It’s a late start, as I didn’t get to bed that early, just couldn’t sleep. Under no pressure I head down to the fish market. Must explain how the markets and areas work. In fact it’s the same in most of the Muslim countries. Where they talk about a souk or bazaar, it’s where those items are sold. Like the spice bazaar in Istanbul where all the stalls and shops primarily sell spices, all competing with one another – same as the Gold Souk in Dubai.
Here in Istanbul I have come across the street that sells locks and tools, one that sells heavy duty industrial boilers and heating equipment. Just after the fish market was a street full of shops with musical instruments and at the other end it gave way to satellite dishes and huge speaker systems.
Even the underground walkways around sell clothes and shoes. Hundreds of people moving through to the ferry stages and in amongst them are these shops.
On the streets are the sorry folks selling anything from batteries to toothbrushes and lighters. They only specialise in one commodity and you get a bundle for a Turkish lira. Just outside are single mobile phones for sale. One guy is with an upturned grocery tray and 2 or 4 mobiles sitting on it. Some stolen or traded but they are very old models. Just like the old second hand model I bought in Turkcell. It works but the spell check is crap as it prompts with Turkish words so any texts are very confusing unless I read them carefully first. I have decided to get one of the smaller ferries across to the Asian side properly as yesterday there was no chance to get off onto land.
The ITYL for a token is a bargain and we are corralled into the holding area awaiting the arrival. The next ferry is due to go at the half hour so they have about a 15 minute turn-around. People are already jumping off before it’s even properly docked. When the gates open there’s a sort of stampede to obviously get the good seats – wherever they are.
The Asian side is no different but the ferry docks in one location and there is a much smaller staging area. The one on the European side has four main passenger terminals about 100 yards apart, then there’s the car and lorry ferries and that’s without the unofficial ones I saw early the other day when these boats were arriving at points and just hovering while people jumped from them.
Now that I am on the Asian side I have discovered that the Selina barracks with the Florence Nightingale Museum is only opened by invitation. You need to phone ahead and I haven’t.
Along the prom walking towards the other ferry point, which is 2 – 3km south, you pass by the Maidens Tower, which is built out in the channel of the Bosporus. Haven’t found much written on it but I guess it was a watchtower, or where maidens were left.
It’s also the venue where one of the Brosnan Bond movies was filmed. When M gets locked in the tower, the sub has a nuclear reactor melt down and Bond gets garrotted.
I take Turkish tea eventually after a stroll, in a café with a terrace overlooking the Bosporus. The view is into the sun but the silhouettes of the mosques and the palace are so vivid, just a shame it’s such a long way to get a good photo of the area.
I don’t normally like heavy black tea but the Turkish tea is quite refreshing. Some of the other tables are partaking in hubbly-bubbly pipes with the smell of apples, peaches and other sweet flavours wafting over.
Eventually I get the car ferry back to Eminonu although it takes slightly longer it runs from the main container port where three cargo ships have gone into during the period I was in the café. They come up the Bosporus from the Marmora sea and then they need to do a hard starboard and a tug does that for them by pulling one end round and they swivel on their axis.
Taxi back to the hotel and supper care of room service just for a change.