The flight must have been fairly uneventful after the plane eventually took off for the second time. I can't recall any part of it. Neither can I remember landing or the process of coming though passport control etc. I took a taxi, or taksi, to a hotel mentioned in the Lonely Planet Guide. If I still had the book I'd be able to tell you exactly where it was. It was the Otel Rio and my room cost 50,000 lire per night.What I do remember is that the room I had was on an upper floor. The building had a kind of light well. I'm not sure how to describe this properly but effectively the building was hollow so that light came from the roof down to the ground floor. Each room had an internal window onto this shaft which probably improved the ventillation too. It meant that you could hear what was going on in the rooms on other floors and a couple of floors below me there was quite a lot of noise coming from one particular room. I couldn't say for sure but my guess was that the occupants were Russian.
I only say this because of the way the evening developed. At first there was just talking, quite loud talking but obviously friendly conversation. It was clear that the men and I think there were only two of them, were drinking. There was a series of toasts. Glasses clinked and I imagined a bottle of vodka being lifted to refill the glasses continuously. The talking became more animated and the men seemed to be telling each other funny stories, at least there was a fair bit of laughter. The drinking continued and the men became more agitated in their conversation. One of them must have said something that upset the other and they began to shout loudly at eachother. There was the sound of furniture falling over and some sort of a scuffle. After that the two of them were crying together and there was more clinking of glasses until I suppose they both passed out.
I woke early. It was a Monday morning and I was in Instanbul. I had been to the city before and limited my sightseeing. It was right at the beginning of the trip and I felt a little self conscious on my own. I was immediately aware that I was in the Orient. Istanbul is an international melting pot. Somehow Africans in flowing robes didn't look out of place like they sometimes do on Oxford Street. They seemed to have something in common with the locals. I don't know but there was a possibility that even in Istanbul they might have been able to converse with business associates in some version of arabic that all of them understood. It wasn't hard to imagine that they were traders who had come by various routes whether by sea from Egypt or overland through the Middle East laden with goods and treasures from all over the African Continent to trade in this gateway to Europe.
In fact this was still Europe. The Bosphorus is the dividing line between the continents of Europe and Asia. On my second day I decided to take a trip up the Bosphorus and the picture below shows "Rumelihisarı" a fortress on the European side of the straits originally built by Sultan Mehmet II in 4 months and 16 days between April 15 1452 and 31 August 1452. It makes you wonder about the speed of modern construction projects. Just up the road from here they've been building a retail development which is to house a Debenhams Department Store amongst other things. I'm sure it has already taken three times longer than that and it is nowhere near finished.
Below is a picture of a "yalı". These were residences built in 18th and 19th centuries where well to do families would resort for some part of the year. I've no idea how old the one in this picture might be. A time-share it ain't.
I seem to remember writing a postcard to my parents while I was on this ferry ride up the Bosphorus. I wish I knew where I went, I wasn't entirely sure where I was going. I got off at one point but couldn't say for sure where. It was peaceful.
