This gave Husb the opportunity to wear his rather dashing white Tuxedo jacket which he received as a leaving gift from school (doesn't it suit him!) It wasn't out of place in the QE dining room, they really love their dressing up on that ship.
We docked in Istanbul and found our pick up point for our tour.
was our first stop. Built by Sultan Abdulmecit between 1843 and 1856, it is a beautiful summer palace famous for being the first palace in Istanbul to be built in the European style.
The gardens were beautiful but the inside of the palace was quite spectacular. It came as no surprise that this palace bankrupted the state with its lavish, extravagant carpets and 3 enormous chandeliers.
"Marble was brought from the Islands in the Sea of Marmara, The porphyry stones from ancient Pergamon city, the alabaster from Egypt, the furniture was brought from Paris, the crystal materials from Baccarat, the vases from Sevr, the candlesticks from England, the silk carpets from Hereke and Lyon with special order. Almost all of 99 small and 131 large handmade carpets are silk and all they were woven in the royal workshops in Hereke. 4.500 square meters area covered by the carpets. It is said that 40 tons of silver and 14 tons of gold were used for the decoration of the palace."
Look! A swan fountain in the Dolmabahce gardens!
Christleton Cricket Club needs one of these!
Istanbul Modern Art Gallery was next on the tour.
(And it just so happened that the QE was docked right next to it)
The golf balls were still there!
And there was a nice cafe in the gallery for me to have my tea fix.... Turkish style.
(My left eye still doesn't look right does it?)
Our tour guide then took us to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate known as the
where there is a piece of the marble that Christ was said to have chipped away at whilst held in captivity. This piece came from Jerusalem.
The Column of Christ’s Flagellation (10)
Located in the southeast corner of the nave, this column is one of the most treasured and ancient relics of the Church of St. George. It is a portion of the column where our Lord was bound and whipped by Roman soldiers during His Passion and before His Crucifixion. Two other portions of this column are preserved in Jerusalem and in Rome. It is said to have been brought to Constantinople by St. Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine, after she visited the Holy Land.
Located in the southeast corner of the nave, this column is one of the most treasured and ancient relics of the Church of St. George. It is a portion of the column where our Lord was bound and whipped by Roman soldiers during His Passion and before His Crucifixion. Two other portions of this column are preserved in Jerusalem and in Rome. It is said to have been brought to Constantinople by St. Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine, after she visited the Holy Land.
The tour continued. What followed next was most bizarre.
We were taken for a walk around the back streets of Istanbul with the view to looking at the architecture of the old city. It was, however, a very uncomfortable walk for us, as the guide marched off at a ridiculous pace leaving the children and older lady trying to catch up. There were only 9 people in the group and she nearly managed to lose all of us, due to the fact that we had to keep looking at the pavement to avoid the stares of the locals of such a deprived area. We weren't entirely sure that we wouldn't get mugged. We must have stood out a mile....white, rich looking tourists in an area like that. We snarled appropriately and asked to get back to the bus.
We had visited Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque when we went to Istanbul last year so the Rustem Pasha Mosque seemed very small in comparison, but the wall tiles were fabulous and the dressing up in shawl and sari lightened the mood a little after the uncomfortable walk ten minutes before.
To be fair it was a nice 4 hours and we DID enjoy the tour.
As we were staying overnight, we didn't have to get back to the ship, so in typical Jolly Holly fashion we got the map out and decided spend another hour at the magnificent
-a water cistern built where a basilica once stood. The cistern was used in the 1963 James Bond film From Russia With Love but all I could think of was the underground lake scene in Phantom of the Opera.
336 columns, arranged in 12 rows of 28, standing in illuminated water, drawn from the Belgrad Forest area 19km away. Quite stunning, especially on Husb's new camera and not so, on mine.
Two of the columns have Medusa's head as the base, one turned sideways and one turned upside down. This is because in Greek mythology Medusa was a monster, having the face of a hideous woman with writhing poisonous snakes in place of hair and anyone gazing directly into her eyes would turn to stone.
The Basilica Cistern-what a bonus.
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The sail out was lovely. You KNOW how much I love twinkly, sparkly water.
The second day in Istanbul was both interesting and alarming. (!) We had a lazy morning with a decent breakfast and planned to take a boat out up the Bosphorus River to Princes Islands (we LIKE boats) but I nearly passed out in the boat queue and can only put it down to just standing. My body doesn't do still very well and there was a definite lack of venous return...that and low blood pressure. I'd had Alpen and figs and pine nuts and melon and banana chips for breakfast and I was stood in the shade. Husb gallantly revived me and we decided to find a wifi cafe and just chill for an hour but that wasn't without drama either as we nearly got run over by a tram. It really wasn't the best bit of road crossing. Then to top it all we thought we saw our ship on fire. Whaaaaat? It was actually the warehouse right next to the QE but there was so much smoke we couldn't see where it was coming from. The wifi cafe served typical turkish yoghurt that had been highly recommended in various tour guides so I ordered one. Could today get any more hooty? She brought me a huge tub of the sort of yoghurt we live on at home... with a straw....and it was sooooo salty. Hey ho I probably needed to replace all the salt I had sweated out after all that woozy, fainting malarkey... sweat HAD been rolling down my legs.
Back on ship we sun-protected with hat, bandana and Factor 30 and did a few laps of the deck before dressing for dinner.
"Say what you see, say what you see" Roy Walker from the TV show Catchphrase was our entertainment, he was a total pro and the Master of Good Timing...
and look who else was on our ship1 Hello Hawkleys!
Summary:
Fantastic weather.
Great food, although why why WHY wipe the roast pork with garlic???
Lovely company- our table of rabble were great fun.
Excellent entertainment.
Beautiful ship (though they are a bit too keen on the dressing up)
Next stop... VOLOS, GREECE.
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