Hello everyone in the A.B.D, did you know you used to have a president called W. Jefferson Clinton?

What's this? A full day of touristy stuff with pictures already uploaded?

After a rich cheesy breakfast of Borek, we took a type of group taxi called "Dolmus" (which means "full") to Taksim Square on the European side. These vans gather at predefined locations and wait until they're full (thus the name). People jump off and on throughout the trip, and they're definitely not tourist oriented. The way they signal an empty seat is to honk when they pass somebody standing or walking on the side of the road. Needless to say there's a lot of honking. I would recommend not sitting right behind the driver, as you have to relay messages (in Turkish) and money going both ways.

We headed downhill from Taksim and started with turkish coffee near the Galaga Tower. Rather than pay, we sat in the rooftop cafe of a nearby hotel, as recommended by Lonely Planet. Turkish coffee is very intense.

While we were overlooking the city, the call to prayer (ezen) sounded, and chanting voices echoed all over Istanbul. It was the first time I had heard it, and pretty magical from such a vantage point.

We headed across the bridge towards Sultanahmet. On the way we walked through little clusters of similiar shops: musical instruments, plumbing, etc. The last cluster by the water was a fish market, where there was some great lolcat material.

After a leisurely lunch of lamb kebab with yoghurt (a woman came by and took some of our bread for her baby), we started on a flurry of tourist activity.

First we ventured down into the Basilica Cistern, an underground water repository. The builders used whatever columns they had lying around, so they don't match in style, material, decoration, etc. It's kind of like how my father suggested that I find one plate each from a bunch of china patterns, rather than trying to find a complete set. The coolest columns were really old ones that have Medusa heads in their bases- reused culture at its finest.

Speaking of reuse culture, we next hit up the Aya Sofya, a.k.a. Hagia, which was a Christian Church converted to a mosque. Huge and stunning, with a nice photography exhibit. More lolcat material was spotted. While inside, the ezen sounded again, again magical.

Tania then acquired a headscarf and we ventured into the Sultanahmet Camii, a.k.a. Blue Mosque. The interior is stunning, but I really didn't want to disrespect the worshippers, so I only snapped a pic of the amazing roof while inside. The courtyard is filled with a market consisting almost entirely of books on Islam.

Later was a great dinner of fish, mussels, and calimari, more coffee on the Bosphorus with some locals, and exhausted sleep.

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