Day 13

We first went to breakfast overlooking the Bosphorus Strait as and as usual in a foreign country, lots of healthy choices.  There will be a video in the Video Page on the Blog that I will post towards the end of the trip.

After breakfast, the hotel arranged to a reliable, fixed price taxi to the famous Grand Bazaar which is the largest and oldest shopping center in Istanbul, founded during the Ottoman Empire.

Words cannot describe the maze of tiny walkways with so many shops.  See the pictures of the map of the Bazaar below. 

After that we took a tram abut 30 minutes to the base of this huge bridge.  We walked over the bridge and then along the waterway to get to our boat which was to take us on a 3-hour cruise along the Bosphorus Strait which is a waterway dividing Europe and Asia.  It is interesting in that Istanbul is on both sides of the strait so you could live in Istanbul and be in one of two countries!

After the tour, we walked to our hotel as it was only a 30 minute and was that a huge, huge mistake as the last part of the walk was up the steepest hill we have ever walked.  WE must have stopped 12 time to make it to the top and our hotel.

A fun day – hope you enjoy the pictures and later on some videos that we will post.

Night from Istanbul

          That's 7,508 Turkish Lira wqual to $179.00 - that's a wad of paper money to carry around!

                                                 Traffic on the street below our window

                                                 One of the several entrances to the Grand Bazaar

                                                           Candy and spices

                                                               Yes she bought it

                                                          Just one of many corridors

                                                                  Lunch - A Kabab not Shish Kabab

                                                    Part of the Blue Mosque

                                                         Riding the train

                                                  Fishermen on the bridge, fishing for Sardines

                                                                        On the boat

                                                              Serving us a snack on the boat

                                                       The were very good

    Just one of many Mosques - undeer the main dome, the men can go in pray, but the women pray in a side room

                                         One of the smaller palaces

                                           More food on the boat - they even provided blankets!

                                                            The famous Blue Mosque

                                                            The Grand Bazaar