{"id":2018,"date":"2016-04-17T10:17:20","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T16:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dltwt.com\/?p=2018"},"modified":"2016-04-17T10:25:21","modified_gmt":"2016-04-17T16:25:21","slug":"on-to-constantinoplebyzantium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/?p=2018","title":{"rendered":"On to Constantinople\/Byzantium"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On Tuesday we arrived in Istanbul. The flight was interesting because one of the airline stewards was dressed in a full chef’s outfit, including a hat. The food in Turkish Airlines “economy” was better than most domestic business class food we have experienced. Go Turkish Airlines!!<\/p>\n

Our hotel is in the old city section of Istanbul near many of the traditional tourist sites. Clearly, there are not a lot of American tourists and our guide on Wednesday said that tourism was way down because of terrorist fears. The USA Turkey warnings really apply to the Syrian border area. So far in our 1 1\/2 days in Turkey, we feel safe and are not concerned.\u00a0 The shop owners and others are aggressive but friendly and quite often hilarious, especially when they called David,\u00a0 “James Bond”!\u00a0\u00a0 It is easy to joke with them and they seem to enjoy the back and forth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Our 3-hour walking tour on Wednesday was excellent.\u00a0 We started near our hotel outside the Hagia Sophia Mosque & Museum.\u00a0 We visited the Blue Mosque (site of the January suicide bombing) which is a huge structure with the interior laden with beautiful blue Turkish tiles.\u00a0 Both of these mosques are enormous and the large center domes are supported by a series of half domes supported by more quarter domes.\u00a0 It was an engineering breakthrough at the time.<\/div>\n
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We wandered through palacial gardens, loaded with tulip which is the national flower of Turkey.\u00a0 \u00a0Shortly, the city is planting more than a million tulips\u00a0 as a city celebration. The next stop was the spice market which was full of great aromas.\u00a0 Just outside this market, there is a coffee store where the locals stand in long lines just to buy their coffee.\u00a0 We then visited a small mosque (Rushtem Pasha Mosque) that was built by a rich architect just to house his tile collection.<\/p>\n

After a simple Turkish lunch of vegetables & some meat we were off to visit the Cistern Basillica. The large underground facility was originally a water storage facility used during periods of war. In Istanbul, you cannot miss the Grand Bazaar, an enclosed area of 5,000 shops.\u00a0 The owners are aggressive (no match for Beijing’s Silk Market, though) and again quite often very funny.\u00a0 Just like the Medina in Marrakesh, many, many stores sell the same goods.<\/div>\n
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On Thursday & Friday we have separate trips, including 7AM flights, to Ephesus & Cappadocia. With a 5 AM pickup & returning late on both days, it should be quite an exhausting adventure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Hagia<\/a>
Hagia Sophia Mosque<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"Largest<\/a>
Largest Tulip “Carpet” ever<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The Blue Mosque<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Interior<\/a>
Interior of the Blue Mosque<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A<\/a>
A great fountain idea (the water is like a turning page)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Wonderful<\/a>
Wonderful park near us<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/a><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The tulip lady<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Soaps<\/a>
Soaps in the Spice Market<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Spices<\/a>
Spices at the Spice Market<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Pastries<\/a>
Pastries are a favorite<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Sweets<\/a>
Sweets sell well in the Spice Market<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Blue<\/a>
Rushtem Pasha Mosque – Blue tile collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Cistern<\/a>
Cistern Basillica<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The Grand Bazaar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The Grand Bazaar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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On Tuesday we arrived in Istanbul. The flight was interesting because one of the airline stewards was dressed in a full chef’s outfit, including a hat. The food in Turkish Airlines “economy” was better than most domestic business class food we have experienced. Go Turkish Airlines!! Our hotel is in the old city section of … Continue reading On to Constantinople\/Byzantium<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Si9J-wy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2018"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2086,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018\/revisions\/2086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}