Your phone number is 5316987129. I hope that is what you asked. Might have a zero in front of it.
Glad you like your new hotel. Maybe your feet have just decided that they have had enough and want a rest. Could also be walking on hard surfaces all day.
Maybe Alan Jones has decided that it's time to come out of the closet and he wants to get married. More likely he's just decided that opposing gay marriage is a loser and he wants to be on the winning side.
I think it would be a good idea to stay close to home on Saturday. People at those rallies can get pretty excited.
Thanks for that. As I suspected, I kept the wrong one! The bunting has grown. There are now all these banners the size of a single bed sheet flapping amongst the rest. Along the arterial roads there were three across the road on each side for quite a way. Some were even for opposition parties.
ReplyDeleteThe breakfast here is also good - not the honeycomb oozing into a plate, and some of the other things but quite a range, and actually more things that I eat.
I'm sure all the money is mine! You appear to be making a profit on your bus ticket. Keep it up and when you die it will be worth a fortune!
I have had an interesting day. I decided to see chora church (a museum), Pierre loti café (supposedly an Istanbul must see) and eyup (which Susan told me to see). I took the bus to eyup - but eyup is like tuggeranong and is divided into x-eyup and y-eyup... So I wasn't sure where I was actually supposed to go. At one point I saw a sign to the café and ended up walking along the side of an incredibly large cemetery. I decided to catch the bus but we ran out of the golden horn and I hadn't seen the café. So I got off again. The main road had somehow divided and I was in a one way street and couldn't see the other half! After much more walking i eventually found a bus stop going in the right direction. Chora church is in the middle of a lot of narrow Istanbul streets, up from the golden horn but very close to the city wall (which starts at the golden horn) so I decided to take the bus back to the wall and walk up beside the wall until I was near the church. Unfortunately there are streets and houses and a hill just inside the wall, and there are no holes in the wall and where there is a park next to the wall it has a myriad of furrows and is definitely not flat or walkable. So I tried walking on one side of the wall and when that was clearly a mistake, i tried the other but my street ran through the wall to the other side - at least I was further up than I had been. Then I came across a bit of wall that had been restored, so you could climb up. There were fantastic views! So now I knew where I was, and was past the church. After losing my way again I finally found the church which has magnificent mosaics, but there were very few people there.
ReplyDeleteOf course I came back a different way. In the process I had lunch, refilled my Istanbul card (which didn't have enough left for a fare) and caught two buses and a tram. I even saw that the big sign was no longer on the aquaduct. I did get a bit lost, but I caught buses going in the right direction so I wasn't really lost. It was really nice going through shopping areas where they weren't touting all the time.
It's worse than i suggested - eyup has about the same population as Canberra, give or take a couple of thousand.
ReplyDeleteI decided to do a loop, and buy some Turkish delight, and I thought I could do it tonight. It worked and I am back.
I went to the end of the tramline - kabatas. The funicular to taksim square joins it there, so I took it. The vintage tram that goes down istikial avenue starts at taksim square, so I took that and got off it at what I was told is the best Turkish delight shop in Istanbul - about halfway down. I walked to the end of the street and took the other funicular down to karakoy. It is the second oldest in the world (or maybe it was the second built). I have wanted to go on the vintage tram but I had been trying to work out how to include it with the politics. So I have done the last thing I wanted to do near taksim square. The vintage tram goes along what is effectively a mall, and it was wall to wall with people. I went into the saint Antonio of Padova Catholic church on the way down. The funicular joins the tram so I then took it back home. Public transport here is as good as Japan. Nothing I caught today was more than a minute away. Absolutely amazing!