After fully resetting our biological clocks, we set out on a self-guided walking tour that touched on Turkish food, Byzantine history and Ottoman conquest.
For our first stop we walked down to 'Privato Cafe' in Galata for a village breakfast. Holy crap. Their breakfast included countless marmalades, spreads, olives, breads, butter, cheese and honey. And our only picture was just the appetizer; we were later served Mennamen (a sort of omelette), eggs, Turkish pancakes and fried cheese. And of course, they refused to charge us for our six teas, bringing the grand total for breakfast to $17.
Afterwards and apparently fully fueled up, we unintentionally set off on all day walking tour across the Galata bridge, through and around Sultanamet, and back to the restaurants off Istiklal Caddesi.
Our first stop was the Basilica Cistern, built by early Christian rulers about 1500 years to collect water it was only "rediscovered" about 50 years ago by the city and restored.
Our next stop was just across a public square to the Hagia Sofia, originally built by Constantine as the basilica of 'new Rome', it was later conquered by Mehmet and converted to a mosque, and more recently converted to a museum by Turkey's secular government. The manner in which this building displays the convergence of Islam and early Christianity, together with the fact that Istanbul takes such pride in this overlap, makes this building an enormously fascinating and hopeful landmark. For instance, where else in the world will you see a gold mosaic of Jesus sitting atop Arabic script pronouncing that 'God is Great'?
Following that visit we made a failed attempt to visit the Blue Mosque, which encouraged us to take a cicuitous, if somewhat disappointing, l
walk around what the maps showed to be a waterfront walk, but which was in actuality a waterfront highway. Nonetheless, we still made time for lattes and cake back in Galata, and superb dinner, drinks and dessert at Antiochia.
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