Istanbul
We got up early and went to the restaurant for breakfast. A beautiful buffet with hard boiled eggs, fruits ( fresh apricots yum) vegetables, every thing you can think of to drink, bread, honey still in the comb. We sat on a deck looking over the city and harbor, sea gulls calling. The Blue Mosque was on one side and the Hagia Sophia on the other. I went Turkish and wore a shawar kameze (sp?) It is all cotton, long sleeves long pants and a scarf to wear around your neck or head. I actually did you it as a head scarf a lot. It kept the sun off my head. The Mosque was very pretty and old.
Digression: Old has an entirely different meaning here. There is Texas old ( 150- 200 years) East Coast old ( 1700 A.D. ) Turkish old, that you are walking around in is like 500 AD. The streets are old the walls are old. Not everywhere. There are a lot of new buildings and industry. But the old stuff is really old.
The Mosque is still in use. There is a tourist side you can go in. The tiles and mosaics are fabulous. Imagine a dome that climbs in to the sky with windows with stained glass all over it. Very cool.
We went over to the Sophia. Sort of a line to get in but it wasn’t that bad. Now you have to understand that everyone here is working all the time doing something to separate you from your money. So we had a boatload of guides ask us if we wanted them to show us through the museum. We said no to everyone, but the thing is there is almost nothing to tell you what is what in the museum. It would have really helped to have someone tell us about the place. But it had been a work in progress. It was built by Justinian. It was a beautiful cathedral. There are all sorts of mosaics that are gorgeous. Later Muslims took it over but contrary to usual practice, instead of destroying the murals, they plastered over them. Now work is going on to uncover the mosaics. All sorts of young women in head scarves climb up on scaffolding and carefully remove tiny bits of plaster and in no air conditioning. I was so tired I fell asleep sitting up in a chair in an outside snack area.
Then we went to the ship, checked in and had our welcome lunch. We went back into to town for Jeannie’s birthday dinner at Hamdi Restaurant. The service is always so good and we had fantastic food. Dessert was great: baklava and this stuff that took 20 min. to make. We took pictures and Mr. Hamdi himself took a picture with Jeannie and then took a picture of the three of us. It took awhile to get home because we didn’t have the address of the ship. The staff of the restaurant worked very hard to figure it out and finally we got back. One more little drama went one of us lost out key card for the boat and we had to go back to the Hamdi to see if it was there. We finally made it back to the ship and to bed.

