We arrived in Istanbul on Thursday and settled into our hotel in the Sultanahmet area in the old city. This is the area that was once Constantinople. We are in walking distance of many of the attractions of the city and there seem to be more tourists than Turks on the streets.
On Friday we were awed by the Sultanahmet Mosque better known as the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia (once the largest church in Christendom, later a mosque and now a museum) and the Topkapi Palace. At the palace we saw some of the treasures of the Ottoman Empire including jewellery, furniture and clothing studded with emeralds, rubies and diamonds some as big as golf balls; holy relics: the staff of Moses, the head and arm bone of John the Baptist, and the footprint, whiskers and other items of the prophet Mohamed. We even toured the Harem; Adrian was quite disappointed that there were no scantily clad girls in Jeanie pants, not even a eunuch
Saturday it was the Basilica Cistern, an underground water storage built by the Romans, followed by the Grand Bazaar (the first undercover shopping mall) and then a couple more mosques. In the evening it was off to see the Whirling Dervishes.
Today (Sunday) we have flown to the Capadoccia region to commence a tour of Turkey.
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