Istanbul Day 3

So today our last day here, we headed for the incredible Sultanahmet Camii, or the Blue Mosque as it better known in the west. Blue, because of the more than 20,000 blue-hazed Iznik tiles that adorn its interior. Our hotel was just a five minute walk away from the mosque so we had walked past it lit up in the evening and had heard the spine-tingling call to prayer from its six minarets. I have never been in a mosque before, I guess this is a bit like never having been in a church and then stopping by St Peter's for a look.

I hope you get some idea from the photo of the scale of the place. How did they make a building so vast and impressive back in 1609? Sadly it was somewhat lacking in spiritual atmosphere, due entirely to the hundreds of tourists (us) and the smell of feet. But wow, it was beautiful.

The weather wasn't so brilliant today so we headed off back to the port to take a boat trip up the Bosphorus. We took a boat tour, it wasn't exactly the big white shiny boat on the picture, and nor did it leave in 'ten minutes' as advertised, but this actually added to the fun of the trip. All us dopey tourists together in the hands of our utterly charming guides! We passed more fabulous looking palaces and the Istanbul Modern, reminding us that we'd barely scraped the surface of what this crazy, chaotic, beautiful, fascinating city has to offer.