Saturday, August 7th:\u00a0 CeeGee and I walked past the Blue Mosque to find the Mosaic Museum.\u00a0 We discovered a lovely back street with a couple of small hotels and shops.\u00a0 Directly below the mosque were a line of shops selling pottery and tiles.\u00a0 At a lower level, there was another small street of shops which sold carpets, jewelry, pottery, kilims, and other souvenirs.<\/p>\n
Between two shops was a crossway which led to the entrance of the Mosaic Museum.\u00a0 This was a small two-story museum which displayed the ancient mosaics which were recently found in Istanbul.\u00a0 They were beautiful Roman-style mosaics.<\/p>\n
The weather was very hot and sunny and we slowly walked back toward the main area.\u00a0 We noticed some men stringing lights across two of the minarets at the Blue Mosque for Ramazan on Wednesday.\u00a0 We stopped at the tomb of Ahmed 1 near the tram.\u00a0 Past the gate, at the entrance we had to remove our shoes before walking into the tomb.\u00a0 Sarcophagi were arranged in rows with the largest and most important at the back and in the middle.\u00a0 The interior walls were decorated with beautiful tiles.<\/p>\n
I was very tired and I wanted to return to my air conditioned hotel room to rest and catch up on this journal.\u00a0 CeeGee wanted to explore more of the Istanbul, so we went separate ways.\u00a0 I typed for a couple of hours and waited for the arrival of my cousin, Roseanne from the U.S.\u00a0 CeeGee said later that he explored the area around the university and the little streets around the Grand Bazaar.\u00a0 People were putting up decorations for Ramazan.<\/p>\n
Finally, I heard a car pull up at the entrance to the hotel.\u00a0 I looked out of the window and saw Roseanne emerge from the car.\u00a0 I ran down to greet her.\u00a0 It was exciting to see a cousin from home here in Istanbul.<\/p>\n
Roseanne checked into the hotel and got settled in her room.\u00a0 CeeGee returned from his explorations and we three went out for dinner.\u00a0 We walked up to the little street which leads to the main avenue and chose an outside cafe.\u00a0 We ate a delicious meal and retired for the night.<\/p>\n
I could not sleep because my French cousins were due to arrive at 2:20 AM at Ataturk Airport from Marseille and Lyon, France.\u00a0 I worked on my blog and anticipated their arrival.\u00a0 I heard their car pull up to the hotel at 3:30 and went down to greet them.\u00a0 I had not seen my French cousins in at least a year and it was wonderful to see them again.\u00a0 They checked in and we all retired to our rooms.\u00a0 It will be a big day tomorrow and the beginning of our “cousins’ tour”.\u00a0 :-)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saturday, August 7th:\u00a0 CeeGee and I walked past the Blue Mosque to find the Mosaic Museum.\u00a0 We discovered a lovely back street with a couple of small hotels and shops.\u00a0 Directly below the mosque were a line of shops selling pottery and tiles.\u00a0 At a lower level, there was another small street of shops which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5,8,3,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-armenian","category-family","category-istanbul","category-travel","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1428,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions\/1428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}