Istanbul

I can't believe it. Twenty-eight days have passed, I must say from my perspective it went by pretty fast. We accomplished a lot, but there is still a lot of work to be done and even more follow up over the next few months. I am happy with the time I was able to steal and do a little sight seeing every now and then. The last was Istanbul, after work on Wednesday the Captain and I met up with his old RMC friend who's posted there. We got to visit the Blue Mosque, St Sophia and the grand bazaar. Had it not been raining I might have even gone to the spice bazaar. The mosque was breathtaking inside and out. I have a really neat app on my iPhone that lets me stitch photos together, so I took one inside the mosque and its looks like your standing in it looking at the entire interior. We went by St Sophia, I didn't want to have to pay to get in and prayer time was about to start so we would have been rushed through. The grand bazaar was mind boggling, its a labyrinth. I was looking for a fake Omega to replace mine which broke a year ago and isn't very reliable, the pin keeps breaking. I found a few nice ones but the price they were asking was ridiculous. They were asking about $270 Turkish Lira which is about $150 Canadian, and were about the same quality I would get on Queen St in Toronto. There was a really nice one.. possibly stolen but we wanted $300 Euro..or $400 CAD. He brought it down to 180 but there was no way I was going to pay that.  Afterwards we went to have a bite to eat, I can't say I'm a huge fan of Turkish cuisine, there is something with the meat, a spice or a marinate that reminds me of minced meat or the meat pies I used to get. Not my favorite to say the least. In all this was a great trip with no regrets. I can't wait to be on my last flight of the trip and I will be making a very planned stop at the duty free in a few hours.

Blue mosque

Blue mosque

Baklava anyone?

Entrance to the Grand Bazaar