This afternoon we took our guests to the Chora Museum. Since our last visit screens have been installed over the mosaics as part of its transformation into a mosque, but they are less obstructive than those in the Hagia Sophia. It was really beautiful, as beautiful as I remembered it, so I was pleased to show off somewhere that those two had not been to. We walked down to Balat afterwards, and with guests interested in such things I allowed myself to looking into the little shops scattered about there. These turned out to be really nice, filled with prints, handmade ceramics and glassware, etc. I lusted after a pair of coffee cups both handmade, one with a handle in the shape of the hammer and sickle, the other a red star. One of them bought a hammer and sickle and I really envied her having a place to put it in. This has been one of the annoyances, perhaps the only real one, of living on the road. When one travels one finds so many beautiful things and leaves them behind.
We went onwards to Eyub where I got a tasbih for my grandmother, thinking she would like it as purportedly a Companion of the Prophet is buried there. The mosque itself was beautiful, with cool courtyards and lots of people praying quietly at the grave, and a massive old tree in the centre of it which, as the GF said, was not unlike the tree in the Game of Thrones.
We took the ferry from Eyup which turned out to be an error as it made about 10 stops between there and Karakoy. It was a beautiful sunset journey down the Bosphorus, but frustrating, like being stuck in traffic.
Then we returned to the flat, while our guests went out for a meal which sounded horrific. I have never been so pleased at declining an invitation. It was to one of those Bosphorus bars that are designed to gouge tourists, who in turn flock there, so there were countless very drunk Pakistanis paying through the nose for terrible food and over-priced drink, over a view of the Bosphorus that was not quite as nice as the flat I’m staying in now (leave alone the previous one, in Galata).