Istanbul Day Three

Our final day in Istanbul and our final day of our vacation. We have had such a great time--we're really not ready for it to end. It rained very briefly early this morning and now we have another beautiful day.

We had breakfast again on the terrace, then headed out on a short walk to the Blue Mosque. This is an incredibly beautiful building. We removed our shoes before entering and put them into the plastic bag provided. We thought Brie and Kim would need to wear head scarves, but they just waved us in. The high domes are tiled in a variety of beautiful old tiles. The architecture is amazing and the floors were covered in a variety of beautiful carpets. The large floor area had no chairs, the men pray on the floors and there was a small area off to the side for women.

We then walked to the banks of the Bosphorus and wound our way around to the Spice Bazaar. Like the Grand Bazaar, this is a large covered market with lots of stands, most of them selling bulk spices, teas, nuts, candy, etc. In the streets just outside the Spice Bazaar are lots of stands with household products, party and wrapping supplies, kitchen supplies, green markets and even large plastic jugs containing live leeches and other (?!) medicinal products. We wandered around the streets looking in shops and observing people. Outside the Spice Bazaar, the people were more locals versus tourists.

We had a quick lunch at an outside cafe then went back to the area near the Bosphorus and bought tickets for the scenic ferry tour of the Bosphorus from the end of this river where it empties into the Adriatic Sea to the beginning at the mouth of the Black Sea (about 7 miles). From the ferry you could see the city, mosques, old castles, forts and palaces built on the banks of the river. There were also lots of "yalis", old wooden houses, some very ornate, built right at the edge of the water.

The ferry stopped in Anadolu Kavagi near the mouth of the Black Sea for about 2 hours. Up until now, we had stayed entirely in the European side of Istanbul -- this stop put us on the Asian side. We decided to walk up the hill to an old fortress. As we walked up the streets toward the fortress, there were signs saying keep out and forbidden zone and warning that taking photos was forbidden. The signs were posted on chain link fences with barbed wire at the top. There weren't any other people walking up at that point. We were trying to figure out what the deal was and whether we should keep walking up to the fort when we heard a voice over a loud speaker (in Turkish of course). We weren't sure if we were being warned to stop or what was going on then a truck came into view with the loudspeaker--it was a couple of guys selling potatoes and onions from their truck :).

We kept walking up to the fort, past all these fenced areas then came to a sign saying entrance to the fort (in English) . We walked up that path/stairs, and came across a bunch of cafes and shops obviously set up for tourists. The stairs kept climbing up, through the cafes, until finally we got to the top and the ruins of the old fort. There were amazing views of the Bosphorus, the Black sea and the little villages along the river.

When we got back to the hotel, Brie and Kim decided to go to a Turkish Bath while Joe carefully packed up the bottles of wine, olive oil and other breakables that we bought during our trip. The baths were a couple of blocks from our hotel and were originally built in 1584. There are separate areas for men and women. You go in and they give you a towel to wrap up in, then you go into a large room with a big marble circle. You lay on this heated marble and "relax". It is really hot in there. There were about 10-12 women in there of all ages and nationalities and no one seemed to have any idea what to do or what to expect and the women who worked in there spoke only Turkish and impatiently talked to you and gestured to get you to move around and do the bath. Everyone else had a good sense of humor and it was an interesting experience--When in Turkey...

We had a nice final dinner together in a restaurant down the block from our hotel then bought some baklava and other sweets to eat in our room as we took on the challenging task of packing up our treasures for the trip home. Wish we had more time to explore this city, there is so much to see.