A little clearer — An Elegant Sufficiency

I can’t tell you how pleased I was to look out of the window and see the mosque clearly this morning! We’d spoken to a variety of people about “what if the fog returns tomorrow morning” and the response was always the same: though they didn’t verbalise “Aaaagh” , it was there in their facial expressions nonetheless.

You see, we’d already had some upheaval with plans for today because it was the Istanbul Marathon and many of the roads were closed this morning. So, all of those tours to various parts of the city, including our own to the Beylerbeyi Palace, had to be cancelled and replaced with boat tours instead. That was fine with us - even though we’d sailed up the Bosphorous on previous visits, we didn’t mind the idea of returning to take another look. But maybe we’d not be able to go at all - in which case we’d have to stay on the ship…and what a hardship that would be (NOT!)

Of course, before we could go anywhere, we had to negotiate the l-o-n-g walk through the terminal. Yes, that light at the end of the tunnel seemed to get further away rather than closer!

Eventually we reached fresh air and from that point, there was just a bit further to reach the boat jetty, where our vessel was approaching.

Though we had brought raincoats and umbrellas, so far so good. It was merely overcast and for now, that was good enough. I think everybody on board took this first picture!

Once out into the Bosphorous proper, we enjoyed a little trip down memory lane. There’s the stadium and mosque near the Ritz Carlton hotel where we stayed when we boarded a Regent ship here in Istanbul some years ago.

A little further on was the Dolmabahce Palace, which I blogged about from that same trip here It was a rather sunnier day then though, wasn’t it?

Not much further before we reached the Bosphrous Bridge; the one that our schoolfriends and work colleagues who did the Interrail thing as teenagers aimed to walk over just to say they’d been to Asia. How exotic it seemed in those days!

We made a short stop just before the bridge though, at Ortakoy, where we had a few minutes to explore the area.

From here we could see the “traffic” on the bridge - this morning, it was the runners in the Marathon of course.

Back on the boat, we continued to make our way up towards the Black Sea, passing through little flotillas of small fishing boats bobbing around. Every so often, a larger ship would sail towards us, sounding the horn by means of a warning, though quite what the fishermen were supposed to do in terms of getting out of the way, I have no idea.

As we passed this castle, I recalled being with Edward on an earlier visit here, when we took a similar Bosphorous cruise towards the Black Sea. I remembered our boat calling at various villages on the way, each of which had some kind of speciality product. How did we know that? Well, someone would come on board selling it. We remembered various products but most especially, yoghurt.

We were now at our turning around point and as we did, we got a good view of the next bridge - I have no idea what it’s called!

We’d also reached our second stop, Kanlica. Here, we had the opportunity of going ashore for twenty minutes to take a look around and maybe investigate the local speciality: yoghurt! How funny that after all these years, we find ourselves in the yoghurt village again!

Yes, of course we did! The green sachets contain icing sugar, traditionally sprinkled on top of the somewhat more acidic yoghurt than we’re generally used to eating. It tasted fresh and good though.

On the way back, we sailed along the Asian side, playing “which house shall we have?” as we went. Just as we agreed that the one we were currently passing was our favourite, we’d spot one that looked even better!

The little pergola/summer house sold us on this lovely waterfront home. Of course, we’d also need a beautiful boat to make the most of the waterside setting, wouldn’t we? It’s fun dreaming about the impossible, isn’t it?!

Looking closely at the hillside homes as we sailed by, we spotted that many of them had some kind of lift tracks leading up to them. Well, it would be a very steep flight of steps up there, wouldn’t it?

The journey home often seems so much quicker than the journey there and we reached the little lighthouse we can see from our window really quickly. Our little boat turned, aiming for the jetty where we’d got on this morning.

Thankfully, she hadn’t sailed without us! Looking at my watch, it was just about lunchtime…hmmm!

We had time for a restaurant lunch and looking at the daily schedule, Chartreuse was open this lunchtime. After a quick freshen and tidy up, we headed there looking forward to a treat.