Feb. 17&18: ISTANBUL - First, we saw Topkapi Palace. The palace is where the Sultan and his Family lived and ruled, and it is home to the spoon maker diamond. There is a story behind the diamond and it’s name, the story in that the diamond was in the trash covered in filth so the people didn’t know how valuable it really was. A street vender found the diamond and sold it to a jeweler for three wooden spoons, but once the sultan found out about the diamond he had it in a second (because it was illegal for anyone to have something of value that the sultan didn’t have) and the sultan was nice enough to grant the vender and jeweler their lives. The second part of day one was the spice market. At the market we got to taste some Turkish delight and we bought some too. Then we went out for a Kebab dinner then back to the ship for the night. 

Day two

Today we went to three mosque, one was the Blue Mosque, second was the was the Hagia Sophia, and the at the mosques we had to cover our heads and take off our shoes. Then we went to the Roman Hippodrome to look around. There was a really cool Egyptian obalisque, stolen from Egypt around 3000 years ago. Next we went to the underground cistern and there were fish in the water down there. We went on a Bosphorus cruise and saw lot of the Asian continent side and European continent side of Istanbul. last place we went to was the Grand Bazaar which was sixty covered streets of shopping, the store keepers were trying to sell us things like carpets.

Medusa head in cistern