6th Day- Sightseeing

Saturday 5th May, 2007


Today was our day off, or at least it was supposed to be.
After a late start at 10:30 a.m. (for the first time in a whole week!! Oh THANK GOD) we set off for the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia (typical tourists for the first time).

Off to the Blue Mosque first: with its lovely gardens. Unfortunately we couldn't go past the inner courtyard, because prayers had begun so we decided to go across to the Hagia Sofia, which is just about 500m away from the Blue Mosque (actually it's directly opposite, in a straight line!!!).

Just enough space to get a group of 6 architects, an engineer, surveyor and geographer separated for over 30 minutes (people, the fact that there was a crowd there doesn't count).

The Hagia Sofia was just as lovely and quite grand, with one chandelier as big as my room back in London. Exquisite mosaics, intricately worked marble and brass fittings I could go on and on.
After this the group split up and Michael, Iyad, Tony, Renata, Natalia, Ioannis, Mi and I left for the Topkapi Palace while Sara, Meghna and Suzaini went to the bazaar.

For about two hours we went on tour of the palace and dined in style on the Konyali Restaurant balconey overlooking the Bosphorus.


No rest for the development practitioner, indeed. We reconvened at 8:30 for more work and:

refined our project objective and methodology, assigned tasks to different members and made a timeline for the proposed activities.


photos will come on later















Lantana