I was very grumpy indeed this morning as there was no water in the taps when I woke up, so that I had to use mineral water even to wash hands and brush teeth and perform the most basic ablutions. The water didn’t return till the stroke of 11, so I assume it was a scheduled outage, and was particularly irritated that we hadn’t been told in advance so I could save some water, and just the previous evening I’d remarked to the GF how I enjoy my two daily showers. Anyway, eventually the water came and I showered, but after drinking my tea, boo.
We took the ferry to Kadikoy. It was a less sunny day than the last couple, but there was still frequent sun and the grey times were not especially grey. We wandered through new (to me) parts of Kadikoy, including to a kitchen store next to a proudly old-fashioned sex shop, dark and seedy and with neon tubes spelling out EROTIK. The kitchen shop was closed but soon after we passed another and bought some glass containers and a peeler so the GF can make his roasted vegetables tomorrow.
One of the purposes of the trip was to try the sahlep from what is held to be a particularly good purveyor. This purveyor turned out to be known to us – on our first trip to Moda, during the summer, we bought ice cream and had it on the sea shore. Today we had the sahlep on the shore as the sun went down. There was a pink-grey haze over the water, and through it scudded sailboats, their sails golden in the light. The sahlep was also very tasty.
Our stroll along the seafront continued, with a brief pause to watch a group of very large and powerful looking men expertly play basketball. A couple of them were the massive, powerfully built types with shaved heads and jet black beards, and I idly wondered what it must be like to be alway represented on screen as a thug or a laughing stock. That said, I suppose my own representation on screen is probably as a drab librarian or shopkeeper or something, when of course in truth I have a rich inner life.
We came to a decision point: to turn left and return to Kadikoy to take the ferry back, or to turn right and walk further along the shore till we reached the Marmaray metro line, and return from there. We decided to go left, for several reasons: it was growing dark and probably cold, and we had just been talking earlier of how the ferry makes even the journey a pleasure in a way which even the swishest, swiftest metro can’t. As we turned we spotted another kitchen shop and picked up a few containers, and then walked on to the port, once more connecting known places on the map.