years the structure was a mosque. We were very excited to see them.

In 2020, Turkish President Erdogan announced that the museum would once again revert to being a mosque. This controversial decision brought on global criticism. Even UNESCO was upset. However, the government dcreed that it would be a "working mosque," open to anyone, and the Christian icons and mosaics on the walls would be protected.

In 2025, an extensive restoration project began, and a year later, we showed up in Istanbul. Here is what the Hagia Sophia looked like:

Not quite the gorgeous structure we had seen 16 years before, but I'm sure all this renovation will be worth it in the end.

The interior is cavernous and lacks the elegance of the Blue Mosque, which was built much later and basically replaced this one for centuries.

TURKEY 2026: WALKING AROUND ISTANBUL, PART I -- THE OBELISK OF THEODOSIUS AND THE BLUE MOSQUE

 June 23, 2026

We had a full day before we had to board our ship, so the Joneses, Kenisons, and I (Bob was away for the day on a birding trip with a guide) planned a walking tour of Istanbul. Bob and I had previously visited Istanbul  in 2010 (those blog posts begin here), and 16 years is a long time. The city felt different--in some ways more modernized, in other ways more restored to its ancient past.

We walked from our hotel to Topkapi Palace, built in 1459, six years after the Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople, then the capital of the Byzantine Empire. In its heyday, the Sultan's harem lived here, along with state officials. However, it was basically abaondoned as a residence in the 17th century, although it did retain government-related uses. In the mid-19th century, the sultan moved the court out as well, but the palace continued to serve as a treasury, library, and mint. After the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, Topkapi Palace became a museum, which it has continued to be to the present day.

Unfortunately, the palace itself is NOT wheelchair friendly. (Hooray for the Americans with Disabilities Act that requires ramps and elevators in public places. I really notice the lack of equal access in foreign countries.) We enjoyed a walk around the grounds anyway.

This is the Hagia Irine, originally built in the 4th century during the riegn of Emperor Constantine, making it one of the earliest Christian churches in Constantinople/Istanbul. It was one of only two churches never converted into a mosque. These days it is a museum and concert hall.

The Imperial Gate, one of three ceremonial gates at Topkapi Palace, was commissioned in 1478 and reconstructed in 1867.

TURKEY AND GREECE 2026: A MIRACULOUS TRIP

 June 2026

In 2025, after our trip to Uganda with our granddaughter, we planned a return trip to Uganda in July 2026 with one of Bob's law partners and his wife with the specific purpose of going gorilla trekking. We set up our tours, purchased our flights, and were ready to go.

My brother and his wife and my sister and her husband had planned a trip together--a Viking ocean cruise from Instanbul to Athens in late June 2026. One day in spring during a family chat my sister-in-law shared their travel plans and said, "Anyone who wants to come along is welcome to join us." Within days my other two sisters and their spouses had joined the cruise. At that time our Uganda plans were set and we could not afford the time nor the money to do two large trips in one summer. I was feeling really sad to be the only sibling left out of all the family fun.

HOWEVER . . . 

The ebola virus hit the Democratic Republic of the Congo early in the year, the country bordering the area of Uganda we had planned to visit, and a few cases spread into Uganda. We watched and waited, and even though the risk to us would be low, we were pretty sure the outbreak would affect our trip.

Map of Ebola outbreak. The Democratic Republic of the
Congo, where most of the ebola outbreaks have
occurred, is the large country to the west of Uganda.

NEW YORK CITY 2026: THE MET

 June 1, 2026

On my last day in New York City, I met A at Elbow Bread for one last strawberry lemon sheep's cheese Danish (my third one in three days), and then he went off to work and I was on my own.

I'm starting to feel a lot more confident in the city, and I was able to find my way via subway and walking to my next destination. The subway took me to the west side of Central Park, and then I walked through the park to the east side, passing by this deliightful bronze sculpture of Prospero and his daughter Miranda from Shakespeare's The Tempest, appropriately located in front of the theater that is home to the summer Shakespeare in the Park festival.

I eventually made it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, fondly called "The Met," the fifth largest art museum in the world by gallery space. (In case you are wondering, #1 is the Louvre in Paris, #2 is the British Museum in London, #3 is the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and #4 is the National Museum of China in Beijing). Last year it had 5.7 million visitors, making it the most-visited museum of any kind in the United States.

The Met has a permanent collection of 1.5 million works grouped in seventeen separate departments. I only had a few hours, so I decided to start in the European section and see how far I got from there.

