To get to Bursa, we had to take a larger sea ferry. It was kind of like flying in an airplane, with inflight service, and window seats, but we were just hopping across the Marmara. Bursa is not right on the coast, it is about an hour south from the sea, so we got dropped off at the port coastal city of Yalova. My Fodor's guide led Ceylan and I to believe that it would be a snap to get off the ferry and find a bus going to Bursa, but that was not exactly the case. We wandered around Yalova for about 20 minutes, asking random people on the street for a bus to Bursa. Old women tried to point us in the direction of the bus station, but I guess we looked so confused that a young man finally just offered to take us there himself. At the bus station, we were put on a very sketchy, but cheap, unmarked bus. I figured it was safe because we were surrounded by Turkish people, so this obviously wasn't some kind of scam run on foreigners. Sure enough, it took us right to the bus station in Bursa, which was, coincidentally, right next to the local IKEA, which has taken Turkey by storm.
Most people know doner kebab, the late-night food of champions. Iskender Kebap, which consists of doner meat, usually lamb, on top of bread, and then topped with tomato sauce and yogurt, is a specialty of Bursa. In fact, I avoided having Iskender Kebab in Istanbul because someone told me that I should save my first time for the best Iskender in Turkey. Reportedly, one of the best places to go is this family-run restaurant on one of the main drags in Bursa. It is a total hole-in-the-wall, but I knew it had to be good when I saw a line of people, mostly Turks, snaking out the front door and along the sidewalk. It kind of reminded me of the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. There is not really a menu, because there is only one thing that they make there. When the waiter comes to your table, he only asks if you want a "big" or a "small" order. From our seats, we noticed a waiter wandering from table to table. He was carrying a frying pan full of this grayish looking liquid, and if you nodded in assent, he would pour it on top of your Iskender Kebap. I asked the boy what exactly was in this secret sauce of his, and he replied that is was a mixture of butter and the animal fat drippings from the doner. Now, I am all for the Turkish experience, but I just couldn't go that far, and I opted out on the heart attack in a pan. I do have to say that the Iskender was DELICIOUS, and that I was definitely not disappointed.
Like Edirne, Bursa was also a capital city of the Ottomans before Istanbul, and as such it has some very nice historical mosques to see. I fell in love with one called the Yesil Camii (Green Mosque), so named for its green tiles. To me, the Yesil Camii is by far one of the most beautiful mosques I have seen, ever. I really could not get over the bling bling materials (gold and marble as far as the eye could see), and the exquisite craftsmanship. To the left, I am showing just one of the several carved marble arches on the exterior of the building. Every arch had a completely different design, which meant serious $$$$.
A really nice calligraphic inscription over the main entrance.
I tried to get this picture perfectly centered by putting it on the floor, but, o well, close enough.
The Yesil Cami has some of the nicest tiles in all of Turkey. The place is practically wall-papered with tiles. What really impressed me was the range of different kind of techniques being employed, from hexagonal tiles overlaid with gold paint...
...to colored tiles individually cut and then fitted together in a pattern, like a mosaic. This is the ceiling of a smaller room off the main prayer hall, and when I took this picture it was nearly black inside. I could only capture this image with the flash on my camera, and when I had a better look at it later on my computer, I nearly passed out because of how nice it is!
I was actually just trying to get a good picture of the tiles, and I didn't even notice the prayer beads in the foreground. I think in the end it could be a very nice postcard!
Center of the prayer hall.
As I wandered around the mosque, I noticed a balcony above the main entrance, and I assumed that this was most likely the sultan's loge, or, in other words, the private viewing box for the leader of the empire. I figured if the common space was covered with ridiculously nice tiles, then the sultan's private suite had to have even better stuff. I snuck around and noticed the door leading upstairs was locked, so I found the equivalent of a sexton and offered him a small contribution to the mosque, and presto-chango, we were up-stairs in the loge! Ceylan and Rebecca could tell you that I was so excited I was almost hyperventilating. When I am in a place that really gets me going, I go into this weird trance, and just move around and take picture after picture, without paying too much attention to the people around me. 
We also marched up this massive hill to find this other mosque that turned out to be rather unimpressive, save for its cemetery out-back, which was very quiet and picturesque. Here you can see rows upon rows of Ottoman graves...
...but to me, the most interesting part were these stones kind of heaped up in a corner of the cemetery. I passed them once, not giving them much notice, until I saw a figure on one of the stones! The blocks of marble were covered with Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and figures in Roman dress. Clearly, this cemetery was not only used by the Ottomans! I thought this stone was especially pretty, with the angel and the inscription in Latin.
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