Continued from Istanbul Day 3 Part 1.

After coffee, it was time to eat again. The stomach may be satisfied, by the eyes are still hungry.

The Barcelona Bakery with the Angry Birds cake. They’ve got some awesome shit here.

I am #1.

Ahhh. I love cake like a fat kid loves cake.

Walked outside after stuffing our faces and we ran into a protest march. I don’t know what they are protesting about other than that 4+4+4=0.

Marching behind all the protesters are the riot police.

There were quite a bit of riot police. I was waiting for a bomb or gunshots to go off at any minute.

Antique book store.

I believe this is an A clarinet. I’ve never seen one before.

What’s the question?

OHHHH!!!!!

I take this very seriously. I miss my accordion. Sigh. Unfortunately, this vintage accordion was a little out of tune.

This is the Tunel area in Istanbul, right next to Istiklal. It’s full of musical instrument shops. It’s a little edgier here.

Found a Turkish bath supply store. We are going to get some accessories to use when we visit a Turkish bath in the coming days.

Kese, a mitt for for exfoliation.

Galata Tower. Gonna head on up here for a view of Istanbul from a vantage point. Built in 1348. That’s a long time ago…

The top floor is now a restaurant and this is the restaurant dome.

Breathtaking.

That’s the Asian side of Istanbul over the Bosphorus strait.

That was pretty fucking awesome. Istanbul is dotted with massive mosques. Click for full size.

It was cold and windy up in the tower though. Then it started getting really cramped up there as everyone came up to watch the sunset and wait for the city to get dark for the night shots. We decided to leave because it was getting too cold and we would have had to wait another 30 minutes for the sun to go down completely.

So cute.

After Galata tower, we kept on walking down towards the water. It’s almost 8 and we are in search for dinner.

3 randomly lit up pavers in the sidewalk.

I believe that’s the fish market.

Galata Bridge that crosses the Golden Horn. It’s filled with restaurants on the lower levels.

Fish market indeed.

They are getting ready to close shop for the day.

Found a restaurant right inside the fish market for some dinner. Fresh seafood right from the market. Yes please. The restaurant was actually right on the water, but it was too cold to sit outside.

These were out of this world. Tiny fried bones means fried whole and eaten whole. So fucking fresh!!

Kick his ass, sea bass! Now, get in my belly.

All the mosques have pimp lighting at night.

Topkapi Palace to the left on top of the hill.

Bosphorus Bridge lit up at night. It connects Europa Istanbul to Asia Istanbul.

New Mosque.

The other rows of restaurants on Galata Bridge.

That was fun. Got some great photos. We walked and boarded a tram to head on back to our temporary home.

Ah, yes. My baby, the Blue Mosque.

Ain’t she a beauty.

While walking home, we saw this guy busting ass running and pushing his food vendor cart. What’s going on?

Oh, the police showed up. Apparently, a lot of these vendors don’t have permits, don’t pay taxes, etc. and operate illegally. So when the cops show up, they scram. It was funny to watch this man who was dressed up rather nicely in dress shoes hauling ass pushing his cart away from the police. The police were too lazy to get out of their car to chase down the man though.

Not 20 seconds from the previous photo, we walked by the man with the cart in hiding down the street. This was the funniest part because even as he was looking past us to make sure the police wasn’t on foot pursuing him, he saw us and started hawking his product to us. Hah!

I am liking Istanbul.

To be continued at Istanbul Day 4.