After yesterday’s slightly overwhelming day, today we decided to stay around Selcuk, which is a lovely little town. It’s bisected by a road, with the markets and other things on one side and the sights and old houses (many now turned into guesthouses) on the other side. We started with the museum which was fairly […]
Back to the markets
Today, Saturday, and the organic market in Ferikoy was on, so we strolled there. We took the route through Dolapdere, with its vertiginous stairs, crumbling churches and beautiful neighbourhoods, and up to Ferikoy itself. It is yet another of the parts of Istanbul with truly lovely old houses, easily the equal of Balat, but very […]
Ups and downs
I woke up with a headache after a disturbed sleep and had the sort of day where I kept drinking water hoping to wash away the headache to no avail. I did get started on work at least, and did a few chaptres of the book I am to finalise, and also learned that a […]
Red carpet
This afternoon, as the cleaners came, we popped by the flat to meet the architect and give her a small payment for windows, show her the basement, and measure the wall where the projector screen will come. Then we walked through Galata’s light shops to get a sense of what is available – light switches, […]
Tile decisions
After lunch, the GF and I took a ferry to Uskudar – I will never grow tired of the ferry – and then a taxi about 10km inland to Ataşehir, a satellite town full of skyscrapers. I understand it’s a fairly desirable place to live, but felt rather grotesque, with huge glassy skyscrapers and massive […]
For great justice
Twenty years ago, give or take a few days, one of the original memes spread across college computers. It was everywhere for a while, partly it was novelty as there were not so many other memes competing with it. Strange to think this was before even 9/11. In honour of the days when a meme […]
Founding fathers
The other founding father of the nation had his folk artistic treatment. First there was Jinnah’s birthday cake in December, and now there is this rather splendid sculpture of Iqbal in a Lahore public park. The first still makes me laugh, but the second I rather like, and thought it was rather lovely that it […]
Demolition
A rather difficult day. I had a lot of work, but it was a sunny day and I went with the GF to Kadikoy. We waited for the ferry at Karakoy, didn’t realise it was the one moored at the pier, and missed it as chugged away. The next one was only 20 minutes away, […]
Happy birthday
It was Jinnah’s birthday on 25 December, much to the relief of Pakistani Christians as this means that they can have Christmas off without the mullahs screeching blue murder. This was doing the rounds on social media – a celebration of his birthday somewhere or the other. One understands the ‘get me out of here’ […]
Peran Christmas
We had our first Christmas in Galata, Pera as was. In the morning I dashed to finish some work, and managed just as the GF arose. We went off to bring a Turkish breakfast from a nearby cafe, along with a couple of glasses of freshly squeezed pomegranate juice. Since our dining room is dark […]