Istanbul Day 1

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You just have to love jet lag! Even though we were exhausted we were awake this morning from 4am... Snoozed for a couple of hours and finally gave up around 6am. It was nice though to take our time in the morning as breakfast didn't start until 8am. Breakfast was nice but interesting - a spread of sweets, cheeses and cold meats...

We left the hotel around 8:30am and made our way through the Hippodrome where we saw heaps of large tour groups. We decided to go to Aya Sofya first - there was already quite a large queue waiting for the gates to open at 9am, but the queue moved quickly. Aya Sofya was quite breathtaking, with the current building amazingly built in the 500's.

Next stop was the Basilica Cistern, which was also built in the 500's to supply water to the Great Palace and surrounding buildings. The cistern consists of 336 marble columns of 9m in height (all perfectly spaced) and has walls over 4m thick. The cistern has a capacity of 100,000 tonnes of water.

We then caught the tram to the Grand Bazaar, but unfortunately nearly all the stalls were still closed for end of ramadan. We walked back to the hotel to freshen up before heading back out to have lunch at a cafe near Stoa Basilica Square (which is situated above the Basilica Cistern - hence how it got its name). I had a donar kebab and Mike had lamb koftas, and a few flavoured beers which I had as chandies (nice in the 30 degrees heat)!

After people watching from the cafe, we joined a tourist bus tour which took us around the Sultanahmet, across the Galata Bridge and then across the Bosphorus Bridge, which links the continent of Europe to the continent of Asia. Interesting fact - Istanbul is the only city to span across two continents. Unofficial estimates also have the cities' population at 20 million!

For dinner we went to the Mosaic cafe in a little lane way near the cafe area where we had lunch - food and service were very good. Tried to visit the Blue Mosque on the way home but they were closing the gates just as we arrived...

Pedometer reading: 14,433 steps

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Photos

Obelisk of Theodosius
In the Hippodrome since 390AD

Head of Medusa
Basilica Cistern