Turkey: Day 2

Day two in Turkey was a full day of exploring Istanbul, which let me tell you was a real treat. I had no idea it was so beautiful there. My first and favorite view was of the Mosques from the Galata bridge. It was so beautiful to see all the domes and minarets.

We started the day out at the Topkapi Palace, it's a former home to the Sultan's that has been converted into a museum and cafes. It is home to the 4th largest diamond in the world. The security there is nuts, no insurance agency will even insure them because of all the priceless jewels there. The grounds are beautiful to walk around and see all the different artifacts. One thing I really liked was that they had a man there reading the Koran.

This is the diamond. I had to get the picture off the internet because they don't allow you to take photos.  It's 84 carats and absolutely huge!

So I left my memory card on the bus so no pictures of The Blue Mosque or Hippodrome square but they were really pretty. We didn't get to spend a lot of time in the blue mosque but the tiles were the prettiest shades of blue and the carpets in all the Mosques were really interesting. The Turkish designs are specific to regions and groups of people.

After visiting the Old City area we headed down to the grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar is the largest and oldest covered market in the world. It was built in 1461 and consists of over 58 streets. We only had an hour but that was enough time to figure out what was there. It had a lot of shops but they seemed to sell a lot of the same things as all the other shops. Some of the highlights included Turkish pottery on bright blues and greens and reds; they had these great turkish lanterns and lots of jewelry and knock-off bags.

A street and some of the locals in the market.

Glass Lanterns of all different colors.

A pottery shop.

All the lanterns lit up.

After a long day of walking around we were definitely ready for some relaxing and what better way to do it than a beautiful boat ride through the Bosporus.

We made it about 2 minutes in before someone started singing about their flippy floppies.

This is either the Hagia Sophia or the Blue Mosque I am leaning towards the Blue Mosque. 

A little Titanic action... absolutely necessary.

Roommate picture!!!

We ended the day with, of course, some sea food. Catch of the day and it sure was delicious!