First stop the Blue Mosque, our first mosque for both of us, built about 400 years ago.
The exterior and interior are both grand and beautiful at the same time, and I got slightly carried away with the camera trying to catch the colours and patterns of the ornate tile work.
In contrast the Aya Sofya is in many ways simpler,
but the magnificent domed ceiling does make you stop and stare, almost floating way up in the sky.
It is easy to forget that the building is close to 1500 years old, and for the first 900 years was the greatest church is Christendom before being turned into a mosque when (then) Constantinople fell to the Muslims.
It is now a museum, and the contrasting Muslim and Christian elements sit side by side. The surviving Byzantine mosaics are spectacular in their vibrancy.
Anne also tried the weeping column, which is said to cure ailments if your finger emerges moist - she was hoping for better knees. Unfortunately her finger was dry, so she’s banking on knee replacements in future instead.
The Bascilica cistern, completed in AD 532 was an interesting diversion, atmospherically lit and supported by 336 columns. The bit of water left in there has loads of fish in it, if you ever go then take a net and you’ll be sorted for dinner.
A quick bread ring from a street stall followed by a glass of freshly squeezed pomegranate and orange juice (I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many pomegranates in my life) was lunch on the run as we made our way to the Grand Bazaar with its 4000 shops.
It seems mainly for the tourists, but you can easily lose yourself for a few hours wandering the lanes, turning down the offer to look or not as you feel. We also visited the Spice Bazaar
and did the tourist thing and bought some Turkish delight (and dried apricots), although perhaps more interesting was the area inbetween. Here you’ll find the authentic bazaar shops and stalls where the locals will shop for everything from clothes, household items, hunting equipment, food to electronics.
We stopped at a bookshop to see if we could find a Turkish road atlas and were invited to sit and have satsumas and tea whilst they checked. Unfortunately no luck with the atlas but it was a nice interlude. Anne also made me have my hair cut as I was starting to look somewhat bouffant-ish. I think it was our best haggling of the day - 10TL down from the initial 30TL, plus I got another cup of tea.
A döner kebap (no, kebap is not a typo) on the way home rounded off a great day, until a knock on our hotel door about 2200 revealed the receptionist saying somebody wanted to talk to us about our car. We thought there was either a problem or we had to move it, but it turned out to be a British woman (Nicola) travelling on her own in a camper van who had seen our Land Rover and wanted to have a chat. She was trying to decide whether to carry on through Iran, Pakistan and India, or park up the van in Greece or Bulgaria and fly out to India. We told her our plans and decisions on not doing that route, rather going through Syria and Jordan before shipping out to Australia, but left her to make her own decision.
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