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Our adventures in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus continue....
  
A very early start for our trip to Istanbul. Because Bill and Margaret are here we all four decided on a visit to this wonderful city. A very early start as our original flight was switched to 7.30 a.m. but it gave us an extra day there, so it was marmalade butties and coffee at 4.30 before setting off .
We booked in to our hotel in Taksim square before in fact the rooms were ready. Once we had unpacked we set off to walk all the way down to the older part of Istanbul crossing Galletta bridge to the waterfront area. When you do this you get some stunning views of the real Istanbul and crossing the bridge you see hundreds of fishermen on both sides catching a free lunch for the family. As we crossed we thought for a moment
that we had landed in the wrong city, is this really Venice?. Speaking of lunch we realised that we were all hungry by now, so the only thing to do was to enjoy the traditional mackrel and salad in bread, fish doner, which is served at many of the ticket stands by the ferry boat area. They were absolutely delicious.
After a stop for a drink, to wash down the doner kebabs, we headed for Topkapi Palace. Joan and I had been here about 3 years ago and found the whole thing quite stunning and showed what an opulent lifestyle the emperors had. This time apart from the Treasury with its stunning diplay of jewels, where incidently you are not allowed to take photos, some of the grand rooms with mosaics everywhere, we visited the harem. We were told that there could be up to 1,000 ladies available for the emperor, now thats just greed! The views from the grounds right up the Bosphorous were quite stunning and it is quite amazing how very busy this waterway is, not only with ferry boats, cruise liners and small container ships, but also huge tankers going up to the Black sea area and presumably the Russian ports.
At the end of a first enjoyable day, we took a bus back to Taksim square, a reasonably early dinner and bed by 9 p.m.
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