Day 5 - Sugar Friday, the end of Ramadan and the weather-sunny & warm. Everybody has come to the town centre to pray at Aya Sofia (now a mosque after being a museum since the 1920s), then to eat all they can handle and to listen to their President Erdogan when he reopens the Blue Mosque today after being closed for years of renovations. The crowd was so big that 1000s couldn’t fit into the Aya Sofia. We picked this day to do our city tour!!
We managed to spend about 4 hours being guided round the old hippodrome and visiting the Ottoman’s Topkapi Palace - also having just finished some major renovations. Our guide Ozlem, was an interesting person - female, late 40s, no children, eternal student, enthusiastic about her job, big picture thinker especially about politics. She promoted the idea that, in our modern hyper- connected world, political leaders were now obsolete, that society no longer needs politicians to maintain the peace - just like we don’t need royalty, nor even the church leaders to tell us what to do or how to think. All this while walking from one place to the next. The Topkapi Palace of the Ottoman Sultans was fabulous - the picture in this blog being a soldier’s helmet from about 13thC.
Eventually 1.30 arrived and it was time to head off to Egypt. - woohoo!!