After the cock-ups listed in the previous post, we caught an overnight bus to Istanbul. There are worse places to do an overnight bus trip than Turkey - Turkish buses are actually really good.
We stayed a couple of nights in Istanbul with Simon until our tour started, then another night with him after our tour ended. Simon has lived in Istanbul for a while now and he was a great tour guide. He was also a great host!
You see the Turkish flag a lot here. Good thing that it's probably our favourite flag! 
The roof of the Blue Mosque (up inside the domes)
The Blue Mosque. Behind it is the Hagia Sofia, which was the biggest Byzantine church prior to the conquest of Istanbul by the Ottomans. They converted it to a mosque.
Byzantine Christian frescoes inside Hagia Sofia, painstakingly uncovered from beneath plaster.
Us with Simon and Tash, another friend of Simon's who was also staying at his flat.
The Basilica Cistern, an enormous Roman water reservoir constructed beneath the old part of Istanbul. It was only rediscovered relatively recently, when city authorities noticed that people were getting water out of a hole in the street by lowering buckets!
Ladies have to cover up in mosques.
Inside the Spice Bazaar. Sylvia haggled herself a great deal on a blue pashmina (see previous photo)
We were lucky that Julian and Jana just happened to be in Istanbul on the last night we were there. They stayed with Simon as well, so we had a good old catch-up :-) 