How can I help you spend your money?

Eleven hours sleep is unheard off, but after waking Phil up at 6:00, he told me to go back to sleep until a sensible hour. Turkish breakfast of feta, tomato and cucumber took me back to Olu Deniz. Our first stop was the Blue Mosque, which is on our doorstep, literally. We managed to get through the hoards of tourists to wait in an extremely long queue to get into the mosque. We removed our shoes, I regretted not bringing socks and imagined the millions of bare footed people that had tread the carpets before me, and donned the head scarf. To say the interior is impressive is an understatement. If you can get through the crowds of tourists, you then see a wall of windows and men praying. The women through covered rooms on the side. What was surprising and very disrepestcul was the number of people that removed their head scarves after they entered to mosque and the number of people trying to get into the praying areas to get ‘the photograph’. The staff were really herding cats.

Then it was onto Aya Safia to marvel at the impressive dome. This time we got an audio guide, but as usual we didn’t follow the normal format, so did numbers 3,8, 15 before we realised we were really confused and should probably fine number one. It’s a very stange mixture of both Christian and Muslim influence in the same room.
Off to the cistern, what I thought was the thing at the back of the toilet, but not in Istanbul, it’s a vast cavern where water was stored. Following the tourists, we walked through the arches and looked at the carp in the water.

Lunch was mezze…again, relaxing on low seats and Phil smoking the water pipe.
I persuaded Phil to go and see the train station as it was the terminus of the Orient Express. Alas, I took him in the wrong entrance so it was a bit like taking him to London Euston…he wasn’t impressed.

We wandered past the passenger ferries that take people up the Bosporus and for the first time we saw Turkish people. I’m amazed how many tourists there are here. We walked over the Galata Bridge, past the many fishermen and imagined what Londoners would think if we fished off of Westminster Bridge.

Phil risked my life in crossing a majorly busy road and then the only way was up, up to the Galata Tower for an amazing view over the city. Alas, the width of the walkway was the size of my hips exactly, and two people had to go by each other so it was a little bit of a tight squeeze to say the least but the view was worth it.
On the way down, Phil said we should try a new route, as always it didn’t have any tourists, was quite run down and had a sign “pink pig watching you”. Comforting.

We meandered back to the hotel, through the spice bazaar and I wish the camera could capture the smells and sounds of “how can I help you spend your money”. At the hotel we sat on the roof terrace, between Aya Safia and the Blue Mosque on either side and the Bosporus on the other. The boy done good, he couldn’t have got a better location if we were sleeping in the Mosque!

Dinner of shish kebab and the first baklava, with some mezze to start of course and then on for a after dinner drink and water pipe with a difference. They also had whirling dervish, who in a trance spin constantly. It was amazing to see, I fall over if I spin around once.

A fantastic first day, and can’t wait for the next.