Istanbul from Egirdir

Finally I have time to stop and write.   I'm in a lakeside town called Egirdir, surrounded by mountains still with a scattering of snow. I arrived here at 6am after a complicated overnight bus journey so if my thoughts here are a bit random, that may explain why.

It's a bit hard to think back to Istanbul after the fantastic time I had in Cappadocia, but Istanbul was great too so I do want to put it down.  The best part of Istanbul was the company - I met up with Matthew at the airport and his friend Sue joined us the next morning.  I don't think the city would have been quite the same if I had been on my own and it added a wonderful dimension to it, even when Matthew relied on his directional skills rather than mine and Sue's slightly more accurate map reading.

We saw the tourist sites - the Haghia Sophia church with its Byzantine mosaics and huge dome; Topkapi Palace's beautiful iznik tile covered walls; the view of the city from the Galata tower; and had a fish sandwich on the Galata bridge.  However, the highlight was the Kariye (Chora) church out by the city walls.  It's a small byzantine chapel with stunning mosaics - finely detailed and very well preserved. There is also the most alive fresco painting I have ever seen in a medieval church - I didn't take a photo as I didn't think I could do justice to it, but here's one of the mosaics:

Quite often we got pleasantly lost in the streets of Istanbul,  and it was good to get away from the mass tourism of Sultanahmet square. We spent the rest of our time exploring smaller mosques, a large Greek Orthodox church, learning to use Istanbul's tram system and trying out all the food options. We went to Istanbul's historic kofta restaurant for meatballs and found a non touristy pudding shop for rice/custard dishes. We tasted a range of meze and had copious quantities of tea and turkish coffee. Oh and the breakfast at our hotel, Hotel Minel (http://www.minelhotel.com/) is still the best one of the trip so far - yoghurt, honey, bread, cucumber, tomato, cheese, olives - yes that's the usual - but then also fresh omelette and hot cheese pancakes.  I am quite preoccupied with food as you may notice in subsequent blogs.

I joined the tour group after two days and shifted to their hotel. We had the obligatory visit to the Blue Mosque in the morning, and then a couple of us went into the underground cistern - a strange place of pillars and randomly assorted reused columns, including two giant Medusa heads, that support the roof of part of Istanbul's old water system:

I said goodbye to Matthew and Sue over another pudding and then it was time to fly to Kayseri in Cappadocia. More after I have had a cup of tea.