Monday we ate bagels and coffee for breakfast..yummm!! Then we walked all the way from uptown to Times Square and made our way to the Majestic Theatre where we bought tickets for the evening show of Phantom of the Opera. We elected to walk back to our hotel (The Excelsior) by way of Central Park. Street performers, watching dogs and people and, of course, the birds entertained us on the long walk home.
It was a great show and Celina's first Broadway production. We got a cocktail near our hotel after the show and then fell into bed, exhausted.
Tuesday was our travel day.
Celina tried a knish (appears to be similar to an empanada) with mustard for breakfast which turned out to have too much spicy mustard but was delicious otherwise. Gavin was nice and shared half of his bagel in exchange for the second half of the knish.
We boarded the subway for the long ride to JFK (approximately 1 hour). We got through check in fairly easily and got to the gate without incident.
The time difference between Turkey and New York forced us to lose 7 hours. Fortunately those were night time hours, leaving plenty of daylight to explore Istanbul!!
It took an hour of navigation through metro/crowded trams and cobblestone streets to find our hostel. We heard the call to prayer as we passed several mosques, including the famous Blue Mosque. Celina fell into a hole in the cobblestone but fortunately, no twist or break! YAY!
The quaint Istanbul Hostel (yeah, that's what it's called) has a strangely Mexican Hacienda feel to it. We've unloaded our heavy packs in the room and are now on the way to explore the streets of Istanbul before Art gets in and joins our little party for the next couple of days.
That "strangely Mexican feel" comes from 7 centuries of Muslim rule in Spain. The Church at the Mission of San Xavier del Bac contains the architectural features of a Mosque, with Christian images added to the Muslim aniconism.
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