Exploring Istanbul!

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We were up at 8am this morning to have breakie with everyone at the hotel and then start exploring. So, out the door at 9am into the already scorching heat. Meant to be 35deg and 94% humidity or something today! We wandered up to the Hippodrome initially. This is where events used to take place in Istanbul and is used now I think for prayer and gatherings. Its been preserved pretty well but wasn’t hugely exciting to see. They had a “pencil” slash needle which was given to the turks from Egypt which was in amazing condition after a couple of thousand years! So we took a few snaps and then moved on to the blue mosque. This to my disappointment is not blue! Kind of blue on the inside but not really! It was pretty impressive on the inside and outside and is still very much used today. We had to cover our legs and shoulders but thankfully they gave us things to use otherwise we would have been scorching for the whole day! Cos its Ramadan they have prayers that get boomed literally from the towers at the mosque 4 or 5x a day at the mo. The first is at 4am or something! A few people on our tour got woken with it but we didn’t thankfully! We then moved on to Hagia Sofia, which is a world famous museum now. It used to be a church then a mosque and now just a museum but apparently was almost one of the 7 wonders of the world. It was pretty big but not as stunning or beautiful as i expected on the inside or out really. There was a hold in the wall where gabrielle apparently turned his thumb in 360deg and rotated the whole building around so it was facing a diff way?! That’s the story anyway!

After Hagia Sofia we all went to lunch together at the Pudding Shop. Apparently Bill Clinton used to visit alot and it was a place where hippies gathered back in the day. Food was good! More meat! After lunch we had one more stop all together – Topkapi Palace. It was huge and spread over a lot of land. We were getting a good explanation about it till a band started playing to celebrate something and our guide lept talking but only caught a few words here ad there so really didn’t get the story. It was apparently where Sultan (the king) lived and kept his harim (ladies). It had a room with his clothing and royal jewellery. The best part prob was the view out of the asian part of Istanbul and the water so we took our first group shot and other pics then said bye to everyone cos we had free time from 3pm till tomorrow morning. It had been a good day but pretty full on so we were looking forward to some time to ourselves. We decided to try and get down to the water to do a river cruise. It took us a while to fin the place but we did stumble across the restaurant we had decided on for dinner which was good to see there that was! After asking for directions we finally found it and umped on a boat thinking it was about to go but unfortunately for everyone in turkey the guy down at the bottom of the boat was a bit loudspeaker happy and kept yelling the same thing in Turkish over and over again for like 25mins before we left! We were about to throw him overboard. The cruise was an hour and a half and was nice. After the cruise I was a bit gutted cos had missed the womens vault final but had been watching the results live on bens phone. We wandered up the street and as if one cue as i was talking about it wahhooo there was the gym being replayed in a bar! So we went in and bought a drink to watch the final!

We were meeting jess, elias and andrew for dinner, who wanted to do the tour with us but were arriving only tonight so couldn’t unfortunately but we hadn’t heard from them so we went to Metropolis for dinner and met them afterwards. Dinner was amazing!!! We had a testi – cappadocian dish very famous in turkey! Its in a clay pot with lamb, veges and sauce cooked o a flame and they do this whole flame show thing for us and then slice the clay top off and pour it on our plates! It was super impressive and so yummy! The wait staff were amazing also! Highly recommend it! J We then caught up with the others for a drink and Olympic watching across the road which was awesome to see them! They are going to try and do our tour in reverse so we meet in the middle and stay at the same places etc which will be good! After watching the 100m finals we were in bed cos have to be up at 6am tomo for our long bus ride to Gallipoli!!

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