A proverbial cat, which is out of the bag, is still just as beautiful

Our dear friend Waverley taught us so much about Istanbul while we were here last year. One of Istanbul's best kept secrets is the Buyuk Valide Han. I've written about hans on the blog before, and actually blogged about this experience last year, here.

Earlier this month we went again and found our little man who let us up on the roof. We settled in to listen to what we had climbed all that way for. The adhan is the call to prayer, and it is called by every mosque here, five times a day. Usually you hear just one, maybe two, from the mosque closest to you, but up on the roof, you can hear the calls from countless mosques, all together... The Blue Mosque is the first - out of courtesy, the other mosques wait for it to start, then they chime in. Ozayr caught a snippet of the experience on his iPhone (but in actual fact, this will go on for almost 10 minutes).

It was a beautiful and sublime experience (that is not easily captured on a blog, sorry).

Then to our surprise, a film crew came up. We were pretty dismayed to see them coming through the door, one after another, more and more, until about 12 people stood directly in front of me, blocking my view. Boo! We pretty much prayed that they had an insider tip which they would keep to themselves, but then as we left the han, we saw two women with a guidebook, clearly looking for something... Hmmm...

Anyway, we still love this little spot, and thank you Waverley for sharing it with us!