Turkiye 2023: Day 2 & More Touring on Our Own

This is the second full day here and our first day with the group tour, which officially commence with a Welcome Dinner with our tour manage/director, or shall I refer to her here as TM?

Having said that, we have the whole day to ourselves to continue exploring this incredibly vibrant and historically rich city. But first, we had to leave our little hotel in the Sultanahmet area and transfer to the accommodations that the tour company chose for us.

In order to accomplish that we decided to use the tram to take us to the next hotel.

Now this hotel that the tour company put us in is quite fancy and huge. The front desk has a huge room on the ground floor to hold our luggage before the official check-in time.

This hotel sets the tone for the rest of the trip with fantastic accommodations.

This hotel is near the Bosphorus Strait. The Bosphorus Strait is a significant shipping route between the Black Sea and the world's oceans and also connects the Black Sea with the Marmara Sea and the Dardanelle Strait. In addition, the Bosphorus Strait bisects the city, separating Istanbul into European side and Asian side. Istanbul is one of only 5 cities in the world that sits between two continents. The other four are: Suez (Egypt - Africa and Asia), Atyrau (Kazakhstan - Europe and Asia), Magnitogorsk (Russia - Europe and Asia), and Orenburg (Russia - Europe and Asia).

The street on which the hotel is located is full of restaurants, stores, cafes, shops and just across the hotel is a candy store that I always wanted to visit but sadly did not have time to do so.

Peeking thru the glass window.

Exploring this area near our hotel, we found so many interesting spots.

The closest mosque to the hotel (a 2-minute walk), but we never visited this. It looked very stately, if that is even a proper description for a house of worship. This mosque is a few feet away from the Spice Bazaar, aka Egyptian Bazaar, built in 1664 is one of the two major/tourist spots in the city. How lucky that our first hotel is just a walk away from the Grand Bazaar, just like here.

View of the mosque from the steps.

Entering the Spice Bazaar.

Freshly made baklava.

Dried fruits.

Turkish Delight.

You can see the proximity of the unidentified mosque to the Spice Bazaar. We have this market in our itinerary for the tour, but we decided to visit it on our own because it was just a spit away from our hotel. The experience with markets like this is overwhelming with all the colors and shapes and smells. It's wonderful.