Interesting breakfast at the hotel - various breads, bad scrambled eggs, hard boiled eggs, some sort of cooked hot dogs, french fries, a type of fried bread, sautéed peppers, an assortment of cold cuts, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, raw peppers, an assortment of cheeses (most very salty), an assortment of olives, jams, honey, hot soup, yogurt and several types of what looked like cookies but where not really sweet. It was more like a salad bar than a breakfast bar.
We were picked up at our hotel and then transported to a central distribution point for all the tours. We were going to sail on the Bosporous today along with visiting the spice bazaar, the Chora church, the newer side of Istanbul across the Golden Horn (a protected harbor), lunch and a drive to the Asia side of Istanbul. The hotel recommended this,tour and we weren't quite sure what all was included, we just knew it would be all day. What a fun day! We had a rather mixed group of about 20 people on our tour. As we drove to our meeting spot, we passed by the ruins of the walls of Constantinople.
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| This woman and her husband and son were on the tour. They were from somewhere I. Africa and spoke French creole.. I can only imagine how hot she was! |
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| The electric works looked a bit antiquated. |
After the spice bazaar, we transferred to the boat and saw several palaces and fortresses along the Bosporous.
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| This is the African couple again. |
This is their little boy and he was so cute. He obviously hadn't been walking for very long and trying to walk while the boat was rocking was proving to be problematic for him.
Just one of the many "small" yachts in the area.
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| This little I do Elian girl was having a good time with Ernie on the bus |
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| Another really cute little one. |
This was the traffic around the spice bazaar.
Here's a photo of what the guide called the Orient Express train station. As he explained, depending on your direction, you are either leaving Europe or entering Europe.
More traffic!
This young lady really irritated me. At lunch, they were seated with the Indonesian lady and her little girl and then proceeded to ask for a different table. They stayed to themselves to the point of not entering several of the places we visited. They would go in, decide if they wanted to continue and usually went outside to sit and wait for the group, all the while she was on her smart phone texting. On the cruise, she spent the time texting. What really irked me was when we were in the Chora Church and she spent the entire time texting. I'm sorry but that was disrespectful. I'm sure if we were in their mosque and acted that way, they would be certain to let us know how ruse that would be. OK, so much for my rant about her.
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| The Blue Mosque as seen from the Asia side of Istanbul. |
We were headed back to our hotel and it was about 5:30 and the traffic was crazy. Our bus was trying to get through with a truc, on his left and a car on the right. Needless to say, we had to wait for the truck to drive up on the curb.
This is how a lot of goods are delivered to the stores for restocking. We actually were going to the metro stop on day and a guy was coming down the hill to the street pulling one of these but loaded even more. He obviously had really worn our shoes on because he couldn't stop - the weight of the dolly was pushing him down the hill and he was heading for the street crossing. I was facing him and the look on his face was one of sheer panic. Thankfully he was able to stop just before he went off the curb and into traffic.
I found this interesting. This,woman is on her way home from work, fully covered in the old way and carrying her laptop and briefcase.
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