Day 29 Istanbul

Saturday 4 August (Day 29) Cosmopolitan Hotel, Istanbul, Turkey, 0/9284 km
Jamaliah decided today that we all should take a day rest from the constant travelling and thus we opted to stay a day longer here. Istanbul is a great city to linger on. Weather is great. Sunny, not humid, temperature around 25 deg and with cool breeze coming from the sea. This morning we went to the Archeological Museum located to the Top Kapi palace. A very informative and impressive museum. It took us almost 3 hours to see all the exhibits in it. Quite exhausting in fact. Good thing the kids were not with us. Beside the lovely carved scarphogus found in Sidon we were happy to see the grave stones which were missing from the commercial grave complex of the 2 brothers in Palmyra. There we saw no remaining covers and anything with the shape of a head was damaged. I do hope that in some time in the future all museums give back there treasures to the country and possible site where they came from. From the museum we wandered up and down the streets. We found a starbuck coffee shop where Jamaliah had her usual Frappachino and Rudy’s his coffee. We also found a Movie theatre showing English speaking movies (Die Hard 4, Transformers and Disturbia). After picking the boys up from the hotel, we walked in the direction of the Ferry terminal. We were hoping to take a boat trip down the Bosporus. Unfortunately the only excursion available is a 3 hour round trip. As the boys were hoping to go and see a movie in a few hours time, we decided to forgo this cruise. Instead we bought tickets for a tram ride to the cinema. This was a more exciting ride for the boys instead of the boat trip. Rudy decided to watch Die Hard 4 and the boys watched The Transformers. Rudy’s film was finished first so, while waiting for the boy’s movie to finished RW+JJ had a nice romantic meal in one of the side streets. The boy’s movie was only finished at 11:00 so we waited in front of the exit for them for 30 min wondering if we got the timing right.