Istanbul #1 -- Thurs/Fri Sept 25/26

Travel is very tiring. We got up at 6 am and were here eating supper by 10 am (the next day) your time and 8 pm our time here. There are so many hours spent waiting in airports. But, all in all, the flights went well. Eleanor -- it was cloudy so I didn't see those wind turbines in the North Sea though we probably flew over that area. Only clear sky was just south of Glasgow so saw a few lights.

It's so nice being looked after. We were met at the airport along with two other couples. A van took us to our hotel. This took about an hour because of distance plus rush hour traffic. This city is huge. They have some beautiful landscaping in the newer areas. There are geometrical and freeform arrangements of planted flowers/shrubs through the grass meridians. Very nice and also unusual. Then we got into some of the older areas. Interesting buildings -- many seem to be about one room width wide. There is often a missing one or one with no windows. The narrowness is quite noticeable because they can be three or four stories high.

We are both exhausted. I slept a fair bit on the plane but by the time we got here my body was telling me to stay asleep.

I had an interesting supper -- warm dates stuffed with goat cheese over a bed of interesting greens. The "butter"with the buns must have been goat as it had such an nice flavor.

This is a 5 star (at least) hotel. Huge lobby with live music, beautiful flower arrangements, etc. Our cruise company has a desk that's open all day.

Saturday

What a busy, interesting day (though it rained a lot). We had a bus tour of the city. It is very, very old and certainly worth a second trip sometime for anyone interested in old stuff. We saw classical Ottoman, Roman and Byzantine architecture. The aqueducts were made 1600 years ago and brought water into the city cisterns until the 19th century.

The old city walls had three stages: first one was low and easy to climb, the second one was harder and taller then the third was tall and smooth. The first two sucked in the invaders who were then trapped between 2 and 3 to get killed by arrows or else have boiling oil poured on them. Today the area on the road side of the walls is farmed for organic vegetables. This provides income for people plus keeps the riff raff out of the area. The towers are mostly destroyed by earthquakes. There are 20 miles of wall.

Population and economy are booming. Pop was 1.7 million in 1953, 7 million in 1986 and today is 16 million. Two thirds of these live on the Europe side and one third on the Asian side. Nine hundred new cars are registered daily. There are 3.5 million cars -- highest density in the world. And it is the largest city in the world.

The Bosphorus is the body of water between the two parts of the city. When digging a new tunnel to go under this they found 38 wrecks, including cargos, from 400 years ago -- probably caused by an earthquake and ensuing tidal wave. At the moment all this is being preserved. They also found 8400 year old settlements under the old harbour where the wrecks were found.Turkey is also home to the oldest cave homes -- up to 45,000 years old.

Turkey's #1 industry is agriculture. Istanbul's #1 is textiles followed by automotive manufacturing.They had 8.6% growth in 2012 with a GDP of $11,000 per person -- up 3x in the past 10 years. All industry is banned from the city core and shorelines of the Bosphorus so the air is now clean. This industry is moved to the outskirsts.

Lots of Jews have come here over the centuries -- whenever they were persecuted in their original countries. So the part of Istanbul they settled in became very rich.

There are 2 million refugees in the eastern part. They are well looked after with schools, health care, etc.They are the best refugee camps in the world. They are strongly discouraged from coming to the west part as then they go on into Europe. These countries frown on that so Turkey tries to stop it from happening.

We had a walking tour of the old City which included the Hippodrome where they used to have horse races way back when. Also had a tour of the Blue Mosque. It is called Blue because of the interior decor of tiles. Blue was the cheapest color to make them of plus it withstands the firing process quite well so less breakage. After this was a carpet making demo. It is absolutely amazing how many knots are in a square inch of carpet -- thousands. Smaller rugs take up to 2 years to make! The silk ones are the hardest wearing, lasting over 200 years in a high traffic area. Also are easy to wash. We, of course, got the showing of many carpets plus an onslot of salesmen to "help" us after. I actually bought a small one for a wall hanging. Full sized floor ones were running 16 to 20,000 dollars in the silk. Other fibers were marino wool, pashmina or cotton. They served us a variety of drinks plus a snack. I had strong Turkish coffee. It is made with the sugar in it already. When I was done there was a thick layer on sludge at the bottom of the cup. Delicious. Don had the famous apple tea which is very similar to our hot apple cider.

The afternoon was spent going through the Hagia Sophia which is one of the world's great buildings. Completed 1500 years ago as a church, it became a mosque in 1453 then a museum in 1935. After this we had an hour in the famous Grand Bazaar. Actually, it had maybe ten or twelve different stores repeated over and over. The jewelry was out of sight "glitter" -- quite ugly. The ceramics are gaudy and unsafe as they likely have lead.