Final day in Istanbul, Turkey

Our last day in Turkey before we fly home! We left Ankara early, headed to Istanbul. One last stop at a rest area for lunch and for some, shopping. This was a pretty nice stop, there was a decent restaurant with a wide variety of food at a buffet, cafeteria style. The salad section looked so good I had to take a photo of it. Another section was a sit-down restaurant with menus and waiters to take orders.

Next to the restaurant was a store that sold mostly food items. There were Turkish breads, different types of olives, jars of preserves and sauces, dried fruit, nuts and more.

Lunch and shopping break over, we got on with our journey. We knew we reached Istanbul by the stalled traffic on the roads. Some of us were dropped off near a pier for the scheduled cruise on the Bhosporus. I have done this cruise years before, and thought it may be different. It was not, in fact the cold and cloudy day made picture taking challenging. The condition of the boat was not great either. I forgot to bring a sweater, and one of my travel mates was kind enough to lend me his windbreaker. Below are a few photos from the cruise, including one of the cruise ship Celebrity Infinity docked in Istanbul.

After the cruise, we had a couple of minivans waiting to take us to the Grand Bazaar. Again, another place I've been to before. It was crazy crowded there, but I managed to take some photos and not get lost in the maze of shopping alcoves. It was quite a relief to get out of the Bazaar and sit down on the benches of the main pedestrian walkway to do some people watching.

Our group gathered at the meeting point and walked down to the Legacy Ottoman Hotel that was located in the middle of town. As Metin said, earlier, it took about 15 minutes to walk to our hotel but 40 minutes if we were to try to get their on minibuses. The traffic was mostly at standstill.

Our hotel was an historical and ornate building. Outside the hotel were touristy stores and eataries with a lot of people walking around. We checked in and got ready for our farewell dinner. The food was good, but not great.

There was live music, some of our fellow travelers danced and our tour manager surprised us by taking to the microphone and sang. It was a nice way to end the evening and the tour, but I wish we had more time to walk the streets outside the hotel. We had to pack and be ready for our transfer to the airport at 2:30 am for our flight scheduled to depart at 6:45 am.