Day 7 - University, Mosque, Guy's Night

Plan B
Ray and Dave woke up earlier than us and tried to hit up Topkapi Palace, but unfortunately it is closed on Tuesdays.  Nora unexpectedly got called away for some wedding prep, and Casey was not feeling well, so I went up to meet Ray and Dave to go to the Hagia Sofia.  Hagia is pronounced eye-yuh, and Hagia Sofia means Holy Wisdom in Greek.  Because the Palace (main attraction) was closed, everybody else had this same plan, and the line to the museum was horrendous.  Instead we decided to explore by foot.  We found the expensive shopping areas, the cheap/local shopping areas, a university, and Suleymaniye mosque.  The mosque was incredibly similar to the previous Blue Mosque.  The interior courtyard looked so similar that I didn't bother taking a picture cuz I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.  The interior had a few different colors, but overall, about the same.

Still

for sale at a random shop

University

Main Entrance under construction

Ray taking a picture of the mosque

Mosque Exterior Courtyard (right)

Mosque Exterior Courtyard (left)

Mosque Exterior

Mosque Interior

Mosque Carpet

One person per rectangle

Guy's Night
Guy's night was a lot of fun.  We spent most of the evening at a restaurant with tons of food, beer, and raki.  The highlight was when 2 belly dancers arrived and danced to live music near our table for ~10 minutes.  After dinner, we went to a bar and had more drinks and hookah.  Later we unsuccessfully attempted to go to some dance clubs.  The chill clubs required that you bring a female companion, so they would not let in a group of ~14 males.  The other clubs had extremely loud music and extremely bright strobe lights such that you couldn't even here yourself think.  Finally, we resolved to walking through Taksim Square and stopping for Turkish coffee and hookah.  Not knowing Adam and the Botswana crew well enough to know how crazy the festivities would get, I opted for not taking any photos for the evening.  Hopefully someone else captured some photos of the beautiful dinner arrangement and the dancers so I can add it to my blog later.  For now, I just have some shots of 4am coffee and hookah.

Taxim Square at night

Hookah Teamwork

We arrived home just after 5am :)