One thing I learned in Turkey was in the last year I have seen enough Roman ruins to last a life time. Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and now Turkey. Those Romans really got around. Some of them were truly spectacular but others were really boring. One morning our guide told us we were going to visit the Village of Sagalassos. I said to myself, finally a place were we can go shopping! Wrong! It ended up being more Roman ruins. Now none of these ruins are easy to get to. All of them require hiking up step hills over uneven terrain. I swear that our guide was a mountain goat in another life.

So after seeing these ruins we spent the next 6 hours in the bus on switch back roads over the mountains to the seaside town of Fethiye. What a delightful little town. Our hotel was located at a marina and the view from out balcony was spectacular.

On the next day we spent the entire day on a yacht enjoying the sunshine, doing yoga on the deck and stopping in little coves to watch our crazy tour mates swim in what I would call freezing cold water. No contest between Roman ruins and yachting.

The next day our guide tells us that we are going on a river cruise. What he failed to mention was that the cruise was to see more ruins.

After we cruised down the river for a short time we docked and this was our transportation to the ruins.

Now here are some pictures of the current residents. Previously both the Greeks and the Romans lived here.

So basically this was the end of the formal tour. We flew out the next morning from Fethyie to Istanbul. We had the entire afternoon left for shopping. Our dilemma was that the Blue Mosque had just opened 2 days previously after being closed for several years for renovation. That is where we decided to go and we were on our own because the tour had ended the tour had ended. Our guide described how the tram system worked and six of us went off on our own. It was a bit challenging but we made it.

The Blue Mosque is really called the Mosque Ahmet I and was built between 1603-1617. It is called the Blue Mosque only by foreign visitors because of the blue tiles in the interior of the mosque. When I finally saw it I was a little disappointed about the blue tiles. Further research indicated that most of the blue tiles are in the inaccessible upper galleries. In any event, it was certainly spectacular as shown in the video below.

So we were off to the hotel to pack and get ready for our early morning flight. We were leaving the hotel at 2:30 AM so my plan was to stay up all night and to sleep on the plane. I know that probably won’t happen either.