Turkey, a country of 65 million is Islamic except the 100,000 Christians. Those churches built after the Roman Emperor Justinian became Christian and during the subsequent Byzantine era were either converted to mosques or destroyed. Those former Christian buildings still standing are now museums.
The Blue Mosque is in use daily with the call to prayer 5 times a day beginning at 4:15 AM and last call at 9:15 PM. The words of the Imam are repeated for the congregation by a chanting choir stationed opposite the Imam. This choir is in leu of today's amplification systems.
The more the minarets, the closer to royalty one gets.
The Romans were here also with their pantheon of pagan gods and goddess; their statures properly defaced (noses cut off) as images of god are forbidden. 
Fortresses along the Bosporus Straits guard the distances between Asia and Europe.
A quaint village at the bottom of a steep drop to the water's edge was where we ate and slept the night. We were in the steps of St. Paul the apostle who walked these stones proselytizing. We walked down the cobbled road in the night, flashlights ablaze. The back wall of our room dated to a thousand years before Christ. The following morning, a small van took us up to our bus, high on an overhanging cliff.
What could be more appropriate than a boat cruise on the Eastern side of the Mediterranean and the mountainous Turkish coast. Kathy sits on the forward lounge. 
Aft, under the blue Bimini an open lounge area, perfect for before dinner cocktails and night time sleeping. I was the only one who slept out every night; stars, moon, no bugs. Fish cavorting did arouse me once or twice.
A three person crew manned the 82 footer; winches supplied the power except when one of the anchor flukes caught the restraining bowsprit cable and would have banged away at the hull if not repositioned and secured.
We sailed away to a lost/ghost city, abandoned when the Greeks were repatriated to Greece 50 years ago. The dwellings were not inhabited by the local Turks as they believed the Greeks had left a curse upon the houses which would in turn descend upon themselves.
A Greek Orthodox Church is abandoned in this ghost town, not converted to a mosque, nor a museum for the same reasons: curses.
We conclude this portion of the evening's narrative with a scene of idyllic Mediterranean beauty: turquoise waters, waves gently lapping upon a sandy shore.
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