Friday, October 4, 2013, At Sea Between Istanbul, Turkey and Kusadasi, Turkey

We arrived in Istanbul, Turkey at 8 AM.  It had rained and the balcony was wet.  The sky was cloudy and it sprinkled rain off and on. There was a lot of traffic on the water.  Everything from small fishing boats, to ferries and tankers.  By 9 there were four cruise ships in harbor.  We were docked near the Karakoy Port section of the city looking out on the Bophorus from our side of the ship.  Looking out from our balcony I could see two continents, Europe and Asia and the Bosphorus Straights leading to the Black Sea.  Istanbul is the only city in the world that is situated on two continents.

I looked at my GPS and there was a cache just.22 miles from our balcony on the port side of the ship.  I got dressed and went out to see what was on the starboard side, the direction of the cache location.  The name of the cache was "Mosque by TOPANE."  The information and hint for the cache were posted in both English and Turkish, so I pretty much knew what I was looking for.

I could see two mosques close to the ship when I exited.  Even though the mosques were close the exit through the cruise ship terminal was quite a ways in the wrong direction.   A lady in the terminal gave me a map of the port area and circled the mosque I needed to walk to, she also lent me a pen so I didn't have to go back to the ship to get one.  I had to walk past taxi stands with drivers competing to give me a ride.  By the time I reached the street the cache was further away than when I started, .38 miles.  The walk was along a really crowded busy four lane road.  I did walk by several restaurants and shopping areas.  Once at the mosque I zeroed in on the area of the cache and found it quickly.  The cache was on what appeared to be a tall fire hydrant. The container itself was a plastic tube with a screw on lid and magnets taped to the tube to hold it on the hydrant.  This my first and only find in Turkey.

The Topane Mosque was a great stone structure built in 1580-87 with a massive wall around it and two minarets.  The wall had windows and looking through I saw what looked like grave markers.  I had never thought about mosques being a sort of church, graveyard and all.

After finding the cache, my first in Turkey and my first in Asia, I walked back to the ship.  It had been raining a little when I started for the cache, now it was just downright cold.

Later in the afternoon I walked around the upper decks of the ship to try to take more pictures of the city.  It was cold and windy and the clouds limited the quality of any photo opportunities.  I took some pictures but I' m afraid they won't show much.

When we sailed away, the ship turned stern to the dock went north for a short distance and then did a 180̊ turn and headed into the Marmara Sea towards the Dardanelles Straights and into the Aegean Sea.  Essentially we back tracked the way we came in last night except we turned south toward Kusadasi.  We are scheduled to arrive there mid day tomorrow.

We stopped by the Club 6 and had hors d'ouvres again in the area set aside for Platinum and Elite passengers.  After that we went to the Future Cruise office and booked a Mexican Cruise for April 2015.  This will be a 10 day cruise starting in Los Angeles, going into the Sea of Cortez with port visits to Loretto, La Paz, Cabo San Lucas, then to Puerto Vallarta and returning to Los Angeles.

We opted to have dinner at the Crab Shack instead of our regular dining room.  The Crab Shack is a special restaurant set up in a part of the Horizon Court and they served the food as opposed to buffet style. We had Tempura Shrimp and Hush Puppies for appetizers, Manhattan Claim Chowder Soup.  For our main course I chose a pot of mixed seafood with potatoes and corn on the cob and Gerri had a pot of clam and muscles.  We then had a choice of desserts served from a cart at our table and we both decided on the cheese cake.

After dinner we went to the Princess Live TV Studio and sat in on a murder mystery.  It was funny but we weren't even close to picking the suspect or murder weapon.

We retired for the evening at about 11 PM.