May 22, 2012 Istanbul, Turkey

Istanbul, Turkey

We woke at 7:15am to a beautiful day in Istanbul! We were off the ship by 8:30am. Since Carleigh and I were here in 2009, I had a bit of an idea were to go. We headed out walking to cross the Galata Bridge.

We went into the Mosque on the other side of the bridge. Beautiful!

 Then we went to the Spice Market which is a mini Grand Bazaar.

We walked to try to find the Grand Bazaar but ended up back where we started. Tried again and this time we were going in the right direction.

 
We walked by the Hagia Sofia Museum and the Sultanahmet Mosque and into the Sultanahmet area (old area).

This is the area Carleigh and I stayed in. I even found the hotel we stayed at!

Back by the Mosque and we were going to go inside but the line up was so long we didn't go in.

Photo taken from the window looking into the Mosque

In the park area between the Mosque and the Museum, school kids were having a fair about getting to know Turkey. They had lots of food samples to try. The sweets were yummy!

We them went down into the underground cistern. In the water were these really large fish which people must feed because they would come right right to you if you stopped walking.

Next we headed to the Grand Bazaar. This place is HUGE!! It has over 5000 shops but most sell the same thing. It is very touristy and the sales people are very pushy trying to get you into their shop.

We then headed back to the Mosque area and found a nice cafe and stopped for a beer. It was nice to just sit for a while. Decided a second beer was needed. When we were done we took the tram back to the ship.

We were back on board by 3pm. Grabbed a bite to eat (last time here I had stomach issue after eating the local food so played it safe this time) and then had a nap.
Stopped at the ship cafe for a coffee and headed back out at 6pm.

We walked toward the funicular (an underground uphill subway) to take us up to Taksim Square. This is the area where the local people go and was it busy! We walked down Istiklal Cadesi which is a pedestrian street full of stores, cafes and bars. It was sooooo crowded and hardly any tourists. Istanbul has almost 16 million people and lots of them were out tonight!

Istiklal Cadesi is a few kilometres long and ends near the Galata Tower.

We headed for the waterfront and walked back along it. More local cafes and bars right on the water.

We were back onboard by 8:00pm and very tried from all our walking.

Tomorrow - more of Istanbul.
We are going to head back to Istiklal Cadesi in the morning to do more shopping and we are hoping there will be a few less people.