Dan made up for his bad first night last night and slept easily until 6am, about 7 hours. He says he would have slept longer if we’d closed the curtains so the sun wouldn’t come in. I had my traditional bad 2nd night – went to bed around midnight, slept for about 1.5 hours, then up for several, finally got 2 more in between 4-6. But I managed to make it through the day. Hoping tonight is better.

We had breakfast in the hotel and went out about 9am. We walked about a mile to Dolmabahce Palace, the new home of Sultans starting 1856, when the one in reign at the time decided he needed something more modern than Topkapi (which we’ll get to later in the week). Six sultans lived there until Turkey became a republic in 1923, and then its first President, Ataturk, lived there until he died in 1938. He is generally credited with bringing lots of positive reform to Turkey and making it the more modern country it is today compared to its Muslim brethren. In addition to making it secular and underscoring religious freedom, women were given the right to vote, he banned the fez, abolished titles and had had everyone take surnames. The airport is named for him.

I stole a couple of images off the internet that I thought showed several of the rooms well. Above: the grand staircase shortly after you entered. Those columns are not marble but wood painted to look like that. This palace is built on landfill and they were trying to keep the weight down. Below: one of the salons, or halls. A unique thing about the palace design is it is completely Western – particularly Baroque and Rococo – style in a traditional Turkish layout, with great halls around which are many rooms. Western palaces have thinner corridors with the rooms off of them. It’s mixture of East and West symbolizes much of Istanbul’s attitude about who she is.

We walked first to Taksim Square, a gathering place where large festivals occur and protests have been held, including a recent youth based protest in 2013 that’s referred to as the Tiananmen Square of Istanbul – estimate more than 3million people participated. This is Taksim above and below. [And by the way, complete non-sequiter: there’s no “x” in the Turkish alphabet, so when you need to get somewhere you hire a taksi….]

Next was Istiklal Street, a few blocks down from Taksim. This is #33 on TripAdvisor’s list of 1051 Things to Do in Istanbul, and Rick Steves recommended highly as well. It’s literally just that – a street – with lots of side streets and passage ways off of it, with a wide array of retail and restaurants. We thoroughly enjoyed checking things out and people watching.

We saw a sign from the street pointing to this Turkish Bath so thought – when in Rome and all that. I’d been thinking I wanted to do one while we were here. We went inside. It was a little divey and cheaply priced. We passed in the moment then checked TripAdvisor and it was rated only 2.5 with hundreds of review. A definite pass. But yes that says 1481, as in how long it’s been there. We’ll look for others to go to.

We ended up getting a similar lunch to yesterdays, although we both agreed yesterdays was better.

Where this street ends, the Galata area picks up. The only other thing on our list to go in was the Galata Mevlevi Museum. And odd little side trip, but on the museum pass. It focuses on the history of the Mevlevi order of Sufi-ism, which, in addition to being the order Rumi was in, is famous for whirling dervishes. Yes, they are an actual thing, not just a Sound of Music reference. You can still catch a performance of them here on Sunday nights, and several other places around town, but you have to book early which we of course didn’t. So I took a few photos of photos instead. I learned before we got here that it’s not so much a dance as a religious ritual. I came here hoping to find the meaning behind it but left still with that question in mind unfortunately. Later I found a reference indicating it’s commonly believed to be a re-enactment of birth and resurrection. But this order has been whirling since the 1300’s.

Next we went to the Galata Tower. Built around 1348 as a watchtower at about 220 feet high, it is now an observation point, and has a restaurant up there, too. We had no plans to go up, and even if we had we certainly would’ve changed our minds with the line we saw that indicated it was at least a 45 minute wait. While only about 83 degrees today, it was humid and seemed much hotter.

Eventually we got to the Galata Bridge and I got a close-up of what I couldn’t get from the tram yesterday: Lots of folks fishing off the bridge. The bridge is actually 2 layers: cars and public transit on top, shops and restaurants below.

We took these from a landing below. Not sure which mosque that is; pretty sure it’s Suleymaniye, which we’ll also hit later. (And based on the map I just reviewed, that’s exactly what it is.)

We took public transportation back to the hotel, and rested for a few hours, including a shower and steam room for me (which we’ve done every night by the way), and probably about an hour unplanned nap. We at first were going to go out for dinner but decided to wait and see what the food in the lounge was. It was pretty good, so we stayed in.

That soup was yogurt, rice and mint and surprisingly good Other nice things: the little squares were lasagna; roasted chicken tenders were pretty tasty. In the little bowls were a kind of frittata, with plenty of dill, a taste we keep rediscovering in this lounge for some reason.

Turkey has 2 soccer teams, one of them is named after this neighborhood. Their colors are black and white and I guess they just won something big? Anyway there were flags everywhere. Note the middle of the street below.

We really enjoyed our day, we love seeing how the locals live. And now thankfully it is bedtime.