Got in early to the Topkapi palace now a museum.
The place is huge , intricate beautiful work ( quite a bit of gold ) everywhere, lots of useful information along the way. The treasuries took my breath away, the 86 carat diamond surrounded by 49 smaller diamonds was literally breathtaking. The Topkapi dagger with it's massive emeralds, the golden cradle and so much more By the time we reached the treasuries it was overflowing with people so didn't get to spend too much time in there. There was also a room filled with their clothes, some of them were massive, I didn't think morbid obesity was the norm then. The prayer area had hair, a tooth and the mantle of Prophet Mohammed, lots of bits and pieces from Mecca, swords of different Prophets and the staff of Moses. I think the Quaran is read there 24/7. There was also a royal circumcision room, didn't end up going into the Harem, areas under renovation.
We spent so much time in there that we decided to skip the other museums around, overloaded with information for the day.
Went looking for the Hippodrome, only to realize that we had been in the area the whole time. All that is left of the square are three columns, the Egyptian obleix, the serpentine and
Found a shop to get my shoe repaired, small old shop , lovely old man with music in the background, framed newspaper cutting of his father in the shop. Did a good job too.
Then for the Bosphorus cruise along with a Turkish night , we wanted to do both so combined them to save time. It was a good night out. We passed palaces and bridges, lit up and pretty. After dinner ( with the unlimited alcohol ) began the entertainment , much better than I had expected. First two men dressed as puppets/ belly heads made us laugh, then the belly dancer , exotic . She also had two men from the audience dance with her, the first, from our table, was good
( found out later that he actually does know belly dancing ! ), the next gentleman was not , she tucked his shirt up and with a piece of cloth gave him false breasts, kind of improved the movements. This was followed by dances from various regions. There was dancing at the end, first romantic English songs, then lively Turkish music in the middle there were two Bollywood songs included. For our daily standards this was a really late night.
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