In this episode of Sailing A B Sea we do the tourist thing around Istanbul, a city so big it spans two continents. Where Asia meets Europe you'll find Istanb...

Closed Captions (CC):
That was a really simple process. We gave

the guy our money and our ID cards he

typed in our information and we got our

Musekarts which gave us access for a

year to all the state owned museums and

historic sites.

The first place we

visited was the Topkapi Palace Museum

It's an impressive entrance

There's a great collection of very

beautiful stuff here but one of the

things that's a little bit disappointing

is the fact that pretty much every area

you go into there's no filming allowed

no cameras or video cameras are allowed

so you can't really share the joy. It's a

beautiful place - it certainly is - and it's er

very opulent.

I mean we could share that joy, that's beautiful

At the end of the gardens we had a

fantastic view of the Bosphorus Straits

This first bridge is the bridge we

walked across yesterday to walk up to

the Galata Tower - it's quite a hike

There's constant maintenance and

restoration work going on in various

parts of the palace so when you get to

the entrance there's a little sliding

thing that says this bit's open this bit's

close this bit's open this was closed

and I guess you just got a pick your days

if you've got enough time to wait for

something to be reopened but then again

like to waiting months for some of these

things because they're big jobs and one of

the jobs are doing they're replacing all the

lead sheeting on the roofs. That's gonna

take some time

Well I think we timed that quite well

it's now absolutely chock-a-block and there's

all sorts of tours going on there

especially lots of loud tours with

children. Yes, so definitely came early and avoided that. That was good.

And there's the queue.

So now

we're off to the Hagia Sofia

we shouldn't have to face any queues

simply because we've got our entrance

tickets now and I don't think there's

like a proper queue to get in so to

speak. Wow this place is huge.

It's actually a lot less crowded than I

thought it would be. Getting in was

fairly straightforward with our Museum

Kart. So this place used to be a church

and then a mosque and then they turned

it into a museum.

The size of those doors. Very tall people came

in obviously.

That's why it's called Higher Sophia! Oh, get back in your box. That was a bad one!

Not sure that the camera is going to do

justice to the vastness of this building

just unbelievably huge

Some sort of rock, possibly granite

One solid piece of column carved out of

it

This massive chandelier you can see

behind me is I would guess probably

around that 10 metres across and it's

actually suspended from the very top of

the dome

How did they get that up there?

And who has to change the light bulbs?

So this is an original 13th century

mosaic and each ... the picture is made of

individual little teeny tiles

That's Christ in the middle, John the

Baptist on the right and Virgin Mary on

the left. It's a shame that's all that's

left of it because this is what it would

have looked like when it was whole

For some strange reason known only to

the designers there's a window here

window here and just outside the window

you can see a wall, so they couldn't put

a window here, they just painted one in

instead and actually made it - tried

to make it look three-dimensional if you

look at it from this angle.

So that was

the Hagia Sophia, very interesting. Got a lot of history

behind it

Now we are off to the Grand

Bazaar where we're going to try and find

a place to eat. Should be some in there

that can help us out and we figured it

would be more authentic food than the

usual tourist restaurants outside the

Hagia Sophia

Yeah. They reckon you need quite a while in the bazaar itself coz

it's actually massive.

Yeah, it's two hours they reckon as a

minimum. And they say take patience with you.

We have entered the Grand Bazaar.

Now I guess we need to follow our noses and find food

Aannsha's seen shiny things.

This is where she gets sucked in

It could all go horribly wrong

Beads!

We went through the Grand Bazaar and

about halfway through we saw a little

entryway which brought us outside into a

courtyard and we found a place to have lunch

What are you having Baz? Durum kebab.

And I'm having the Dona kebab.

As we were leaving the Grand Bazaar we discovered an ancient courtyard

It's Tuesday morning and we've got to leave

the hotel in a couple of hours. We're both

feeling as though we've been run over by

Mack trucks after all the walking we've

been doing around the city.

Hips legs knees

Yeah. Is it old age or is it just lack of

regular exercise on a boat? I don't know

I think it's a bit of both

Yeah. So we got to get this room

shipshape, pack everything up. We've got a

plan to get back to the airport. It's

kind of like almost the reverse of what

we did to get here except we're actually

going to get on the tram which is just

literally one road up from the hotel

here which is great. Yeah instead of walking

Istanbul has been very interesting.

Yeah it didn't open up to us easily but it's

a fascinating place. It is there's a lot

of history yeah sort of ancient and

modern all blended together.

If you liked

what we did in this video don't forget

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every time we put a new video out. Thanks for watching. Yeah thanks

We've got to get up now. Okay

We've gotta switch the camera off first though

Okay. We don't want to lose any

subscribers! Oh god that would be

awful wouldn't it? For everyone!

Breakfast of champions before

we head off to the airport. Gotta have a kebab

Right that's breakfast done, back to the

hotel

checkout and jump on the tram.

Yeah, for our two hour journey back to the airport

The last leg of our

journey from Istanbul to the airport was

to get a bus and although we eventually

found out where the bus stop was the bus

never turned up so rather than be late

we got a taxi

As you can plainly see

we're now in a taxi

And the reason why is because the bus that was going to take us to the airport

didn't turn up on time and we're cutting it a bit fine now so

we've got a taxi to the airport for 35 lira so

that's not too bad. Should be there on time.

Well as usual we got stopped. Baz got stopped

They don't like the look at my laptop, they

think it's an explosive device. So we've

arrived it's 12:30, the flight leaves at 12:55, we're

at the gate, they have started loading

yet so we're in time

It's all good. Aannsha gets stressed

I like to have a bigger margin

Anyway we're here. We're here

Dalaman Airport, 2.30 on Tuesday afternoon

that means we're 15 minutes behind schedule

And hopefully the guy is here to pick us up.

We'll find out when we get outside

Barry Jones. Yes please.

Okay he's driving

If you're thinking of visiting Istanbul

we suggest that you allow at least seven

days because there is so much of this

wonderful city to see.

And we are home! It's nice coming back isn't it?

It really is. I know it's only been three days but

it's good to be home

As well as our weekly videos we also

produce weekly blogs which you can find

on our website which is www.absea.com.au

The blogs contain much more information

than we include in the videos and they

have a lot of still pictures too so check

them out.

Next week on sailing ABC we

officially begin our summer sailing

season for 2019 heading off to some

stunning Turkish anchorages