Nevsehir to Istanbul, Turkey

6 - 8 June 2008

A Turkish Delight

7 June. We visited the Aya Sofya church, 1500 years old but still splendid. It was a Christian church until the Moslem conquest in 1453. Then they added some minarets, covered up the Christian frescoes and turned it into a mosque.
We couldn’t visit Istanbul without visiting the famous Grand Bazaar but we didn’t shop for carpets this time. We went looking for a doll in Turkish traditional dress for Angela’s collection and found a beautiful one in papier maché of a woman spinning wool.
In the afternoon, we went to the Blue Mosque (so named for the tiled blue walls inside it) and the Turkish and Islamic Arts museum.
We got together with Heribert and Jacques, whom we’d met in Sanliurfa. After an aperitif at Heribert’s house in Beyoglu, they took us to his local haunt frequented by Turks rather than tourists. It was fun watching the locals getting excited over the Euro 2008 football match between Turkey and Portugal on the large TV screen but it made for a noisy experience and chatting with our friends became a different kind of challenge.

8 June. Together with thousands of other tourists, we visited the Topkapi Palace with all the splendours and treasures of the Ottoman Empire and its famous harem. The jewels in the treasury were so huge that we could hardly believe they were real.
It was rather cloudy for our afternoon cruise on the Bosphorus, but in spite of that the palaces and mosques along the way still looked splendid. This was followed by a trip up to Pierreloti Hill for a great view of Istanbul.