Today, Monday, we hung around the Sultanahmet area near our hotel.  After changing some money and getting a sweet snack, we stopped into the carpet shop whose proprietor had very sweetly accosted us the evening before. (Every other shop almost is a carpet shop whose every employee is on full alert for tourist dollars.). We told him we would buy nothing but wanted to learn more about carpets, and boy did we.   He and his cousin showed us numerous styles and levels of quality and value in rugs and kilims.  They were so nice, and really not pushy, that we might go back.  We forgot to get a picture of them.

The big focus for the day was the Blue Mosque, which is only open for visitors when prayers are not in session.  If you don't have your own head covering you can borrow one.  Here is Phyllis looking very Mona Lisa like.

She will have a bunch of Blue Mosque pictures.  Here are a couple of mine.

Before we left the mosque we stopped in a little room that had a sign inviting visitors to stop in for information about Islam. We talked to a very pleasant man who turned out to be the one who intones the call to prayer  at least some of the five times a day it is blasted on loudspeakers throughout the area. He explained the role of prayer, cleanliness, the concept of salvation and last but not least the place of women in the faith.  They have, he said, two main tasks in life: to please their husbands and teach the children.  We kept our lips firmly zipped, though obviously that was hard.

Leaving the mosque, we got a bag of roasted chestnuts from a gentleman who used an ancient measure to weigh them.  See picture above; (that's where it showed up and I don't know how to move it....)