A Visit to Blue Mosque, Istanbul

A Visit to Blue Mosque

Last weekend Me and  two friends decided to pay a visit to Blue Mosque, a place all the World is familiar and draws millions of tourists every year. Because We live in Istanbul We have visited Blue Mosque numbers of times before but You never have enough of Blue Mosque, you want to visit it all the time.

We traveled to Blue Mosque with my own car but I strongly advise you to go there with public transportation. The area is closed to private cars so you need to find a parking place and walk the rest of way and it is always a traffic jam around Blue Mosque. However, it would be always easy to reach there with tramway, you would need to catch Bagcilar-Kabatas Tramway, coded as T1 and get off at Sultanahmet/Blue Mosque station.

Blue Mosque is an historical mosque built in early of 17th century. It's original name is Sultan Ahmet, named after the Ottoman Sultan who built it and it is widely known as "Blue Mosque" because of those beautiful blue tiles and interior design. Interior design of Blue Mosque is fascinating, breath taking. It has thousans of hand made ceramic tiles, It has one dome, six minarets. The mosque is fairly close to Haghia Sophia which is another popular tourist attraction.The upper levels of the interior are dominated by blue paint. More than 200 stained glass windows with intricate designs admit natural light, today assisted by chandeliers. The most important element in the interior of the mosque is the mihrab, which is made of finely carved and sculptured marble, with a stalactite niche and a double inscriptive panel above it. It is surrounded by many windows. There are many huge tablets on the walls are inscribed with the names of the caliphs and verses from the Quran.

We have spend close to two hours inside of Blue Mosque. We weren't hungry so We didn't eat anything particular We did drink tea at one of the tea cafe around and enjoyed the beautiful view of Blue Mosque. 

It wasn't our first time in Blue Mosque so We didn't buy any stuff out there. The weather was beautiful last weekend, like summer times. As all of reasons, I can consider this short trip as a flawless trip. I am always looking forward to visit Blue Mosque.