Yesterday afternoon we went to Eyup, an old mosque and graveyard which lies further up the Golden Horn than we’ve been to date. We got a ride to the foot of the cable car that takes one up to the top, to find a really, really long queue. We waited about 30 minutes, during which […]
Witches of Scutari
We took our second trip to Asia, this time by walking along the coast (a bit inland to avoid the dust and traffic) to Kabataş, through quiet streets lined with little old blocks of flats and past the place we are moving to next week. It’s a far more residential bit than the beautiful Galata […]
Don’t buy it
Yesterday, after work, the GF and I went down to Taksim Square where we were going to see a flat that had been renovated by an architect we’d met, to see how we liked the work. It turned out that she hadn’t actually done the renovation at all, just her company had, so that made […]
Aptly named
Since the GF and I went our separate ways for lunch I took the opportunity to try what is supposed to be one of the best purveyors of kokoreç, a Greek/ Turkish/ Balkan speciality of grilled lamb intestines stuffed with sweetbreads here, in Turkey, usually eaten as a sandwich. it is rather well-named since the […]
Rushed
Our flat buying proceeds apace, but suffered a bit of a setback today. We are more or less settled on our fixer-upper, assuming it goes through – if not, whatevs – but the GF went today with a contractor to see what needed to be done, and was basically ambushed by a lot of men […]
Faceless city
Today we walked through faceless Istanbul, through wide streets lined with blocky mid or late-century commercial buildings that, in Pakistan, are called plazas. There are streets like this in virtually every city, and if the signs had not been in Turkish it could have been in any of a number of countries I’ve been to, […]
A new prospect
After the glumness of a few days ago, we encountered a new prospect. It is a complete tip: a small flat in an old building which has clearly never been updated or cared for particularly, other than layers of paint slapped over each other and the occasional odd flourish, like a hole in the wall […]
Determination
I closed my Metafilter account today, and deleted all the bookmarks. It had been increasingly clear to me that I was not getting much pleasure out it, only a lot of irritation. This was before I listened to a Talking Politics episode in which Jill Lepore appeared and talked about social media. What she was […]
Babes in the wood
After a few days of feeling quite confident and increasingly knowlegable about this whole house buying business, yesterday was a setback which left me feeling, again, as though we might be a pair of babes in the wood, ripe for the taking. First, there was the increasing suspicion of that nice flat with a view, […]
Uphill
It was a quiet Sunday: we walked down to Taksim Square (stopping for a kibbeh for me along the way), and then onward to take the cable car to Nisantasi. This turned out to be unexpectedly enjoyable, as the cable car was just two capsules each way, and went over the park, over ruined walls […]