Next stop was into the Basilica Cistern, a huge underground water cistern built by the Byzantines and not discovered by the Ottomans until years after their conquest.
Later we made it to the Grand Bazaar, and then out to dinner on a very strange street full of identical fish restaurants all with their own very noisy band! More Istanbul pictures are here
The next day we went up the Bosphorous on a ferry--a very pleasant trip. Here's one Palace, but more photos are here.
That night in what I thought was a highlight (but everyone else thought was rubbish) we saw a real performance by real whirling dervishes. If you are patient--I suggest you right-click, open in another window and read on while you are waiting the couple of minutes it needs to download--you can see a movie of the Dervishes dancing. They kept this up for 30 minutes. You try it for 30 seconds and see how you do! (I fell over!)
On our last full day we went the Aya Sophia, which was a Christian Church turned into a Mosque and (very sensibly) converted by Attaturk into a museum. After breaking into and then being thrown out of the tomb of my idol Mehmet III (who took no part in actual governing of the Empire but sired 103 children), we then popped into the Topkapi palace.
I enjoyed hanging out in the Hareem but was a little nervous in the cirumcision room--luckily they accepted my "just visiting" excuse. More photos here.
