This afternoon, the GF and I took the ferry up the Golden Horn to Balat. It was a stunning journey; the Golden Horn is lovely no matter what, but today it was clear and sunny and very beautiful indeed. We got off at Fener and had lunch (ok, nothing special) and then strolled through the streets which had come alive. It’s interesting to see the very distinct look and feel this is developing, very much global hippy-ishness, with colourful handpainted signs on planks of wood, fairy lights etc. Something you might find in Puerto Viejo, for example. And quite different from other touristy parts of Istanbul which look towards either mass tourism or aspire to something closer to old Europeanism.
We ended up at Coffee Department and had a couple of drips while watching an orange adolescent cat go about its day, most amusingly when it fit itself against a yellow painted bollard, seemingly for camouflage.
The plans for the wedding in Pakistan sound like they might not be too bad – it’s all up in the air at the moment, but possibly instead of a big series of bashes in Lahore there will be a couple of smaller events followed by a trip to the north. Let’s see.