In the morning, after showering and putting my dirty clothes back on we went downstairs and learned that our luggage had arrived at the airport. We were given two options: 1. Wait for the luggage to be delivered to the hotel or 2. go to the airport and pick it up. The risk with option 1 is that the bags might not get to the hotel before we would have to leave for the airport to fly to Fethiye. So we went for option 2. We returned to the airport and it is a good thing we got there when we did. Colleen's bag was in a pile about to be loaded on a truck for delivery to our hotel and mine was in next to the lost luggage office with a tag indicating it was to be delivered to Alan Jan.
We quickly changed into new clothes before dropping our bags back off at the hotel and finally we got to see a little bit of Istanbul (besides the airport and hotel) with the rest of the tour group. First we went to the Basilica Cistern. This is an underground water storage built in the sixth century to supply water to the Great Palace. It was forgotten about for a few hundred years when it was redescovered in the 16th century. Now it is a really great place to escape the heat in the summer as well as check out the Medussa heads.
Next we made our way to the blue mosque. We only had about 15 minutes to marvel at the beautiful stained glasses and tiled domes before all the tourists were kicked out for prayer time. 
After the mosque we proceeded to the Hippodrome. I'm sad to say that there was not a hippo to be found. At one time, this was the site of the beloved chariot races but now it is merely a nice looking park. Among the sites in the hippodrome was an Egyptian obelisk from Karnak. When I was in Karnak a few years ago, I didn't notice that it was missing any obelisks but I plan to go back through my pictures and see if I can find the spot from where it was ripped so that it could come to Istanbul and guard the hippos that once lived there. (I might be making that last part up.)
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