Wednesday 19 August 2009

The only time I've ever seen a scene like this was when I was in amsterdam (and truth be told that memory is a little fuzzy although I can't for the life of me understand why).  Istanbul has about 20 million people or so I've heard and I think all of them were strolling down iskatel st with us.  A nice alternative to the old city where we've spent most of our time, lots of shops and restaurants.  The street that Time Out assured us was where the locals ate was, shockingly, full of turistas like us and was as overpriced and spruiked as anywhere else we've been but I've long since given up on the idea that my type of tourism is any better than the masses.  We did manage to see a little bit of culture by visiting the left breast of istanbul's cleavage and tried a new epicurean delight of chocolate soaked baclava, trawled down the bosphorus and found a slightly less intimidating area of the markets (these ones sold guns and tobacco amongst other things).  Recovery took the form of the settlers of catan card game, we'd tried to play previously in marathon 4 hour session (hell, I've done marathons that were shorter than that) that ended when someone made an illegal play, backtracked, forgot where she was and then conceded (????).  This time the lady claimed her principality proper and the noble laird once again learned his place.

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