NEW YORK CITY 2026: MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, A BIT OF CENTRAL PARK, AN ART OPENING, AND MOMBAR'S

 May 31, 2026

MoMA is a tough museum to top. With its 708,000 square feet, there is so much to see that you can spend an entire day there, and its eclectic collection has something for everyone. We followed our visit to MoMA with a visit to the Upper East Side Museum of the City of New York, a relatively puny 113,750 square feet. In spite of its small size, it contained one of the most expansive artworks I have ever seen: He Built This City (2004-2025) by Joe Macken, a work that rivaled almost anything in MoMA.

In 2004, New York truck driver Joe Macken began a little project in his basement that he worked on in his free time for the next 21 years: a scale-model of the entire city of New York. He had no prior artistic training, no building experience other than constructing a few miniature models, just a vision of his beloved city in miniature. He began with a single structure--30 Rockefeller Plaza. Using a scale of 1 mm = 10 feet and balsa wood, an X-acto knife, his home ruler, Elmer's Glue, and acrylic paint, he expanded from Rockefeller Plaza to Midtown Manhattan, then to the whole borough, then to Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island. After 21 years of work, he had created a 1,350 square-foot replica of NYC that includes every street, every building, every park, every bridge. Iconic buildings such as the Empire State Building, the World Trade Centre, the Chrysler Building, and the Woolworth Building are incredibly detailed.

In 2025, Macken's TikTok posts of his project went viral, accumulating over 10 million views. The Museum of the City of New York took notice, and the rest is history.

Mr. Macken's model is simply spectacular. Photos don't do it justice.

View from north end

View from south end

NEW YORK CITY 2026: MUSEUM OF MODERN ART (MoMA)

May 31, 2026

 On my third day in New York City, I met A & M at my new favorite bakery, Elbow Bread, then we took our morning treats to a park about a block away. It was really fun to sit on a bench and watch the residents of New York's Chinatown doing their morning exercises. One man was doing tai chi off to the side, a couple was playing badminton, and a group of about ten women were following a leader in a synchronized dance routine.  See a short video here.

M had an art opening that evening, so we said goodbye to her so that she could go do all the last-minute things that needed to be done, and A and I headed off for an artsy day.

We had gotten an early start because it was Memorial Day, and we knew the city would be bursting with the energy reserved for holidays. We made our way past massive St. Patrick's Cathedral, which takes up a full city block on Fifth Avenue between 50th and 51st street. However, I am not one to walk past a church when its doors are open, so I made a quick stop to take a look.

There was a service in progress, so we couldn't walk around inside, but I appreciated even this glimpse of St. Patrick's lofty Gothic Revival ceilings.

One of the wonderful things about NYC is the variety of architecture. Just down the street from St. Patrick's, for example, is the wonderful Art Deco-style International Building of the Rockefeller Center.

 

About this time we realized it was going to be very, very difficult to get to MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art), which we had planned to be our first destination. The Israel Day on 5th Parade was slated to move up Fifth Avenue between 62nd and 74th streets, starting at 11:30 AM. Activities were scheduled until 4:00 PM.  The theme of the parade was "Proud Americans, Proud Zionists."

NEW YORK CITY 2026: MAGAZZINO ITALIAN ART MUSEUM, DIA BEACON, AND A HOME-COOKED MEAL

 May 30, 2026

On my second day in New York, A and M had a great out-of-city excursion planned. We started by catching a train in the iconic Grand Central Station. If you look closely at the picture of A and me on the left, you'll see a red dot on the ceiling. It's a heart-shaped mylar balloon that floated there months ago (maybe Valentine's Day?) and hasn't wanted to return to earth! Those things last forever.

We took a 1.25 hour train to Magazzino Italian Art Museum in Cold Spring, New York, a village about 50 miles north of Manhattan with a population of approximately 2,000 and located across the Hudson River from West Point.

The museum, which contains a collection of postwar and contemporary Italian art owned by married art collectors Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu, opened in 2017 at the site of a former computer chip factory (Magazzino means "warehouse" in Italian). It consists of two buildings, the original warehouse and a second building opened in 2023.

I tend to go a bit crazy in an art museum. I like to take a lot of pictures that I can then examine in more detail on my computer at home. Here are a few of the photos I took of my favorite pieces.

They had an exhibit by the Italian artist Alighiero Boetti that I especially liked. On first glance, you see a mercator map of the world.

But look closer and you'll see the world depicted by the national flag of each country. The embroidery for this and other works by the same artist was completed by Afghan women in refugee camps.