We knew this day would be a lot of walking. We started by stopping in another mosque to look inside. This is the Suleymaniye Mosque.
A look at the ceiling.
Here it is from outside.
This is the Valens Aqueduct, not far from the mosque. It was in really good shape considering it's another 4th-century artifact.
Eero standing in front of another mosque. This is the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Mosque, aka "Conqueror's Mosque".
This is a great statue of Fatih Sultan Mehmet (the same guy the mosque is named for). It really stands out from the other monuments we saw in Istanbul. That's Eero and Vernon going to check it out.
We then tried to walk down to the waterfront to see some other landmarks, including the Bulgarian St. Stephen Church, which is made of metal rather than stone. Unfortunately we didn't have much luck finding it, although we had a wonderful guy in the park down at water level help us get back on our way.
We kept running into groups of kids, playing, which we didn't see much of in the touristy areas. Some were playing soccer in the (very quiet) streets. The one guy was in a playpen improvised from the bars on a window.
An example of those quiet back streets. We had a couple of kids practice a little English with us, but generally people weren't interested in tourists in this part of town.
We did find this cool building. It is the church of St. Mary of the Mongols, the only Byzantine church in Istanbul that was never converted to a mosque. The stonework is really interesting.
As we wandered around, we passed umpteen convenience stores (each of which would bring on pleas for ice cream and/or lollipops, even if the kids already had lollipops in their mouths). We also saw this "claw" game, where you can win either stuffed toys or packs of cigarettes.
We then walked a long way towards the Kariye Museum, which was sadly closed when we got there. But it is next to a big beautiful park that the kids enjoyed, and next to Asitane restaurant, which we all enjoyed (see the Istanbul Dining section from earlier).
After dinner we went back to our apartment and packed up. Our flight the next morning was from the other Istanbul airport - Sabiha Gökçen Airport. It's named after the first female combat pilot in the world (according to the airport's web site), and an adopted daughter of Ataturk. It has one of the most charming FAQs we've ever read: a nice introduction to flying for less experienced flyers. It was much farther from our neighborhood than Ataturk airport (the one we had flown into), so we got to see a lot of greater Istanbul - it really goes on and on.
Then it was onto the plane and off to Barcelona!