Istanbul, Turkey's Most Westernized City

Istanbul was my favorite part of visiting Turkey.  The Bosphorus boat tour was awesome, and you could see ruins of Mehmet the Conquerer's fortress walls he built around Istanbul during the 1300s.  Istanbul was a vivid replica of how Orhan Pahmuk described it in his "Istanbul-Memories and the City."  The Ottoman pashas' wooden houses on the Bosphorus and the Ottoman Sultans' palaces, such as the Topkapi Palace illustrate how the sultans, beginning in the 17th century, became secluded in their own world, and this isolation even caused some to go insane.  The blue tiles are eveywhere.  Ottoman sultans only married Christian wives, which is very surprising.  Also, if one of the Sultan's concubines gave the Sultan a male child, then she could marry the Sultan, which was unheard of in other royal families.

Equally magnificent were the Hagia Sphia and Blue Mosque.  The Hagia Sophia has both Christian and Muslim influence, perhaps the only church in the world to have both characteristics.  Also, it is said that the Hagia Sophia's doors are made out of Noah's Ark, and that the wood was carried from Mount Ararat.