Turkey Istanbul

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Today we visited Turkey for a city tour of Instanbul. Turkey sits on the border of Europe and Asia and Instanbul is actually half in Europe and half in Asia. The city is ancient and crowded. Our first stop was the palace at Topkapi. Here for centuries the rulers of Turkey, the Sultans, lived with there 500 wives (busy guy) and ruled the better part of the known world. The Palace became a museum in 1954 when the last Sultan was deposed during the white revolution, so called because no one died. Since then the Palace, and all its treasures, have been open to the public. Here we saw the ornate daily items used by the Sultan, gold and diamond coffee cups, solid gold plates and even a solid gold cradle,we tried to get one for Vinny but the last one was sold this morning. The star of the treasures were the crown jewels and the famous Topkapi dagger, the star of the 1954 movie Topkapi. I have to say these guys lived well. In addition to the Sultan treasures we also visited the treasurers of the prophets. Here we saw the beard of Muhammad, the silver cup he used for drinking, many swords of the phrophet and his followers. Here also we saw the arm of St John, the beard of St John, his wooden cup and mayn other artifacts of christendom. Amazing. After the palace we headed to the Blue Mosque, so called because of the blue tiles throughout the inside of the mosque. This is a functioning mosqu,e so 5 times a day it is closed to the public during prayer.We were lucky as prayer was not for another hour. The mosque is huge, one of the largest in the world. It is ancient and contains many treasurers. Following the Mosque we headed to the christian/islamic Haige Sophia. This christian church, dedicated to St Sophia, became a Islamic Mosque during the reign of the Ottoman Turks. The church has both Christian and Islamic motif abounding. The building is under renvovation so you can not really feel the granduer of the 4th largest unsupported dome in the world as the center point. Following our relegious experience we had lunch is a local restaurant. The local fare was excellent and quite filling. We ate in the open air since the temperature was a pleasant 76 F with a slight light sea brease. A beautiful day for touring. After lunch we hit the famous ancient Bazaar. This is the longest running bazaar in history stemming from the days of the origiional spice road. Here there are 6000 stalls passed down from father to son over hundreds of years. They sell everything from jewelry, to ceramics, spices and anything you can imagine. You are required to bargan for everything. I had some fun talking with the shop owners and making some good deals. It was a feast of sights, souds and smells. From here we went to the spice market. Here are all the spices from India, Iran and Turkey.The major spice here is Saffron and it is amazingly expensive. 100 grams sells for 100 Euro which is about 3 teaspoons full. It may only take a little to add flavor but this was way out of my price range. After the spice market we headed back to the port to reboard our ship for the overnight trip to Ephesus. Another amazing day on vacatin.

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