although the fact it was built from marble stolen from the roman hippodrome next door, which is now no more may account for the speed of building. It was pretty, but I think I'm just about church/temple/mosqued out.
The guide also pointed out the sultans palace, and a church, turned mosque, once the 4th biggest church in the world, and the biggest underground cistern in the world as being worth visiting, but I think while I'm here i'm going to relax, and go shopping, rather than be cultural here.
Next door was the site of said hippodrome, alas now gone, but for the obelisk stolen from an Egyptian temple,
one that we'd been to a few days before was still there, it's a bit strange now to see these obelisks all over Europe, after having seen them in their rightful place.
After the blue mosque we headed to the traditional roman baths, a building to be appreciated in it's own right, being built by the Turkish equivalent to Michelangelo, which I will be going back to tomorrow to see more of it and to be pampered. Before heading to a rug shop for a sales ad, beautiful rugs, but a lot out of my budget.
Then it was lunch time. We went to a place recommended by the guide and had donna kebabs,
nice, and Turkish pizza with ground meat with and without the cheese - these were the highlight of the main meal for me.
Dessert was turkish coffee, very strong, but good and a pistachio baklava like sweets, they were really good, and not overwhelmingly sweet, a nice lunch all-round.
After the good Turkish food, it was of course time to hit the grand bazar and go shopping. My goal for today was to go window shopping and do the main shopping tomorrow. In this I succeeded, i saw some beautiful soft scarves, and a pretty spice grinder, which I hope will turn out to be functional, and sat down to a cup of apple tea, very tasty.
I still haven't decided if I want to buy some dried apple to to drink while I'm in Europe, or use as gifts, as I don't think it'll get thru customs. (Edit: didn't end up buying any)
At this stage I had a headache, and we had a dinner show that night, so I decided to head back to the hotel, to work on the Internet and have a nap.
This was a good end to the afternoon, and at 7:30 we met in the lobby to head out to our Turkish dinner and dancing show.
The dinner was good. The food started with a mezze plate,
followed by pastries,
that I think were spinach and ricotta, then a main meal of meat, tomatoes and chilli on a base of some kind of cheesy vegetable purée.
It was good, but not sublime. Dessert was really nice and simple, vanilla ice-cream on fruit salad, there are no pics of dessert, I ate it before thinking.
The entertainment at dinner was good. About four belly dancers, and other groups of dancers in-between. There was even one group which threw knives with their mouths. I'd put pics here, but my iPad doesn't like the length and pic density of this post already, and there is only so many times I can rewrite a blog.
After dinner we went home and I crashed.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Location:Istanbul
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