Wednesday 26 October 2011

MSC OPERA–Where Europe and Asia meet

We docked back in Istanbul and today we had a whole day excursion of the city.

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We started the day at the Blue Mosque which is above.

It is called blue because of the colour of the tiles.

It was packed with thousands of people all with their shoes off, so you had to watch your tootsies.

All the chandeliers are low as the used to have candles and this made it easier to light them.

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Then we went to St Sophia which was a mosque, but is now a museum.

(I’m very pleased with this pic – sorry Mum, I know, more postcard photos!)

Lunch was included, which was lovely tasty Turkish goodies.

Which was great as we are really bored with the bland and salty Italian type dishes they serve on this ship.

Then we had free time at the Grand Bazaar.

We didn’t buy anything as I was too nervous to haggle.

And they knew we were tourists as soon as they looked at us.

We also went to the Topkapi Palace, where the Sultan used to live.

We saw the Royal jewels, including some spectacular diamonds.

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There are four cruise ships in port today.

The Opera is the little one in the middle!

Can you imagine the swell in the population, we have about 2300 passengers, but the big boats must have double that number.

Out of the 2300 passengers, 50 are American, 6 are Australian and there are a handful of English.

The other 2230 are mainly German, Italian or Russian.

Can you imagine 3 more noisier languages? It makes my head spin.

Until next time, Red heartRed heartRed heart Kim

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