Weather: fine and sunny 30deg
This is such a huge, interesting city it's hard to know where to
begin. As we are staying in the Old City that is where we've concentrated our efforts. It's so big that there were riots (about the arrest of football managers
etc over corruption) and we didn't hear or see a thing. There's also a whole stack of world foreign
ministers and secretaries of state here currently, however no sign that
anything is going on.
We took a walk through the Blue Mosque first up. Apart from the huge crowd there were numerous
tour guides, all talking loudly, taking groups through. I felt it cheapened the whole experience and
was disrespectful to their faith. I would have rather have seen it done in
dignified silence. Inside the Mosque was
nice but not particularly special from other big mosques and it wasn't all that
blue. I was expecting something bluer
if photos I've seen were indicative.
Took another look at the Grand Bazaar and this time it wasn't as busy. In
the afternoon I caught a tram over the bridge to Taksim, a huge shopping area
in the newer side of Istanbul. Just more shops and more stuff. Tomorrow I want to veg out and just take it
easy in preparation for my flight home on Monday.
This will be my last set of notes this trip. I've enjoyed doing them and I hope I haven't
bored you too much. I assumed that if
you didn't want to receive them anymore you would have asked me to stop sending
them. They are more of a journal for me
than anything else. I do them daily on
my Notes of the iPhone then I email them directly from there. This is my first tour with an iPhone and I
must say it has been invaluable. I use
it for the following: email, diary, notebook, foreign exchange calculator,
normal calculator, compass, computer, news source, iPod, books (reading Pillars
of the Earth currently), camera, video camera, maps and oh, I can also make and
receive phone calls.
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