Eyüp!

Ack!  I am a day behind!

Yesterday, we went on an Eyüp tour.  Eyüp is in the Western part of the old peninsula, and it's where our TA, Aslı Hanım lives.  

You can see the newer European side across the Golden Horn:

Our first stop, next to the "children fun park",

was the Feshane.  Now, if I told you that "hane" meant "place for something," you would know that the Feshane means "place for fezes."  It made all kinds of clothes, but at one point it was solely a fez factory.  Sweet.

Now that the fez is illegal, it is used as a museum and hall for all sorts of events, including a big gathering for Ramadan:

Next, we went to a mosque that our guide said was one of his favorites.  Unfortunately, I don't remember which one it was.  But I do know that the outside of the complex is built in Ottoman Baroque style and that there is a birdfeeder on the outside of the connecting school.   Apparently this birdfeeder is nothing to write home about, since nice ones are on a lot of these types of buildings, but I am writing home about it anyway.  

Then we made it to the most famous mosque in Eyüp, the Eyüp Sultan Camii and Tomb.  A friend of Mohammed is supposedly buried here, so it's very crowded and lines are long.  You also see a lot of little boys dressed up in what look like over-the-top gold and white prince costumes with staves.  These boys are about to be circumcised.  The costumes are really cool, but I felt weird taking pictures of people as specimens of "the strange things they do in Eyüp," so I can't show you what they look like.

This soup kitchen is the only one attached to a mosque in Istanbul that hasn't been turned into a restaurant or something else (at least I think that's what he said).  

Since Eyüp is most famous for someone being buried there, a lot of people want to be buried there.  There are tombs and graves everywhere.  There's a whole hill of them, and while you can walk, it's easier to take this,

which by the way, is still only 1.40YTL with your Akbil.  Look, it's the Golden Horn!  First looking East:

And now looking West: