Istanbul day 1

In the morning we took all our dirty clothes to the Amphora laundry. We were welcomed by Ertugrul and Ibrahim Tüfekiçi, father and son who run the business. They offered us some drinks and towels and we chatted as good as possible. They were very helpful and kind and offered to deliver the clean cloths at the hotel what we gladly accepted. When we left I fell on my nose on the wet and slippery cobble stones downhill and hurt my knee. Immediately a friendly young woman came for help. The trousers were ruined and we went to the pharmacy to have my knee disinfected and bandaged. The knee still hurts when I go up and down the stairs, but thankfully it’s not injured.

After that we visited the Little Hagia Sofia, a jewel of a small mosque, built by Justinian and his wife Theodora between 527 and 536, just before Justinian built Hagia Sofia. Then we visited the Topkapi Palace and the Harem. The sultans lived and worked here with their concubines, eunuchs between the 15th and 19th centuries when it was the court of the Ottoman Empire. 

In the evening we had dinner with the whole group on a rooftop terrace. Afterwards some of us had desert at Hafiz Mustafa.