Istanbul - Day Two.

I sleep in. For ages. Willy manages a shower, gets into bed with me, gets bored so finishes getting ready, all before I wake up. It's not a good survival technique. Even the call to prayer doesn't wake me and we are surrounded by so many mosques, I forget how many but it's a lot - think Venice with churches, Istanbul with mosques kind of saturation. I drag myself through the morning routine while Willy sorts out flights, accomodation, etc for our next stop - rock on Cappadocia, we'll be seeing you Friday. We head upstairs for breakfast.

I don't do breakfast. Ask my Mother. In Turkey I do breakfast. Big time. I have olives, sliced meats, cheeses, cucumber, tomato, eggs, plain yogurt, and a pastry thing with cream cheese. It's glorious. That's my kind of breakfast. After breakfast we get taken on a walkabout with a young guy from the hotel and a couple of Serb's. He takes us up to Suleymaniye which is apparently the largest mosque in Turkey and the European Continent. I find it fascinating, it's the first mosque I have ever been to. I can't get over how pretty the lights are and my headscarf gets in the way when I try to take photographs - I don't have an elegant or sophisticated bone in my body. We get given a bunch of pamphlets on Islam before we leave. Our walking tour concludes at an out of the way open air restaurant than looks out over Istanbul - I take photo's of a young woman being attached by birds as she eats her lunch.

We return to the hotel, pick up our washing and go the the laundromat, before wandering down to Galata Bridge. On the way I get ripped off buying a shirt but I don't care, we pass New Mosque, and almost get ripped off again by a guy trying to sell a boat tour that didn't belong to him. We watch the fishermen as we cross the bridge and buy water off a kid - I have never drunk this much water before in my life. We spend a few hours traipsing around New Town, I don't like it that much as you could be anywhere in the world, I much prefer Old Town where you know without a doubt that you are in Turkey.

It takes us a few minutes but we figure out the Metro and then the Tram which takes us all of the way back to the Gulhane stop outside Gulhane Park. We do a loop and spy the Gothic Monument which is supposedly the best preserved monument in Turkey from the Roman Empire. The park is lovely and cool, there are a dozen couples of all ages making out in the nooks by the palace walls, and for a while we get some reprieve from the traffic and selfie stick hawkers. All good things must come to an end, so we make our way to Aya Sofya.

Aya Sofya is interesting because it's a church that's well over a thousand years old, which was turned into a mosque and is now a museum. It's an impressive structure and the Christian mosaics dotted throughout the place make me smile - it's such a clash against the Muslim designs. We try to see the Blue Mosque but unfortunately it is closed for the evening, we end up accidentally picking up a young man who shows us around for a few minutes before dropping us at his "uncle's" shop - typical. Despite telling them that we weren't buying rugs, they feed us sweet apple tea and show them to us anyway. Turkish rugs are double knotted, Persians only single knot theirs, Turkish rugs use vegetable dyes, not harsh chemicals, and survive well for decades. He is also (so he says) good friends with Daniel Craig, decorated some other celebrities house and has family in New Zealand. The more you know. Despite his best efforts, we leave without a rug and make our way back to the laundromat (who hadn't done a disapeering act on our clothes), then back to the hotel once again.

For dinner we try the restaurant looking over Istanbul, there's even fireworks! It's a wonderful end to a wonderful day.