Night 1

Our first night, we were frozen to the bone and luckily Sandra has steady hands for the night-mode because all my pictures came out blurry... The is the Hagia Sophia Mosque, the most highly visited mosque in Istanbul - all of us Mr Urban Art History alums will remember it well !
The Blue Mosque by night...
Our hostel was awesome. There was something different every night. Our first night was free hookah (aka shisha, nargile) - and no I'm not doing drugs (a disclaimer for my family). When you smoke a hookah you are smoking flavored tobacco, but not a lot of tobacco - mostly flavor. We had cherry and since I don't smoke, it resulted more often than not in a fit of coughing. I guess that means all the French second hand smoke hasn't completely ruined my lungs :) Anyway, shisha was often smoked by the Sultans; you see water pipes in almost all the old paintings...and it is still widely enjoyed today.
And we had free popcorn...