Well what a first couple of days!! Landed in Istanbul around 7.30 am Sunday morning which with a +7 is 14:30 EST. Not too bad I guess, works out to be 22 hours in the air. Getting out of customs was a crack, they didn’t even check our bags, nothing. Very funny.
Once arriving Leigh and I walked around the Sultanamet which is a mecca for touters and scam artists. Because it is such a tourist orrientated place they are everywhere vying for your attention and your Turkish New Lira.
For all you cat lovers out there, Turkey is a place to be. It seems in Islam cats are not nessacarily revered but respected and they are all over the city. Turkish people feed them and take care of them…very tame and don’t seem that malnourished.
After catching up with the tour group our guide walked us through the city showing us not the main attractions but the free ones where you don’t see the large tour groups trekking through. The group who I am with is quiet varied in age ranging from 22 up to 60+?? Not to sure on one bloke but I think he is approaching 70. I am not mentioning this because I think it is a bad thing, actually quiet the opposite. One couple since retiring have travelled constantly so the wealth of experience is great.
Sunday (today) has been brilliant. After breakfast four of us travelled to Topkapi Palace and we walked through that at a relaxed pace. This palace is where the Sultans of the Ottaman empire up until the early 20th century rulled Turkey. There is that much history in this place, just to name a few relics located in “The Treasury” that you may have heard of…. John the Baptists arm (covered in gold and jewels) and head are in one display cabinet. Directly opposite that is the Topkapi dagger which supposedly is very famous (Lonely planet says so) although I have never heard of it. Really the amount of jewels and history in this one room is crazy. I was a bit bemused at the start as each display case is rather simple. If both of these artifacts were in Australia for example I could just imagine each being in its own room surrounded by a glass case. Checked out the haram, which was impressive but not as impressive as The Treasury. One Sultan, Murat III, once had 200 concubines, ended up with 100+ kids 🙂
Grabbed some lunch and checked out the Cistern, took some great pics of that however I forgot to bring my camera cable to the Internet cafe so you are going to have to wait for photos. This is where Constantinople, as it was called at the time, housed its water. I have been told that the water was shipped via aquaducs from 19ks away. This place is huge, I couldn’t believe that we were underground in the heart of the Sultanamet with Trucks and buildings over our heads!
If you haven’t realised by now I am loving the trip so far.