The Icing on the Cake

1:32pm
This morning, we got up at 4:30am to take our flight to Cappadocia. After arriving, the hotel transfer shuttle drove for over an hour to reach our hotel. We are resting up from the long morning, in a room that has a 300-year old history!
In a glance, yesterday's events.

Day 6
We really learned to use the various modes of transportation to get around Istanbul, and found everything very accessible.

We took the tramway, funicular, and taxi to visit Chora Church, which was preserved from the 11th century. I just loved the mosaic art.

We also went to Dolmabahçe Palace, which was built with a definite European flair. Too gaudy for my taste. I definitely felt this museum was overrated. It was very hot in the palace, which made it difficult to concentrate on the obligatory tour. The tour guide's english, or "turkglish" was really hard to understand.
Towards the middle of the tour my mom and I quietly escaped. We were rewarded with this magnificent view of the Bosphorus Strait.

From here, we stumbled upon a ferry cruise that toured the Bosphorus Strait for around $7USD per person. Very good deal, and what a lovely view!! That cruise was definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

On a side note,  I forgot to mention that we were able to see an original of the Ishtar Gate of Babylon in the Archaeological Museum the other day...

After our lovely cruise, we took the bus and got lost in some obscure area, but found our way to where we could take the tramway to our hotel. We made an unexpected discovery some beautiful ancient city walls.

The diet continues:

#10 Pita bread with doner kebab chicken meat

#11 Lovely custard dessert with Turkish tea at the palace

#12 I think this was a pork kebab sandwich we had after docking on the Kabatas port. It was wonderful!

#13  Bread pretzel. Not my personal favorite but if you are hungry, it's good to chew on.

We were rewarded with a lovely sunset at the end of our long day