12 Jun 2022
Three of us in our seventies, decided to book a privet guided tour in Istanbul Our tour started really good, car arrived on the right time, Maryann was a very knowledgable guide. After visiting Hippodrome and Hagia Sophia - wrapped up in about one hour - we were taken to Topkapi Palace where we spent more then three hours. We have altogether six hours to spend in Istanbul. We realized and noted that we won't have time left to visit Blue Mask, Grand Bazar and eating lunch, but we still have plenty of visiting to do in the Topkapi Palace. The only memory have from Blue Mask is a picture from the distance. Our request was to taste local food, that did not realized either. We were taken to a regular restaurant. After lunch finally we walked to the Grand Bazar where we spent about 30 minutes (!). Due to miss communication between our guide and the driver, we were so late that one point we needed to leave the car and use tram to get to our ship. We still were late by 30 minutes. Unfortunately, we were so late, we needed to run from the tram to the port. We were so looking forward to our visit in that interesting, beautiful city, hope one day we'll be able to re-visit it.