This blog is dedicated to my friend LouLou, who, hopefully in July, will be submitting some blogs on locations she will visit in Poland.
The images below are some of the doors I chanced upon. Sorry LouLou!  I had to include a dog image!

Friday we made our way to Topkapi Palace. Used to the Westerner's overuse of signage that directs you to the ticket offce,we missed the ticket office,went through the security scanners and then found that we couldn't go through the turnstyles as the ticket office was about 100m back the way we had come! Two of the four of us, retraced our original route, purchased tickets at the office, went back through the security scanners and then we were finally able to get through to Topkapi Palace. Well worth the to-ing and fro-ing!

Our trusty guide (my sister) successfully lead us to a café in the bazaar where we had a late 3pm lunch. We then hit the antique section of the bazaar where one of our group made a good buy, and we then went on to purchase – impromptu – a lovely carpet for our front entry hall. Oh well, even if we see the same carpet in Sydney, we will always have the lovely memory of visiting Istanbul when we look at ours!

 Our trip back from the bazaar was chaotic, as having purchased a carpet we thought taking a taxi to the hotel would be the best option. The first taxi driver said it would cost 40 odd Turkish lira, which we couldn’t understand, as it only cost us 10 to get there! We walked on, found another taxi driver, and once in the taxi he let us know that Sultanahmet Square was closed, so traffic was horrendous heading back to where our hotel was located.  We managed to get part of the way back via taxi, and then the taxi driver let us off near a tram stop, so we could tram it back to our hotel.

Later that evening, while sitting down to dinner, we noticed a man outside on the street, setting up a stall with a couple of rabbits and a rooster. We thought perhaps that this set up was for diners, so they could choose what they wanted for dinner!

 After dinner we went for a stroll and went over to find out what the animal set up was all about. The animals told people their fortune! It works a bit like a fortune cookie, the owner of the animals asked your name, what language you spoke, told the animal (depending on whether you chose the rooster or one of the two rabbits) and the animal then picked one of the cards from the correct language section,with it’s beak or it’s twitching nose. Very cute,but no photos I apologise, as I didn't have my camera!  (Link to fb will only work if you are friends with me,hopefully it works!) https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10150942109753286&set=a.10150913472918286.431835.772073285&&theater

After a late lunch we headed down through Eminonu Square past Galata bridge to catch a ferry that would cruise along the Bosphorus. We had to race as they were yelling out that the ferry was about to depart. We quickly jumped on and the ferry cruise began.

The first full day in Istanbul started with me waking up at 5am (jetlag), spending some time on my notebook,and then properly commenced with a savoury breakfast at the Sirkeci Konak Hotel in the Sultanahmet area of istanbul.

Heading off to meet our Context Tours guide, we took a roundabout route to the entrance of the Four Seasons Sultanahmet Hotel, where we were to meet. We were booked on a Roman tour of Istanbul and, with time restrictions, we organised at the start of the tour to visit the Hippodrome, Aya Sofia and the Yerebatan Cistern, all within close proximity of Sultanahmet Square.