Last day in Istanbul

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I slept better than ever before during our trip, thanks to the ear plugs we bought the day before. The only thing on our agenda for the day was Istanbul Moden Art Museum and especially their photography exhibition. The museum was huge and we spent quite a lot of time browsing their permanent exhibition at first, which was perhaps a mistake since exhibition was not extremely interesting plus the building was quite cold. We had to go warm ourselves at the museum's café with a cool Bosphorus view terrace. The two other exhibitions were much more interesting and afterwards I wished we had spent more time and energy on those. The photographs showed Turkish life from 1950s to today, few even from 19th century.

After museum we were quite tired and hungry, and started looking for lunch. We ended up walking quite long as many places were closed and others just didnt seem too tempting. It was interesting though, because we ended up walking through some bazaar-like streets where mostly locals were shopping. Finally we found a place to eat and we both ordered kebap. I have always thought the kebap meats u see in Finland look quite nasty and i never buy it, but here kebap is quite different and was tasty.

During lunch we were trying to decide whether to visit Topkapi Palace or Suleyman Mosque and opted for the latter since visiting a palace seemed slightly tiring after already having visited one museum for the day. The mosque was basically similar to the Blue Mosque but more light and spacious and had lighter colors inside. We were impressed. But quite soon we had to leave because praying time was about to start. So, we walked to the mosque yard and sat there for a while looking at the nice sea view. I also bought two pashmina scarfs, one light purple one and another one with red and black. I might still buy few more if I find nice ones in Cappadocia where we are heading tomorrow 😊

We still visited Grand Bazaar. That was rather basic market selling lots of pirate goods, and we just walked through without buying anything. Back at the hotel we took a nap for a while before still going to a nearby restaurant for dinner. I really wanted to try "manti", which is a Turkish version of Russian pelmenis, and luckily we found it. It was small raviolis in yoghurt/spice dressing - not bad at all. After a small walk we went to bed because we had to wake up at 5.15 the next morning to catch out flight to Kayseri, Cappadocia.

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