Good Morning

BING! Wide awake at 3:45 a.m., feeling completed rested and ready to take on the day. Too bad the rest of Turkey was still sleeping. We read and watched TV for awhile until the sun came up and we felt it was acceptable to go for a walk around the neighbourhood.

Were staying at the Four Seasons Sultanahmet which is actually an old prison that they have refurbished into a hotel. I would have no problem serving consecutive life sentences in this place. It's amazing.
The hotel is in the old part of Istanbul and right around the corner, is the Sultanahmet Camii (Blue Mosque). It is pretty spectacular to be here actually looking at it, and it was the perfect time to be there (read: no other tourists were there yet). Well, that's not entirely accurate. There was a group of Asian tourists there (read: who better to take a picture of both of us together).
After walking around for about 45 minutes, we went back to the hotel to get some breakfast. What an amazing way to start the day:
Here's a shot of my traditional Turkish breakfast. Everything was delicious... the only I didn't really like was the fact that my sausage tasted exactly like what my cab driver smelled like on the way to the airport. Good thing we had strong coffee to go along with it.
Naturally, Ryan had his usual though things are always a little bit different in foreign countries... his "sausages" were bright pink hot dogs. Not even the 5 mini bottles of ketchup he used (yes, 5... he even dipped his toast in it this morning. Barf.) could get him to eat them. But really, everything tastes better when you're eating it here:
That's all for now. We're off to meet our tour guide. He's taking us all over the city to see the sites.