Woke up at 7, back up the steps to breakfast. Decided to make base camp on level 5 then carried on up to the top when rested.
Back down, then to the cafe for a latte. Weather sunny but still cold so jumper and jacket again.
On a side note, the pizza place we ate at yesterday is the 9th most popular restaurant on Tripadvisor – out of over 10000 in Istanbul.
Walked around to the Basilica Cistern, no queue to get in for a change. It was an underground reservoir fed from a forest 19 km from the city. It was abandoned for centuries then renovated in the 80s and opened as a tourist attraction. It is cool, dark and has around 200 columns, including a few with carvings and one with an upside down face of Medusa for some reason. Left that and walked to the Spice Bazaar we visited as part of the tour yesterday. On the way we witnessed the shoe shine scam. There are loads of blokes carrying shoe shine boxes offering to clean your shoes (obviously), but the scam is that as they walk past you they drop a brush. You stop to pick it up and he’s so grateful he offers to clean your shoes, making it seem as if it is free. Of course it isn’t. So one of these guys was coming towards us, and a brush hit the ground. Luckily I’d only read about it yesterday so we kept walking – funnily enough he realised he’d dropped it and picked it up himself.
At the Spice Bazaar, accosted by every vendor, but resisted and looked at lots of shops and bought some tea. The prices ranged from 250 Turkish Lira to 25 for a kilo of the same rosehip tea, so it’s best to shop around. Walked back to the hotel carrying our purchases (even more Turkish Delight. Song keeps telling me to stop eating it but then buys 4 kilos of the stuff).
Lunchtime. Walked back to the place near the Grand Bazaar where we are the other day – a kebab again, but these were good and cheap. Wandered around a bit more, stopping to stare at the Mosques again, then decided to head back to the hotel again. Walked 10.97 km today.
Were all set to go out again for dinner but neither of us were hungry so stayed in and watched downloads.
Tomorrow is Athens for half a day, then onto Santorini.
Last year I was able to show a map on the web page that showed my location in real time whenever I was connected to the internet. It used Google Locate but they’ve discontinued it so I can’t do it this year. Google have also changed the way I was able to link to gps tracks that I’m recording so they aren’t up, but I hope to have those available at some stage, I’m working on it.
