The final stop

We arrived pretty knackered from the sleeper, with the 1am and 3am border crossings taking out nice big chunks of actual sleep! We hopped on the terrifyingly long Marmaray train from Halkali, and sped into the centre of the megacity. 

Having checked into our lovely Airbnb, we had some horizontal time before heading out to see the Blue Mosque. We arrived at around 15:30, just after it reopened after being closed for an hour of prayers. We stepped inside and were blown away by the sheer scale and beauty of it.

The intricacy of all the patterns was a sigh to behold, and we could have spent several hours staring up at the tiles and mosaics.

However, we were really flagging by this point, so headed back, dropping off 2 canisters of film to be developed on our way!

We went back out in the evening, on our way to an excellent kebab shop for our first proper meal of the day! 

It was all delicious, and the perfect end to quite a long and tiring day!