May 2, 2024 Thursday

Early morning rest

I woke up at about 7:30 in the morning and got dressed. When I put on the black turtle neck shirt, it smelled of the dinner that we’d had the night before at K’s house. Yum, lots of good spices. I made some coffee for John and some tea for me. I’d brought cut lemons back to the hotel from lunch. I stuck them in the ice bucket with a little ice to keep them cool. I do so love hot tea with lemon.

We settled in to wait for our sweet guide to come get us. John read his iPad on the little sofa in the room, and I wrote at the desk about what we’d done the day before.

Off on another adventure

S came to pick us up at 8:45, and we weren’t ready. We dashed about, grabbing coats, and went downstairs. She drove us to their apartment building, and this time, we didn’t go up to the apartment. Instead, we walked to the park across the street, where S’s husband E, their boys, and Becky and her boys were waiting for us.

At the park, we saw a structure that someone had built for the feral cats that lived there and nearby. During our walk through Istanbul, we observed a large number of feral cats. People feed them and even construct houses for them in public places. Below is a picture of one of the cat houses in this park.

While I appreciated the citizen’s love of the cats, my goodness, did that little house reek of cat urine. Whew.

Farmer’s market

Once we were all together, we walked to the subway through a neighborhood market. Lots of stuff for sale. Most of what I saw were vegetables and then later clothing. John’s belt had broken when he got dressed that morning. We kept an eye out for a new one but never saw a belt he liked. Most of what we saw for sale were women’s belts or dress belts.

The market smelled lovely with all the fresh veggies and looked gorgeous with the piles of fresh strawberries and cherries. Yes, yes, those are fruits, but you know it all goes under the category of veggies. E bought some cherries for the group though I never ate any. I really like to wash my things before I put them in my mouth. Call me conventional, if you will. It didn’t slow the others down.

Subway

We took an underground train. E used his subway passes again, which I really appreciated. S and E took us to the area where the Aya Sophia and the Blue Mosque were.

Wikipedia says:

“Hagia Sophia, officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque, is a mosque and former church serving as a major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey. The last of three church buildings to be successively erected on the site by the Eastern Roman Empire, it was completed in 537 CE.”

According to the Britannica online

“Hagia Sophia is not, in fact, the only name that the structure has gone by. Even now, it’s known by several different monikers: Ayasofya in Turkish, Sancta Sophia in Latin, and Holy Wisdom or Divine Wisdom in English (alternate English translations of the Greek words Hagia Sophia).”

Becky went into the Blue Mosque area, which didn’t have a line. Women are encouraged to wear head coverings in these buildings. I appreciated having found my black scarf and wore that. Becky had a lighter one she’d brought and wore.

Wikipedia says about the blue mosque:

“The Blue Mosque in Istanbul, also known by its official name, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, is an Ottoman-era historical imperial mosque located in Istanbul, Turkey. It was constructed between 1609 and 1617 during the rule of Ahmed I and remains a functioning mosque today.”

John and I stayed outside with S and her kids. I think the littlest had fallen asleep, and E walked around with him in the stroller.

Ice Cream Vendor

E suggested, and we all agreed that we come back in the afternoon when the lines to get into the Ayasophia would be shorter. We walked towards the Grand Bazaar. On the way there, we stopped at an ice cream vendor. So entertaining. He made quite a show of it. He’d put the ice cream in a cone and then put that in another cone. When he gave it to you, he’d take the cone with the ice cream out and leave you with an empty cone. There were always spectators watching, and they’d laugh. Or he’d give the cone to you, and he acted like he was dropping it, which would cause the person to grab for it. I fell for that one and got ice cream on my hand. We all laughed at all his antics. I appreciated E taking us to see him.

The boys get shoes

On the walk to the Grand Bazaar, we passed many outdoor stalls selling merchandise. The boys asked Becky about buying them some shoes, and she agreed. We stopped at a shoe sales stall, and Becky bought them both some Nikes. They were knockoffs, I’m sure, but the boys were quite happy with them. Sam’s were bright orange, and Micah’s were a more sedate black and white.

Micah said he wouldn’t wear them until he got home so they wouldn’t get dirty. I thought that was a very good plan. I’m sure they would have gotten dirty in Ethiopia. Of course, that was before we knew about the shoe washing on the sidewalks of Addis Ababa, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The boys were told they had to carry the bags with their shoes in them while we walked, and overall, they did a good job.

Grand Bazaar

The Grand Bazaar was quite a sight. Miles and miles of corridors filled with small shops selling just about anything you’d want to buy and people everywhere. To get from one place to another, you had to squeeze through the crowd. I spent a lot of time keeping an eye on our little group while I let S and E keep track of their children.

One area we passed specialized in jewelry. I noticed that the jewelry sparkled a lot. On the way out, I saw that the merchants had installed special lights above the jewelry that I suspected enhanced the sparkle. It was clever and slightly deceptive.

Another area had a corridor filled with rug dealers. Some of the rugs I liked, but I honestly have no place in my house to put another rug nor would I know a good deal if I saw it. I told John it would be just like life for me to buy a rug in Turkey and find out later it was made in China. E said more likely it would have been made in Iran. Exactly.

I almost succumbed to buying a spoon rest, but wasn’t crazy enough about any of the designs to actually buy one. We, rather E, managed to find our way out of the labyrinth and go out the same gate we came in. We really covered only two corridors in there.

Lunch Outside the Grand Bazaar

I found the restroom down a steep, spiral-tiled stairwell that would never have passed code in the U.S. Luckily, at one curve, they installed a handrail I could use going back up. On the way down, I leaned against the wall to avoid falling. Becky and John came behind me.

