Istanbul is not Constantinople
After freshening up, I caught the metro and tram into the old city of Istanbul (Sultanehmet) with my backpack (much to the chagrin of my fellow passengers who were crammed up to it). Walked through Gulhane Park trying to find the Archeology Museum- but well worth the lunch by the fountains, tulip-lined paths, cranes!!! nesting in the tree tops and a view of the Bosphorus. Kind of neat to see large bird trying to land on tree tops. The Bosphorus was thick with ferries. A rain shower took away all the travel dirt and backtracking along the walls of Topkapi Palace, I finally found the Archeology Museum. This follows the precedent of going to the Archeology Museum in Madrid on a layover I spent there. Have a layover, might as well go to an archeology museum. More Egyptian than I would have thought, I did find a treasure trove of carved stone pillars, sarcophagi.... anything that could be carved really, jewelry (my that would look nice in my ears, let's see if it is in the gift shop), and last, but not least.... Mosaics. A whole building in fact. The museum is divided into three buildings, the largest of which had a bag check, which relieved my back, but back to the pack I went for the final tour through the mosiac building- blues and whites in intricate designs, with a few green, yellow and orange pieces thrown in, plus stained glass windows. The building was divided into 5 or 6 little rooms off the main hall with large stone threshhold that I had to climb over and always made me off-balanced as I descended. Having seen my fill, with still an hour before I had to get back, I tried to see the Topkapi Palace (closed for the day), Aya Sofia (looked closed for the day) and the Blue Mosque (closed for prayers, but the courtyard was open with a gorgeous display of Islamic calligraphy under cover of beautifully decorated ceilings, to keep my dry in the rain). Finally it was time to depart in the rain with the hordes of people. My scarf did nothing to hide the fact I was not from here (or maybe the backpack?), so multiple people asked where I was from, to which I laughed and played dumb. All in all a great layover, despite being very wet by the end. My brother and sister-in-law even picked me up in Gaziantep at the end of the adventure and put me to bed.