Day 10 - Good morning Istanbul

Today is the start of our first day in Istanbul. With all the early wake up calls in Egypt and all the running around we had to do, it was nice to wake up lazy and spend the whole day being lazy. First we started with a breakfast on the rooftop of our hotel, overlooking the Sea of Marmara and the Blue Mosque. What an amazing view. Honestly, if the rest of the trip was going to be anything like it had started today, we were in for some great times and lots of great food. Breakfast took forever because I couldn't stop eating. I was amazed by the freshness of all the fruits and vegetables and ate almost the whole plate of melons myself. I also tried to resist the halwa as long as I could, but finally had to give in. Finally my DH dragged me away from the food so we can start exploring Istanbul.

Our first stop was up the street at the Hippodrome of Constantinople since we wanted to explore our own 'hood before we wandered off too far. I have to point out here at the beauty of the Blue Mosque but we decided to wait to visit it. It looked like it would be a perfect end to our trip to Istanbul and we felt we wanted to save it at the end. Almost like a dessert. But we loved walking by it every morning and enjoying the quietness of the benches that faced it. By the time we got home in the evening, they were packed with tourists, but in the morning, you could actually hear the birds chirping in the surrounding gardens.


It was fitting that we'd take a moment to reflect at the Milion, which was used as a starting-place for measurement of distances. From the Milion, we wandered up the paved, carless road to try to find a location to buy our Akbil. According to our hotel manager, this Akbil is the only way to go in Istanbul. The Akbil is a small stainless steel "button" on a plastic holder. Inside is a computer chip. You basically put down a deposit for this little thing, put cash into the account and then are able to use it on trams, trains, busses and ferries. We knew we had to get one. Not only does this save us from having to figure out the change for each trip, it allowed the both of us to use it together. Of course finding where these little bits of heaven were sold was a challenge, since neither one of us knew how to read Turkish, so most of the morning was wasted walking around with only this purpose.

We finally got an Akbil, placed some cash on it, and found ourselves next to the Grand Bazaar, the oldest and largest mall in the world. Of course we got totally lost walking aimlessly through it's 50+ streets. Since we knew we didn't want to buy anything on our first day, it was interesting to just walk around and check out the various prices from the different shops. The main central area was much higher priced for the same items you find on the less walked streets. We saw a lot of Nazar sellers that were dirt cheap as compared to the ones that had rows and rows of much more expensive protections in the central area. the outside area of the Bazaar also housed much more of the utilitarian shops that the locals would have been buying from, including appliances, jeans, tennis shoes and guns. Yup, we walked right by a gun shop with a full display of every kind of gun imaginable in it's window. Very interesting indeed. Personally, I loved all the bright colors of the tourist dresses, headscarves, toys and shoes.

We also walked by lots of little local mosques and marveled at the details of everything. It was interesting to see the tombstones in the tiny little graveyards in front of these mosques. We keep meandering around the Bazaar and all it's local neighborhoods the rest of the day and ate at a local tourist place. On our way home, we also walked by the Basilica Cistern, but had been warned there really wasn't much to see in it, so we didn't go in. So we just keep moving along to finish up our perfect lazy day.