After affair up with your adviser in foreground of the Istanbul Karakoy Port commuter terminal, activate your drive to the Old Town. Cross over the Galata Bridge, which spans the Golden Horn, to access in the affection of the old town.
We will aboriginal stop at the jewel in Turkey's Byzantine crown, the marvellous Hagia Sophia. This baroque Abbey of Divine Wisdom, originally congenital in the 4th aeon A.D., was acquiescently adequate in the 1900s, absorption the accurate history of the august city-limits of Istanbul. When it was built, Hagia Sophia's arch was the better in the apple and it is now one of the world's finest examples of Byzantine architecture. After several conquests and pillages, the architecture was adapted into a mosque, but fell into busted as the centuries passed. The mosaics were baldheaded in the 1900s and the abbey was committed as a Byzantine-Ottoman museum.
Your next stop will be the Topkapi Palace Museum. Topkapi Palace, the bench of the Ottoman Empire for about four centuries, is amid on the Seraglio Point amid the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara with a baroque appearance of the Bosphorus. Walk through the courtyards of the Palace, appearance the chimneys of the Royal Kitchens, the Harem Tower, the Ceremonial Halls and the Throne Room and see the Costumes of the Sultans, the Treasury of the Ottoman Empire, the Library and the Pavilions.
After cafeteria we yield a abbreviate drive to the Grand Bazaar, area achievement from all over Turkey is displayed in bags of shops and stores. Enjoy arcade aural this alive bewilderment of bright jewels, amidst by the candied aroma of incense, beaming Turkish carpets and the active burnish of assumption and copper. Afterwards, drive to Taksim, a leisure commune acclaimed for its restaurants, shops and hotels and advised the affection of avant-garde Istanbul. Walk the acclaimed Istiklal Avenue and see how the consulates, shops, restaurants, baby bite bars, cinemas, libraries, pubs, coffeehouses, old patisseries, chocolateries and abstruse centres are chip into the 19th-century Turkish buildings.
Your adviser and disciplinarian will adieu you from Karakoy Port for your next destination on your cruise.
