Thursday, 19 August 2010. We are back on board the Thomson Celebration and looking over the side of the ship as dusk approaches.
This gives us our final view of the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque on the hill opposite the ship. It clearly shows the six minarets of the Blue Mosque. There is a story that when built, this was as many as the mosque at Mecca itself and that to avoid criticism the Sultan had a seventh minaret built in Mecca. Nice story but untrue - there was already a seventh minaret in Mecca at the time.
Another story, perhaps not so nice, concerns this tower, the Galata Tower. In circa 1630-1632, Hezarfen Ahmet Çelebi strapped on some sort of false wings and flew or glided from this tower over the Bosphorus to the other side, nearly six kilometers (four miles) away. The story goes that the Sultan, far from being pleased that his country should be so advanced in scientific thought and example, was miffed at the thought that Çelebi was trying to be more important than himself and had him killed... The wings were thrown into the Bosphorus and it would be another few hundred years before anyone managed to do the same.
We went into the Horizons bar to listen to the superb sounds of entertainers Tomas and Maris. We managed to sit close by the stage this night and introduced ourselves and got to know them a little. Lovely people and a great sound. I knew I was going to come home to a weekend of 3 gigs with the band and joked to Tomas that I needed to borrow his guitar to keep my fingers hard - you can tell a guitarist by the layers of corn on the finger tips of the hand that fingers the neck and strings. He immediately grabbed my hand to look for the evidence and from that moment we were firm friends!
The ship was in port until 5:00am tomorrow so on leaving the Horizons bar about 11:00pm I collected the camera again and took a few more shots over the side. The Thomson Celebration (and its sister ship the Spirit) has a steady vibration that can be felt all over the ship - something to do with twin generators being out of synch with each other so we were told once. Anyway, it does make it almost impossible to take a long exposure photo and of a dozen or so, I only managed to get a few that are worth keeping.
Above is the bridge over the Bosphorus. It links the continents of Europe and Asia. Despite the hour it is still very warm and people are still sitting out on the rear decks. In fact on several nights we made the lower pool deck our final call before going to bed as we could sit there with a last mug of coffee and talk over the day or plan the next day. Very relaxing!
Just at the side of the ship over the roof of the port buildings was this mosque. I've no idea of its name or whether it is in any way important, but at night it looked spectacular with the floodlighting and the lights on the minarets.
Tomorrow, standing on deck I, along with many other passengers, will shed tears. But for now all is peace.
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