Tour of Istanbul

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Hi all.

Yesterday we took a tour of Istanbul for 100 Turkish Lira which proved to be worth every penny Once again excuse the lack of punctuation = these keyboards are killing me

For other travellers reading this = then take the tour they are well worth the money and the explanations and guided tours are everything Our guide was a little Istanbul local who sounded English educated and said he self educated and got his accent from listening to the BBC world service as a young man and now BBCTV

He is of course multilingual as he walked past us today with a group of German tourists speaking fluent German Meeting up with the Germans tonight for Rika

The day yesterday started off better for us than one guy anyway = some one was murdered in the alleyway two along from our hotel overnight and the Police = Polis = had the area blocked off and the body was lying out in the open with a newspaper covering him = CSI Istanbul

We had a fanstastic time at the Spice markets and the colours and aromas cannot really be described in any way that would do them justice Hawkers were selling other wares outside and you are stopped every few steps

Highlights of the tour would be the ferry ride up the Bosphorus River to the Black Sea and the many expensive houses which line the river = if you think NZ coastal is expensive try 64 to 125 million USD for a house and then the State can tell you how to redocorate it as it is regarded as part of the world heritage site The Turks are a very proud race and have flags flying everywhere = whether that is a hangover from when the Americans were here I dont know but giant flagpoles and flags everywhere Certainly a skyline that is vastly different from anything you see in our part of the world

After the ferry ride and a great lunch we were bought back by bus down the motorway and got to see some of how the other half of Istanbul live in massive high rise apartments most of them illegally built in the 60s and 70s Government here is building new ones and move people out of the old ones which are then demolished to build more new ones

The after noon saw us at Hagia Sophia a 350 AD built church built during Constantines reign as his mother was Christian = what a good son = it was the largest church for hundreds of years and when the Ottomans arrived it was made into a mosque and the beautiful mosaics depicting Christ and Constatine were plastered over as Muslim belief does not allow pictures of living creatures in mosques They were finally uncovered and somewhat restored in 1930

I have tried to capture the size and history of the place with my camera but it probably does not do it any sort of justice The place was built in 5 years using 10 thousand labourers and skilled craftsmen from around the empire We were travelling with a group of Australians in our tour so I felt i necessary to point out that they would still be building it if they had relied on the Australian labour and their unions = to which they all agreed

The marble steps to the Hagia Sophia were worn away with the number of Christians and then Muslims who had been to pray there On the balcony area = for want of a better description were large pieces of marble as hand rails and Lachie and I were disgusted to see people had carved their names into the marble = we thought what destruction = until the guide pointed out that the offenders had been the Vikings and other marauders over the centuries with a couple of inscriptions in Latin also Erik the Viking was here sort of stuff

After this we went to the Bascillica Cistern over the road and it is a cavern underground built to store the water for old Istanbul so that enemies could not poison the water supply What is amazing is that the vast tiled floors and 336 marble columns with architectually designed ceiling was built in two months = I suppose they had 10 thousand labourers hanging around looking for work at the time Something that you may know but was news to me was that Bascillica actually means rectangle shapoed and is nothing to do with it being a church or anything like that

What was interesting is that they used the columns from other destroyed buildings and were probably the first group of people into sustainable living

In the evening we went down to the waterfront for dinner at a restaurant and had great sea bass and salad a couple of Epps Beer and Rika the Turkish version of Oozo = must say that I am loving all the salads and my new breakfast is feta goat cheese with cucumber and black and green olives with Turkish coffee

We are off to the Topaki Palace and the Hippodrome today = already 27 degrees at 11am = but first downstairs from the internet place for another Turkish coffee

Heading off now = hope all are well

Paul

PS sorry for punctuation and probably grammar and spelling = but on short timeframe

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