This morning we caught a bus, unusually, but something we has tried last weekend, and we’ve been rather slow in using the city’s bus system. There are a lot of buses, but there is also a lot of traffic and the buses are often crowded and their routes are not the clearest. The morning’s bus was supposed to take us to near our destination, but it stopped about halfway and let off all passengers. Everyone else seemed to expect it, so perhaps that was its final stop.
We got onto another bus to take us the rest of the way, but it suddenly changed direction and went off past the Trump Tower, so we hastily got off and saw that its number had changed. Who knows when that happened, but in any case it turned out that a ten minute walk would take us to a third bus which would reverse part of our journey and take us to where we wanted to go. So we took that third bus, passing through the streets of Levent – an area which, till then, we’d really only driven through on taxis or underground, and hadn’t realised there was much to it besides large roads and buildings.
We arrived at our lunch destination, a kebab place with a very dramatic garden outside the glass panes, complete with waterfall and a chandelier. A pleasant lunch, with a particularly nice dish of grilled meat with yoghurt and fried bread.
Our taste for public transport having been well slaked, we took a taxi to a cafe, and a few minutes after we drove off, a panting waiter arrived at the car window – we’d forgotten our credit card.
Coffee, pleasant, and then a quick stop at a pottery place where we needed to buy one more bowl. The prices have really gone up – they were, the GF thought, about thrice (in dollars) what they’d been when we bought the first three bowls from that shop. Well, hopefully no more.
Then back, stopping along the way to buy some milk, down through Maçka park and Gezi park, and at Taksim the GF and I parted ways as he couldn’t bear the thought of battling the Saturday evening crowds down Istiklal, while I couldn’t bear the thought of climbing down the steep hill from Taksim, up the steep hill to Cihangir, down the steep hill from Cihangir and up the steep hill to Pera. So we took our respective routes and both were pleased with our choices. I stopped along the way at a shop, which I would not have done with a GF anxious to leave the shoppers behind, and came away with a yoga strap, a lightweight pair of bathroom slippers (more suitable for travel than my current slippers which are comfortable and high quality but also bulky and heavy) and a massage ball.