Once our time was up in Baku our next destination would be Istanbul, Turkey for a week.
Istanbul is located between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, these two seas are connected by the Bosphorus waterway, this navigable by large vessels. The north side of the Bosphorus is part of European continent, while the southside is part of Asia.
Our plan here was to spend time in the ‘Old City’ and surrounding area seeing the local sites, history and sampling the local food. The ‘Old City’ is located in Europe.
We stopped at the Grand Bazaar, we wanted to take some photos but one of the store owners told us we shouldn’t.
From here we visited the Tomb of Suleiman the Magnificent.
From here we continued until we found the Spice Bazaar.
Within the Bazaar there is a Prayer corner.
As we walked back to our hotel, we noticed the city has a Hop-On-Hop-Off bus, we purchased tickets for the following day. We caught the 1:30pm bus, this was about a 3-hour round trip, which ventured over to the Asian side of the city.
We also visited some of the local historical sites.
There appears to be a Mosque every couple of blocks, here is a sample.
And some of the food.
We found an area that was full of restaurants and bars, as we had been walking all day we stopped for a local beer.
This is a small island just off the south coast of the Bosphorus with a small tower called the Maidens Tower.
The Maiden’s Tower Turkish Language: Kız Kulesi, also known as Leander’s Tower (Tower of Leandros) since the Byzantine period, is a tower on a small Islet at the southern entrance of the Bosphorus strait, 200 m (220 yd) from the coast of Uskudar in Istanbul, Turky.
The tower appeared on the Obverse and Reverse of the Turkish 10 Lira banknote from 1966 to 1981.
Origin of the name
There are several stories about the tower’s name. According to one of them, an Oracle prophesied that the Emperor’s much beloved daughter would be killed by a venomous snake on her eighteenth birthday. To protect her, the emperor had the tower built in the Bosphorus and had her locked up there to keep her away from snakes. Her only regular visitor was her father. On her eighteenth birthday, the emperor brought her a basket of exotic fruits as a gift, delighted that he had been able to thwart the prophecy. However, an Asp (reptile) that had been hiding among the fruit bit the princess who died in her father’s arms, just as the oracle had predicted, hence the name Maiden’s Tower. (Wikipedia)