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Published: September 17th 2023
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As we've come to lean, a rest day is not necessarily a day when we rest. We enjoyed a sumptuous breakfast at The Plaza where we tried a number of different breakfast options. The number and variety of cheeses was amazing as were the types of bread. There were many spreads (olives, walnuts, peppers and other ingredients) as well as the more typical western options. One of my favourite items though was halva - for breakfast!!!
Tom and I journeyed out today to explore Edirne. We only had 4 sites on our list and 3 of those were mosques, with the forth being the Grand Bazaar (Altinay Kuyumculuk). I have never been in a mosque before and so I was quite interested to see what they looked like. The largest of the mosques was Selimiye Cami with the others being Burmali Camii and Eski Ulu Camii. Basically they all contain a very large open area that is carpeted. The carpet is printed in such a way that it is obvious where you would kneel to pray via the pattern. Because of this it is very easy to count the number of rows and columns to know how many worshipers can
be accommodated - easily over 1000 in the smallest. The only restriction for entering was that men had to have long pants and women had to have a scarf on. It was quite interesting to see. They also have minorettes, or large towers as I'm sure you've seen. We did enquire if it was possible to climb one of these and were politely told it was forbidden, ah well, we tried. The grand Bazaar was also good to see, full of knock offs of all the major sporting brands as well as an enormous amount of shoes for some reason.
We finished our list of sites just before midday and then wandered the streets for a while finding a promenade with more traders and lots of assorted shops. We picked up some fruit for a bargain for lunch and then I bought some dates, when the vendor shook my hand after I paid him I thought I'd do a quick conversion of the cost, and realised why.
There was also a large synagogue, the Great Synagogue of Edirne. Again, I had never visited a synagogue before so we decided to have a look at that as well. I don't
think there was a dress code for entering but were allowed in without any issue to have a look and take a few pictures. We had managed to wander a fair way from the hotel so we spent the best part of an hour wandering back. We booked our accommodation for the next couple of days which is good to tick off. We tried to book a Gallipoli Tour from Istanbul but are having trouble finding one that is available before Tom leaves as they book out quite far in advance. We'll have to keep working on that one.
Tomorrow we are travelling to Kirklareli, about 70kms away with a few climbs along the way. Seeing as weve picked up a number of days we've decided to take an extra day to get to Istanbul and spend a night on the Black Sea, so this will get us to Istanbul on Friday all going to plan.
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