We are sitting at the airport in Istanbul waiting for our flight to Cairo. We caught a shuttle bus but due to the times between pickups we had to opt for an earlier one. We arrived here at 8am and our flight doesn't leave until 12.55pm. That is a lot of down time. We've had about 3 hours sleep so today is going to go on forever. Yesterday morning we actually got up early for once. We had been out late with the girls the night before and didn't...

We slept through the alarm this morning so missed breakfast and our planned early lineup at the archaeology museum. As there was now no rush we took our time and grabbed some kebabs before heading to the Blue Mosque. The mosque was very impressive from the outside, a very imposing structure. We lined up and things moved pretty quickly. Once our shoes were off and Jac had shawled up we entered. The place was not as impressive as the outside and nothing close to th...

With our thermals on we have enjoyed the day so much more today. The wind was blowing and the sky was overcast but nothing we couldn't handle. We haven't done much exercise over the last week so decided to go on a stroll around the city. We headed off north and wandered through the backstreets, the smells and sounds of the city a delight to the senses. At certain times of the day they blast their prayers from speakers on the mosques, which rings out from all over...

After our long day yesterday we really struggled to wake up this morning and only just made breakfast. They have a lot of sweet things for brekky here so we will bring the Vegemite tomorrow to go on the beautiful fresh bread. We asked the reception about a laundromat and they offered to send it out for us. For €12 we got it washed and dried and we didn't have to waste a few hours watching the machines go round. It was nice leaving it up to som...

We got hardly any sleep last night due to my stupidity. I would have had maybe 30 mins and Jac 1.5 hours. Before going to bed I loaded the map of our hotel in my iPhone to make navigating easy when we got to Istanbul. I normally do this and recheck our flight and accommodation details with plenty of time, but this time I left it until the last minute. As I loaded the map I was struggling to find the nearest railway station, so I did a distance check between the h...