Blue Mosque on a Rainy Morning + Grand Bazaar Visit and Afternoon Walk

We still didn't hear the early call! Strange. It's earlier here, though—5:38 am—so perhaps we were just fully asleep. 🤔

This morning, our plan was to get up and be at the Blue Mosque around 8:30 am when it opened. It was raining, which would have been annoying while wearing long trousers, but our apartment has umbrellas! So handy! I had my long trousers out, and Sarah had her scarf ready.

Finding the actual entrance was harder than we expected—even with our prep last night. We got there, though probably not as efficiently as we might have liked. The line to get in was not too bad: dozens, not hundreds, of people. We took off our shoes at the entrance and placed them inside the provided plastic bag. You then leave the shoes and umbrellas on small wooden racks inside the mosque.

The interior was all carpeted, which surprised me. I had expected the floor to be marble. There were also many cables hanging from the ceiling for lighting, which spoiled the view of the lovely ceiling, if you ask me. It would be better to run strips of LED lights around the place. That would work really well—I’ll send in the suggestion! 😉 The view of the ceiling was still impressive, but if we are being honest, the visit didn’t quite live up to expectations.

We headed back outside and took a few shots of the square with its rainy-day feel. We then went via the Hippodrome back to the apartment, which gave us a view of the people lined up to enter the mosque—hundreds, not dozens, now!

It was time to head back for a coffee and relax until after lunch. We grabbed some fruit and bread from just down the road first.

Mid-afternoon, we went to the Grand Bazaar. It was as massive and busy as we had imagined, yet the shopkeepers were far better behaved than we expected. We didn’t see people being hassled or approached much at all to buy things. Only one person asked Sarah if she needed any help, but it was in a very nice and normal way. We walked in a grid-search style—up and back, then sideways to avoid getting lost—which worked pretty well. It didn’t take long before it all became a bit too much, and we had to escape back out into the semi-open-air shopping lanes outside the bazaar.

We eventually made our way to the Spice (or Egyptian) Bazaar, which was equally interesting, with a nice aroma and lots of food.

Bazaared out, we went down to the waterfront and along to where we could see across to the Asian side of Istanbul. Four cruise boats were in port today, with around 7,000 passengers. From the water, we headed up through Gülhane Park, which runs almost right up to Hagia Sofia. The skies threatened to open up, and by the time we got to the Hippodrome, there was a bit of light rain. We seemed to be the only people wandering about this afternoon wearing T-shirts and shorts! The high today was a lovely 17 °C—good Kiwi walking weather! 👍😂 7km this afternoon. 

Dinner tonight was chicken breasts, kept whole, with our new spice mix, potatoes, lettuce, and tomato.