Sultanahmet Camii

My first day in Istanbul (May 3, 2004) I spent hours just walking around the Sultanahmet district. In this picture I'm standing across the street from the Blue Mosque (Sultanahmet Camii) while a friend I met there took my picture. The Blue Mosque has the most impressive exterior of any building I saw on the trip. It achieves a sense of architectural balance and upward movement that draw your eyes to its topmost dome, while appreciating the whole. At night, they light it up with blue-tinted flood-lights, and the sky fills with seabirds. This happened to coincide with the nightly call to prayer, as it often does, leading the locals to say that the birds are praying.