Sorry to all for this taking so long!! The day after my last post was our first attempt at sorting out our visas for the most bureaucratically backward countries. We found out fairly quickly that the life of a diplomat and their staff is pretty easy; they are only open for visa business between the hours of 10 and 12 in the morning and as we only found this out at 1130 on Friday morning we realised we had a little more time to prepare ourselves for the nightmare to come.
I had my first experience in a headscarf when we went to get our visa photos for Iran. The scarf I bought in Morocco for this purpose was originally indigo but unfortunately it had a little accident in the washing machine and decided to shed it's colour and become a lovely shade of baby blue. This added to the panic of the night before leaving, as I was trying everything possible to get the blue dye off the rubber in my mothers washing machine!! The scarf is rather fetching when worn around the neck but combined with the blonde hair poking out and the blue eyes, it does make me look a little like the Virgin Mary, which may or may not sway in my favour in the future. We shall see...
The weekend was free of 'work' so we decided to enjoy the sights of Istanbul. Our first stop was the Basilica Cistern. This is an incredible feat of engineering, it is a cavernous underground space that was built to store enough water for the city in times of siege. It is supported by 336 pillars and the best thing about it is that all of the pillars are 'recycled' or stolen from ancient Roman or Greek sites. The proof is in the pudding when you go to the very back of the cistern and one of the supporting stones is a beautifully carved Medusa head that is on it's side, and another that is upside down! To us these are ancient relics to them a mere piece of rock...
We spent alot of time walking through the bizaar which is a higgledy piggledy mass of tiny streets which all look the same! Each shop seems to specialise in one thing and one thing only, they have no concept of diversification. The best was one little shop that sold every kind of napkin you could possibly imagine, but he only sold napkins no other dinner table accoutrements just the humble napkin, one would need to wind their way through the maze of streets to find a shop which only sold dinner cloths!
Around the streets of Istanbul you will find people selling anything and everything, one of the most common is the shoe polisher who often accost Humphrey about the state of his shoes. We walked past one of these shoe polishers and he accidentally dropped one of his brushes, being the trusting Brits we are, we quickly stooped down to pick up his brush for him, both thinking 'poor chap if he loses his brushes he loses his livelihood!' Humphrey was quickly snared into his trap and the chap tried all the harder to polish his shoes in 'thanks' for picking up his brush, the scene ended with Humphrey dragging his hand away as the chap said 'Don't break my heart!!' We were to witness this wily trick two more times...
The weekend ended with a trip to Hamdi, the best Kebab joint in town and with the most incredible views over the Bosphorus...a real treat watching the sun go down on the balcony looking out over to Asia.
I had my first experience in a headscarf when we went to get our visa photos for Iran. The scarf I bought in Morocco for this purpose was originally indigo but unfortunately it had a little accident in the washing machine and decided to shed it's colour and become a lovely shade of baby blue. This added to the panic of the night before leaving, as I was trying everything possible to get the blue dye off the rubber in my mothers washing machine!! The scarf is rather fetching when worn around the neck but combined with the blonde hair poking out and the blue eyes, it does make me look a little like the Virgin Mary, which may or may not sway in my favour in the future. We shall see...
The weekend was free of 'work' so we decided to enjoy the sights of Istanbul. Our first stop was the Basilica Cistern. This is an incredible feat of engineering, it is a cavernous underground space that was built to store enough water for the city in times of siege. It is supported by 336 pillars and the best thing about it is that all of the pillars are 'recycled' or stolen from ancient Roman or Greek sites. The proof is in the pudding when you go to the very back of the cistern and one of the supporting stones is a beautifully carved Medusa head that is on it's side, and another that is upside down! To us these are ancient relics to them a mere piece of rock...
We spent alot of time walking through the bizaar which is a higgledy piggledy mass of tiny streets which all look the same! Each shop seems to specialise in one thing and one thing only, they have no concept of diversification. The best was one little shop that sold every kind of napkin you could possibly imagine, but he only sold napkins no other dinner table accoutrements just the humble napkin, one would need to wind their way through the maze of streets to find a shop which only sold dinner cloths!
Around the streets of Istanbul you will find people selling anything and everything, one of the most common is the shoe polisher who often accost Humphrey about the state of his shoes. We walked past one of these shoe polishers and he accidentally dropped one of his brushes, being the trusting Brits we are, we quickly stooped down to pick up his brush for him, both thinking 'poor chap if he loses his brushes he loses his livelihood!' Humphrey was quickly snared into his trap and the chap tried all the harder to polish his shoes in 'thanks' for picking up his brush, the scene ended with Humphrey dragging his hand away as the chap said 'Don't break my heart!!' We were to witness this wily trick two more times...
The weekend ended with a trip to Hamdi, the best Kebab joint in town and with the most incredible views over the Bosphorus...a real treat watching the sun go down on the balcony looking out over to Asia.
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