In the morning we went to Beşiktaş to the breakfast street, and then strolled through the neighbourhood and up to what was once an Ottoman weekend cottage set in the countryside and today is a pair of baroque houses set in a small park tightly engirdled by busy road. The gardens were pleasant, with residents including a pair of peafowl, and a large hutch of rabbits. The houses were very baroque, one in particular. It must be quite headache inducing, being a sultan. From here we walked on find coffee in the more trendy side of Beşiktaş, a slightly Sloaney part of town, in appearance at least. Then down through a park, past some busy roads and into Gezi Park and Taksim square, both of which had in recent years achieved some global fame.
A curious phenomenon I observed in myself, of finding analogies to places we encountered almost constantly, from amongst the places I have visited in the past. So a street reminded me of Sloane Square, a hot road of a walk in Luxor, a shopping street of a street in Mexico Ciy, a view of a hillside of the approach to Comuna 13 in Medellin. A way of making sense of what is new, perhaps, but also somewhat disconcerting and, in a way, tiring. It would also have been tiresome, I daresay, had I not kept it carefully to myself.