After a late breakfast we departed the Hotel by Taxi and went to the Galata Bridge, one of the few bridges that cross from Europe to Asia, and walked over the bridge and watched the literally the ten’s of fishermen all pulling lots of little fish from the water. What was strange the fishermen were only operating on one side of the bridge only, perhaps something to do with tides. This area, like everywhere else, was thronging with people and also below the bridge were very many ferries which operate up and down the Bosporus and fascinating to watch.
From there we headed to the Spice Market and there was shop after shop selling all sorts of spices and with a few cheap watch shops in between, watches were being sold for about £ 8.00 . All the way passing the various shops the storekeeper or his staff are stepping out in front of you saying ‘Hello where do you come from and you must by my…. whatever it is they are selling. Needless to say we did not try any of the foods offered as for Noel this could have been a real problem. After about an hour and half wandering the streets we were needing a rest and a drink but not sure where to safely eat we came upon a Burger King and decided we would opt for some chips and not risk the Burger and not knowing what was in it and also unable to question the staff selling it.
From there we carried up the hill and through interesting street after another with wonderful old building’s and not one empty shop insight and with lots of people everywhere reminiscent of Hong Kong crowds it looks like the economy is booming, well at least here it was. We finally arrived at the Blue Mosque along with several hundred other people only to find it was largely covered with tarpaulin and scaffolding and so you could really see the outside properly. There was also a queue to go in and it requires taking off shoes which isn't good for Noel balance and as we were getting a little tired we decided that was enough for the day and we need a beer and food we can rely. We had already picked out an Irish Pub and they generally are good and we caught a taxi who ripped us of a little bit so we leant our lesson and we arrived after about 45 minute taxi ride at the Corner Irish Bar which was really good. The beer menu was significantly bigger than the food menu which largely consisted of Burgers of various types, pizza’s and of course fish and chips which we both went for. We tested out the Carlsberg draft beer which tasted brilliant after a hard days walking and then decided rather than have all the taxi price issues again Noel called for an UBER which worked well.
Gosh we both ache….
