Istanbul

Inside Topkapi Palace

Inside Topkapi Palace

Cruising into Istanbul was quite eye opening. A city built spanning two continents,  it relies on ferries a lot for transport and hundreds of them criss cross the harbour and the Bosphorus, seemingly with no regard for each other!
We took a private tour here abd were met at the port by our guide,and we first drove to the Topkapi Palace. This huge building was most interesting to see and was built over many centuries for various sultans.
The jewels held in the treasury were astounding, including an 83 carat diamond

Next we walked to the Blue Mosque. This is an active mosque so women needed to cover our heads and we all had to remove our shoes to enter (along with thousands of others.. everywhere has been so crowded)
The blue mosque is huge!! There is no way to adequately portray it in photos.  it's not as blue inside as I thought it would be either.  The tile work is stunning.

The blue mosque was huge but the Hagia Sophia dwarfed it!. First built as a church by Roman emperor Justinian and using pillars taken from the Temple of Artemis.This building is immense. It later became a mosque and most of the Christian art was covered up and painted over.  In the 1920s it became a museum and gradually restoration work has uncovered many beautiful mosaics in gold which are on view

Underwater cisterns

Our next stop was the underwater cisterns. this was the Roman water supply.  These days it has only a foot or so of water but in Roman times it contained a lot more as evidenced by the tide mark on the columns. Many of the columns inside were also recycled from other buildings.  The Romans really were extremely advanced.This visit was a highlight of the day and somewhere I'd wanted to visit so another bucket list item checked off!

Last stop of the day was the Grand Bazaar.  This was much anticipated but didn't quite live up to my expectations.  Thousands of stalls, but many just duplicates of each other.  It seemed that the vendors weren't particularly enthusiastic to sell either and prices were much higher here than they were in kusadasi which we were to visit the next day.  There were lots of leather jacket shops and lots of Turkish delight shops (so much better than what we can get in NZ) and ceramic shops. Also fake brand t shirts handbags and watches.
A long day but one of the best!!