Day 32 - Istanbul

We're making lazy starts these mornings, I guess from all that crazy traveling we are finally relaxing. So breakfast at 10am, and we start walking around by 11am. We started the day with a quick visit to the Spice Bazaar, and we bought tons and tons of Turkish delight.















We took the train to Beyolglu, a more modern and trendy party of Istanbul. We grabbed the historic underground Fenicular to Tunel - this is an underground cable car built in the 1800s. From Tunel we admired Istiklal Caddesi and walked to Taksim Square.















We checked out the military museum, which had loads of armour, swords, as well as early and modern guns and rifles. Outside the museum was a huge cannon that could spin to fire in any direction. But the real reason we wanted to go to this museum was to see the chain of Constantinople, that for many years was the city's most important defensive mechanism. It was a huge chain that could be pulled across the entry of the Golden Horn (a waterway that enters into the Bosphorus) making a naval assault on the city very difficult. Unfortunately (for Constantiniople) the Turks did something unexpected, and pulled their ships overland on logs all the way around the city and the chain, only to drop back into the water and took the city by surprise in the morning.

That evening Leah and I met with Serhat, his girlfriend and their friends for drinks and dancing. We didn't get home until 3am!