Day 2

On Day 2 we awoke and enjoyed our Mediterranean breakfast. Mediterranean breakfasts are somewhat different than our sweet American ones. They consist of a lot of olives, cheeses, sandwich meat, fruit, and eggs and bacon. Not many sweet donuts and baked goods. 

 Our view of Istanbul from breakfast

 Our tour didn't start till evening so we decided to explore the spice bazaar. You can see a whole variety of different things in Turkish bazaars

 Dried fruit

 Spices and teas

 Beans

 Soap

 Muffin cups

 Not sure what this is...

 Fresh pure pomegranate juice

 Sea thingys. 

 Sea sponges

Adorable little turtles. For the record these were for pets not food. 

 Fish

 Or baklava. Turks love to put pistachios in anything, baklava, in salads, on meat, in oatmeal, in ice cream, you name it. 

For lunch we enjoyed gyros, which have french fries in them strangely enough. 

Istanbul is the only city in the world to be on two continents, Asia and Europe. Our hotel was on the Europe side so we took a ferry over to the Asia side for the afternoon. 

 That evening (Friday) our tour officially began with a banquet at the hotel.