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Published: June 12th 2017
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Geo: 41.0245, 28.9881
This entire overnight layover in Istanbul was a personal choice by us. When purchasing the tickets, our original option was to take an early flight on Easter morning from Tel Aviv to Istanbul, and then connect to our early-afternoon flight to Dulles. When I noted that Turkish Airlines would allow us to break up the trip, we talked about going to Istanbul the night before and spending at least the morning to let Anna see a small part of the city. K and I have both been to Turkey before -- albeit not together -- and really love it. We wanted Anna to get at least a taste of the city and wonderfully friendly people. Still, we weren't planning on it being quite such a short time, and the unexpected delays of the night before had put a little damper on things.
It was surprisingly not too difficult to get up on Sunday morning, and it helped that breakfast didn't begin until 08:00 am. We made it downstairs just as they were setting up, and following our last hummus-based breakfast we made the short two-block walk up to the Blue Mosque. Our hotel was superbly located at the base of
the major sights, which allowed us to maximize our time. We arrived at the Blue Mosque at exactly 08:30, which coincidentally was the exact time they began to admit visitors. This was Anna's first visit to mosque, and we chose a good one. K had packed veils for them both. As we entered the ante-chamber to remove our shoes, we were surprised, however, that a man came up to Anna, handed her a scarf, and told her to cover her legs. Aside from the Dead Sea hotel, Anna had not worn shorts -- despite her desire to do so -- for the entire trip, and on this morning she was wearing jeggings. I guess the man thought they were somehow revealing. Anna wrapped the scarf around her waist and wore it while we toured the mosque, but she was hot over the incident. She thought it was unfair and she felt singled out by the guy. Her genes were coming out, but we moved on.
Next up was Aya Sofia, which is located right next door. It is no longer a mosque or church, so need to scarfs. It opened at 09:00am, and we were in line for tickets when the
doors opened. Timing was working out for everything, though the lines were forming very early. TripAdvisor had just named Istanbul as its number tourist destination in the world, and that seems to have been borne out based on the airport arrivals line from the night before and the tourist lines this morning.
From Aya Sofia we walked -- also next door -- to Topkapki Palace, where we had hoped to see the harem and sultan's chamber. The line for tickets, however, was prohibitively long considering that our taxi was picking us up at 10:45 am. We toured the gardens instead and had a fun family picture taken, with me dressed up as the Sultan and K and Anna as members of the harem.
After some souvenir browsing, we got back to our hotel. No sooner had we closed the door to the room when the front desk called to let us know the taxi had arrived. We closed up our one bag, loaded into the taxi, and were quickly on our way, reaching the airport in less time than the night before.
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