I found the restroom down a steep, spiral-tiled stairwell that would never have passed code in the U.S. Luckily, at one curve, they’d installed a handrail I could use going back up. On the way down, I leaned against the wall to keep from falling. Becky and John came behind me.

We ate outside on the sidewalk which was just as well as the kids seemed less disruptive out there. They could be as loud as they wanted, and I didn’t think they were disturbing anyone. They were at one end of the table closest to the restaurant wall, and the adults were at the other end near the pedestrians.

No one except me noticed they’d opened multiple packages of toothpicks and were playing with them. At one point, a waiter plucked the toothpick dispenser off the table. Good for him.

We ordered chicken shish kabobs off the skewers, served with rice and one pepper. I didn’t eat the pepper.

Becky had lentil soup and hummus. The lentil soup at this restaurant wasn’t as yellow as the one we’d visited the day before. I would have eaten this one, but the soup from the day before didn’t look like something I’d want to eat. I bought lunch for everyone again. Luckily, we were able to use the credit card.

Aya Sophia

Then we went back to the Aya Sophia because Becky wanted to see it. E was right, the line was less long than in the morning. John and the rest of us got in line while Becky and E went to buy tickets for us. I think Becky paid for our tickets. E and S and her family didn’t go in. They wandered around the grounds while we toured.

We eventually got in. You can see the line in the photo above. Honestly, it was just like the old churches in Italy. Yes, it was old and cool, but I didn’t get a thrill from it. John took this really nice picture of the interior. The only people allowed to go downstairs were Muslims.

We discussed how when the building belonged to the Christian Church, mosaics of saints were installed. When the Muslims took the building back, they scrapped off the Christian parts, but not completely. At least, that was my understanding of what the mural below represented.

We took the above-ground train to take a boat tour of the Bosporus River. E paid for our boarding the train with his transit card, which I really appreciated. We got off the train at the docks.

Bosphorus River tour

After the tour of the Aya Sophia, we rode the above-ground train to the docks, where we took a boat tour of the Bosporus River.

The tour boat looked like a ferry boat, with places to sit outside to watch and an inside place with benches to watch out windows. I’ve done river tours before, and I just didn’t get much out of them. Still, I appreciated E and S taking us.

Boarding the boat was a chaotic mess. A man at the top of the gangplank was collecting cash as we boarded. We had ten people. S and E were out of cash. S told me the boat people would take American money. When I asked how much, she said it was $33. I knew I had a twenty and a ten I’d not used for the car from the airport. If I handed him two twenties in that crush of people, I’d never see any change. I added two ones and gave them the twenty, the ten, and two ones, and we were pushed on board by the crowd. I figured that was close enough. It was so chaotic that I wasn’t sure about anything. John hoped that E hadn’t already paid them. I was pretty sure he had not.

Sleeping during the boat tour

So, we sailed up and down the river for an hour and a half. In some places, the boat wallowed. I worried about John’s motion sickness, but he said he was okay. The inside of the boat had benches with a table in between. There were no open benches, but there were some that had only one couple on one bench. We sort of took over one of the tables with one couple. They ended up leaving the table. I felt bad about maybe running them off, but that’s the chance you take on these kinds of enterprises.

Micah and Sam were exhausted from all the walking we’d done and fell asleep. Sam sat on one bench with his head against the table. I swear he had a crease across his eyebrow when he woke up. Micah put his head on his arms on the table and went to sleep.

E bought me a water bottle on the boat. Bless him. I was so thirsty.

I couldn’t tell that the boat had turned around, but Becky told me it had, and we had just 20 minutes left. Oh, joy. Becky played I Spy with the middle one and Thumb Wars with the older one, Moses. She’s so good with kids.

Somewhere towards the end of the boat trip, I heard S tell Jonah that we were going to get dinner and then go home. I suggested to her that we’d rather go to the hotel and not worry about dinner. Sam said he wanted to eat his leftovers from the day before. That worked for everyone.

Hotel bound

Once we got off the boat, E and S found a cab for us that would take a credit card. We thanked them profusely for being our tour guides for the day. The cab driver took us back to the hotel. Yes, that was perfect. We ran into a lot of traffic, but we got back here in about thirty minutes. The credit card worked just fine. Thanks, Visa.

As we were talking about getting a cab, Becky said to me, “You did good today, Mom.” I put my arm around her and said, “Thanks, Becky. That means a lot to me.” Later, Becky told me they also found cabs to return to S’s apartment.

Bargaining for return transport to the airport

When we entered the hotel, I asked the desk clerk about some ice for my knees. They were really aching from all the walking we’d done. The Apple Watch said we’d walked 14,000 steps that day. He gave me the ice and asked us about transportation to the airport for the next day. We bargained back and forth. I didn’t have the cash to pay him the same as I did when we arrived.

We wanted to put it on the credit card. The clerk said there would be a premium for using a credit card. John said just pay the premium. Then the clerk said, “Never mind.” I said okay. He also gave us an extended stay in the room, which was really nice since we weren’t leaving for the airport until 1:45 the next afternoon.

John told me later that an Uber would have been cheaper, but the extended stay in the room convinced him to take it. I’m not sure we can eat our snacks for both breakfast and lunch, but we can get some lunch at the airport. It will cost more, but I can put it on the card. And we have time to kill at the airport, assuming it doesn’t take three hours to get there.

Relaxing

We got back up to the room and ate snacks for dinner. Thank goodness for S and her gift of snacks. I actually ate too much because I wanted to finish the crackers I’d opened. Silly me. I read a bit while I iced both knees for 15 minutes each, then I turned out the light and listened to an Innkeeper book to fall asleep.

This was our final day in Istanbul, and I think Becky got everything she wanted out of it. She’d visited with her friends and gotten to see some old buildings. I was content. I’d toured a city I’d never really thought I wanted to see and enjoyed the places we’d seen.