Tomorrow we’ll take in Topkapi’s jewel-encrusted armor, jewel-encrusted thrones, jewel-encrusted teacups, jewel-encrusted jewels. (Much as we pretend we’re not tourists, we are.) For now it’s the Blue Mosque. If there’s any escape from Istanbul’s clamor that should be it, the only sounds stockinged feet on worn prayer rugs and, if we’re lucky, muezzim and congregants in antiphonal prayer. The Blue Mosque, the only mosque with six minarets, sits on the site of the ancient Hippodrome. Gargantuan golden horses stood on this spot for a thousand years until carried off by the Crusaders and gifted to the Venetians. Now three obelisks are all that remain of the power that was Rome. From the Blue Mosque’s main door we’re routed to the entrance for foreigners. There’s a donation to get in and a donation to the man watching our shoes and pitch from a man selling slides and buying dollars. Inside the mosque the sudden silence is deafening, the intensity of blue tile dizzying. Gradually as the late morning light filters through stained glass we see we’re in the women’s section, the section set aside for non-Moslems.

She’d so like to practice her English. Good lord, what English! Still, she has more English than we have Turkish. Almost every local we meet on our travels has some English; we, on the other hand, are linguistically impaired. But English is spoken throughout Istanbul’s great covered Bazaar. A labyrinth of crafts and trades crowd intersecting streets under roof and every merchant in every stall speaks our language. Any question we have about the antiquity of mosaic plates, the karat weight of gold earrings, the authenticity of hand-loomed carpets is answered in accented English. We look but don’t buy. The glut of merchandise exhausts us. We need to get back to our hotel, change clothes and head out to dinner, some place quiet and elegant. Quiet and elegant our hotel is not; it is, however, on a line that will take us across the Galata Bridge, to the more fashionable part of Istanbul and the Hilton Hotel.