A Day in Asia
I believe I stated this in a previous post, but Istanbul is the only city in the world that is located on two continents, Europe and Asia. On Thursday we traveled from Kabatas, the station at the bottom of the hill behind our apartment, across the Bosphorus to the Asian side of Istanbul. We landed at the ferry terminal and even though the sun was out, it was pretty chilly! We wore some warmer clothes and even went back to the apartment before we headed out for the day, but it was still cold.
We got on the ferry around 1:30 in the afternoon and I had a call scheduled for 4:00 PM and figured I would make the call from the road, which is what I did. After arriving on the Asian side we started walking away from the ferry toward an area of the city called Moda. As we started our travels we came upon a baggage shop that had some really nice suitcases. I’m not sure I mentioned this before, but one of our suitcases is on it’s last leg so we need to replace it. The bag that we are trashing is a carry-on, but we keep accumulating more stuff so we replaced it with a full sized suitcase that we can fill with more stuff!
Once we got the suitcase it was time to turn back toward the ferry as everyone was hungry and I needed to make some business calls. So, we found a Subway shop for Noah and then headed to a restaurant with local Turkish cuisine and sat down for a late lunch. Ilise and I really enjoyed the food with Ilise tasting some tahini that she said was the best she had ever tasted. Now I’m not a tahini expert, but it did taste pretty good. We finished our lunch and headed back to the ferry. Once we were back on the European it was time to head back up the hill. Noah was begging us to take the Funicular, which is a subway train that takes us up the big hill. Now, Ilise and Drew, a well as me, wanted to walk up the hill. Only issue was the suitcase. So, I dragged the suitcase up the hill and we made it a small workout.
All in all it was another really cool day in Istanbul. Drew got some more geometry done and tomorrow is a big day as we will tour the city with Tijen and her daughter Ayse Maya and then head to a Seder with a local Turkish family that Tijen introduced us to. I’m really looking forward to seeing the city through the eyes of a local Turk.
To a life well lived!
Larry Kesslin 