Istanbul
Up early today, still trying to adapt to the new time
zone. After a nice breakfast in the hotel we went in search of a flat white, and we found a
coffee shop close by run by a man who had spent many years in Sydney. The coffee was fine, fortunately.
We
continued walking up the hill past the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque
and the Egyptian Obelisk, all bringing back memories from our previous trip. K
tried to access a public toilet but the entrance wouldn't take her
credit card so she had to climb over the turnstiles, something she got pretty good at over the next couple of days.
We
walked down to the water and joined a 90 minute cruise around the
Bosphorus. It was a pleasant trip, Istanbul really is one of the grand cities of the world.
We had a light lunch at a touristy place, the
waiter at the café insisted on serving M's baklava to him directly from
the spoon to his mouth, fortunately there are no photos of this so it didn't really happen. After that it was back up the hill to the Grand Bazaar where we were really surprised at the stall holder's lack of interest in making sales, noticeably different to our last visit when we were pretty sick of the hassle.
M
went for a walk down by the water where a shoe shiner walking in front of
him dropped one of his brushes, so M picked it up and caught up to him to
return it. The man grabbed his hand firmly and thanked him profusely
while attempting to shine his sandals. M suspected something wasn't right here so he pulled his hand away and made a quick getaway from an irritated looking man. Over dinner K googled "Istanbul shoe" and "shoe shine scam" was the first search result.
Apparently the next step in the scam (that M didn't hang around for) is a
sob story about his family with the aim of the victim handing over
money out of sympathy.
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