People are crazy friendly

Tuesday was supposed to be the day with the best weather according to the iPhone app, so we took a ferry to Prince’s Islands, which are about an hour south of where we are staying. (Istanbul is so large, though, that we were still alongside the city. I would recommend that you take a look at a map so that you can get an idea of Istanbul’s location and shape, which are kind of weird. The ferry was not quite like those owned by Washington State Ferries and it seemed like a gate or two around the walkway could have easily fallen over allowing an unlucky rider to get hypothermia in about 15 seconds, but people here are not as dumb as Americans and don’t need such strong safety regulations as the US. We were hungry when we got to the island so we ate at a pleasant restaurant on the waterfront. I ordered fish and that is exactly what I received. I don’t have any eating skills when my meal still has fins and teeth, so it was slow going, but good. Also we had phenomenal tzatziki. (In Spanish, that is spelled fenomenal and it is now quite difficult for me to spell it with a ph!  

We spent some time exploring the town; it wasn’t too big and although we didn’t walk down every street by any means, we got a good grasp of the different areas. It was absolutely charming and reminded me a lot of being on a Greek island, although it was colder and instead of knowing 40 ish words, I know about 4. I learned how to say dog though, and wait till you hear how…

A few pictures of the town and of the local Starbucks, which is the only one I’ve ever seen with a pool! (Most likely because they more or less shared a building with a hotel…)

After a while, we decided to go up more than out, so we found a random staircase and climbed. At the top, we ran into a middle aged man who spoke a lot of Turkish, of which we understood one word: monastery, since it’s a cognate. We made signs of recognition and so he seemed to offer to show us where it was, so we followed him up higher into a light wooded area near the top of the island. He had us pause at strategic points to take photos (sometimes with him on his phone) and we could see the monastery from a distance, along with a beautiful view of a cove on the other side of the island. Then he took us all the way to the monastery and a cemetery and Catholic church. We didn’t feel particularly threatened at any point, although it seemed weird and we couldn’t actually communicate at all beyond him more or less asking if we were staying in Istanbul (yes) and if we had been to the Aya Sofia yet (yes) or a Turkish bath, which is a hamman (no). We were accompanied this whole time, and part of the previous town exploration as well, by a dog, who we eventually named Kopek (dog in Turkish!). We figured if anything got too sketchy, we’d just set the dog on him and run away because we were certainly faster, but he genuinely seemed to want to show us cool things, and probably enjoy the opportunity to get to hang out with two American girls. At another high point on the hill, there was this weird concrete cylinder about three feet high and he told us we should climb on it which seemed weird so Ali just planked, but then he absolutely insisted that we imitate Leonardo and Kate in the Titanic (OK, this was another word we had in common, although when he had mentioned it before, we were obviously confused because we’re fairly sure the Titanic has nothing to do with Istanbul...).

Then we headed down the way we had come, and at the bottom of the stairs, he (I think) invited us to tea (which is pronounced like chai here, although it’s not quite as good as chai tea unfortunately; think more along the lines of strong black tea) but we told him we had already had tea/coffee (he had seen my Starbucks cup so I think he understood) so he shook our hands, did the Spanish kiss both cheeks goodbye, and rode of on his bike! Absolutely one of the more bizarre interactions I’ve had, but not bad by any means.

We explored a bit more and did actually have some tea when we discovered we had to wait a while for the ferry (which leaves from this sweet building)...

and eventually made it back to Istanbul, which is possibly more beautiful at night. This is the bridge to Asia.... We'll probably head there on Thursday!

Unrelated to all previous stories... look at how gigantic these containers of yogurt are!!!