Noon Report:

• Location: N 41° 01.52′, E 028° 58.98′
• Speed: Docked
• Course: Docked
• Weather: Partly Cloudy
• Temperature: 11º C; 52º F
• Wind: SW 9 knots; 10 mph

Remember how yesterday we celebrated the sea day morning by not setting the alarm?
Well today we had an 8:15 excursion call so we set the alarm for our normal 6:30 early excursion time…
And neglected to turn it on.

Not a problem! I’ve been waking up about 6:00 every morning with a stuffed up head (until this morning).
When I glanced at the clock and rocketed out of bed we had FIFTEEN minutes to get ready and eat before we were due at the bus – and the bus was several hundred meters on the other side of the cruise terminal.

We made it (only 6 minutes late) – eating breakfast bars on the bus once we were safely aboard for our morning tour led by our intrepid guide, Achmed.

Here’s what we didn’t see.

• We didn’t go into the old town. The Blue Mosque Grand Re-opening is today and the President of Turkey (who is in a tight race for reelection with the election just 3 weeks away) is in attendance, on top of the usual grand opening crowds.
• We didn’t visit the grand bazaar because it and several mosques are closed since the day AFTER Ramadan ends is a national holiday (people visit their families and put flowers on family graves-women were selling flowers outside the gates of the cemeteries).
• Same with the spice bazaar – also closed.

Here’s what we did see:

We visited the Rueben Pasha Mosque instead of the more famous (and packed with dignitaries) Blue Mosque – same blue tiles but many fewer people.

Renting space around its base is a source of income for the mosque (which they use to fund their sponsored hospitals and schools in addition to the maintenance of the mosque). Many of the Market stalls around the mosque were closed for the holiday. However a few of them were opening up as we passed.

Wending our way around the stalls we arrived at the entrance to the mosque.

Back outside we killed some time on the local plaza waiting for…

The boatride:
We boarded a sightseeing boat that took us north about half-way up the Bosporous on the Europoean side and back down the Asian side. Here are a few of the sights along the way.

Of particular interest was this fortress.
It was located at the narrowest point where the strait is only 600 yards wide. It, and a smaller one on the other side, had cannons that could shoot 400 yards. They were mounted at water level so their cannonballs would “skip” across the water guaranteeing a hit each time – a very effective means of controlling passage to/from the Black Sea.

Back on board, we dropped our bags and headed for lunch. After that cold and windy boat ride, hot soup tasted really good, especially when accompanied by hot tea.

Then it was back to the room to nap and catch up a bit on blog posts. We got so involved that we missed the 6:30 lecture “Ataturk: The George Washington of the Turkish Republic”. But we did make it to an early dinner.

This is where I say we got to bed early – which is accurate for Cheryl. Randy, on the other hand, had other priorities. 10:00 found him upstairs in the Explorer’s Lounge, and then in the “hot corner” of the Cafe, attending a pair of Zoom meetings that lasted until some time after midnight. The bed felt really good after that.

Every evening we return to our room to find a copy of the “Viking Daily” on our bed. It lists activities for the next day, excursion times, interesting bits of trivia and other information. On the front cover is information about tomorrow’s port or some other piece of general information.

Though they didn’t sell “segments” for this cruise (a segment would be, for instance if you joined the cruise just from Los Angeles to Wellington, NZ), they have divided the cruise up into segments for administrative purposes.

So the cover of tonight’s ‘Daily’ had information about the next segment – from Istanbul to Greenwich – the final segment.

It’s a reminder that this adventure is drawing to a close (although there are 11 ports and only 6 sea days in this segment). It will a busy time but every day we’re reminded that there is an end coming and sooner rather than later we’ll return to the real world (where we have to clean our own bathrooms and cook our own meals).

But until then the adventure continues.

Onward!
R

Cheryl’s Factoids:

• On the bus drive along the Bosphorus Strait we saw a pod of dolphins chasing a school of fish – supposed to be quite common here.
• The rich city of Constantinople was besieged 34 times. Out of the ten sieges that occurred during its time as a city-state and while it was under Roman rule, six were successful, three were repelled and one was lifted as a result of the agreement between the parties. The Romans built 3 thick walls inside each other all around the city – except on the seaward side. Emperor Constantine XI ordered that a defensive chain be placed at the mouth of the harbor. This chain, which floated on logs, was strong enough to prevent any Turkish ship from entering the harbor to attack them. The walls were great against swords and arrows of the day, but when Mehmet II of the Ottoman Empire attacked, he used up-to-date cannon that pounded the walls continuously and eventually breaking them open.
• Lately Istanbul used a chain across the Bosphorus not allowing Russian warships entrance to the Black Sea to bomb Ukraine.
• Turkey is in NATO but has never been accepted into the European Union.
• In the 1853 Crimean war, the British Empire was at war against the Russian Empire for control of the Ottoman Empire. Thousands of British soldiers were sent to the Black Sea and injured during the fighting. The poor reputation of past female nurses had led the War Office to avoid hiring more but by late 1854, Florence Nightingale, with her high reputation, was asked by the British Secretary of War to organize a corp of nurses for the soldiers. She quickly assembled 34 nurses and they sailed to the medical hospital in Constantinople where they found appalling conditions. She developed strict sanitation practices and is considered the leader of the modern practice of nursing. She transformed nursing into a respectable profession for women and established the first professional training school for nurses in 1860. Several hospitals in Istanbul are named after her.