Tulip Festival

Istanbul had a tulip festival going on while we were there.  There were tulips and other flowers everywhere.

Hagia Sofia

Hagia Sofia was a Christian church built in 537 AD, turned mosque in 1453, turned museum in1934.  It was one of the highlights of our trip. 

There were little carts everywhere selling this grilled corn, so we decided to try it.  It was...... interesting.  The corn was not sweet and juicy like we are used to, but very tough and meaty.  Luckily we got the picture when we did because soon after it was in the trash.

The Underground Cistern

They have this little tourist trap as soon as you go down the stairs into the cistern and we got trapped.  They girls were so excited to dress up and were allowed to pick the colors they wanted.

The Wishing Column

You stick your thumb in the hole in the column and twist it all the way around and make a wish.

The girls thought this way really neat.

The Underground Cistern; As Seen in "From Russia With Love"

This was the highlight of the trip for the whole family

There was only about 18 inches of water in the bottom of the cistern, and it was full of large koi

Without the flash you can get a better sense of what it looked like

We think this might have been the corridor between the columns that James Bond traveled



The Columns were transplanted in from other buildings.  Sometimes they used ancient Roman sculpture to make sure they fit

No one knows when exactly these two Medusa heads were brought to the cistern or where they came from, but McKayla was glad she got to see them.

The cruise made port at Kavagi for three hours.  We hiked up to Yoros castle.  It was a pretty steep incline the whole way up to the castle.  The girls were disappointed that they were not allowed to climb all over the castle.

When we got to the castle we could see the Black Sea.

From the other side of the castle we could see the Bosphorus.

This man had a little hut about half way up to the castle.  The girls got to watch him blow glass and they each bought a souvenir.

Bosphorus Cruise

The girls were happy to be sitting down for once during our trip

It was soon too cold to stay on the top, open deck though

So we moved inside where it was much warmer with more comfortable seats.  the only problem was that the windows were so dirty that we didn't get any good pictures of the scenery

The girls enjoyed trying to count all of the Jellyfish in the water.  They claim to have counted 2,523 of them

The return trip was much warmer

The Bosphorus

We took a Bosphorus cruise while in Istanbul.  The girls counted jelly fish while we waited to board the boat.

I don't know if you can see all of the jelly fish in this picture, but there were hundreds of them. 

Dolmabahce Palace

The girls waiting in line to get tickets, we were in this line for an hour.

The front gate.

The girls in front of the palace.  We had to wait in this line for another hour to get into the palace.

Side gate to the palace.

Alina insisted that I take her picture with the lion statue and the cat.

This gate led to a private dock on the Bosphorus.

Palace clock tower.
They did not let us take any picture inside the palace.  It was pretty amazing and very over the top.