Here’s the summary so far… I’m going to try to keep track of what we do, log-style, on the iPhone…

Woke up early at 9, left the house at 9:30. Pastries, tea and OJ at a local bakery… Also more good Turkish tea. Kirk went off to a meeting, Steph and I took the tram from Findlicki to the bridge.

Boat tour up the Bosphorus, passed all the mosques and palaces on the shore. During the boat tour, stopped to get tea at a local shop under the bridge. After the boat, steph and i wandered through the markets up the hill to the the Aya Sophia mosque area. Got a quick cup of tea, then went subterranean and down to the Basillica Cistern, a dramatic underground reservoir, supported by hundreds of stone arches. Blue Mosque after Aya Sophia, then archeology museum. Spent 45 minutes haggling over a used Nokia cell phone, and got a new TurkCell sim card… I’m connected in Turkey!

We needed to get back to the tram, so we wandered for a while back through the sketchy, now completely deserted and dark winding market streets.. Kind of dumb, but we managed to not get mugged. Took the tram back to Kirks place, then headed back out to the markets to do some grocery shopping.

Douerta and Giamala cooked us all a great traditional German dinner, with beef, potato balls, boiled red cabbage, and chocolate covered gingerbread cookies. Sleep now, getting up at 4am to get to the airport to fly south to Adana, Turkey.

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