The Haggle

I felt much more at home today than yesterday, strolling at leasure past the AyaSophia and palace grounds before taking a boat cruise up the Bosphorus to within sight of the BlackSea. I'm still blown away by the achitecture, the mass of housing, the castles and general beauty of this place. Candy for the eyes. Unfortunately my eyeballs froze after about two hours along with the rest of my body and I was all amazing viewed out. Fortunately this is where we stopped at some small village. The lonely planet describes it with few word- small village that survives off tourists from sightseeing boat trips. True. I'm guessing this is how they subsidise a $7.50 four hour boat trip. Also a military installation there and some ruins.

I had lunch with Vinnie (totally not the stereotypical Vinnie of my mind), a kiwi who's been here for the last six weeks. It was so nice to be able to hang out with someone who speaks english. After enjoying some grilled sardines and a heater at overly inflated prices we climbed the mountain through a cemetry and scouted a ruined castle. It was very dillapidated. We came down a more civil route and passed a bunch of little school kiddies walking home along the narrow village streets from school. The boys telling each other jokes and kicking there heads back in laughter, and the little girls with there pink umbrellas huddled together telling stories. It struck me the multitude of different homes, school students around the world walk home too, but the friends are still the same.

I went to the Spicers Markets with Vinnie and learnt everything I could from him about haggling. The whole experience is a lot more enjoyable for me now. I even got a half kilo of figs for 2,150,000 lira instead of the advertised 4,000,000. If you're confused by the number of zero's, try using the money! The figs were good. It was pretty fun. We'd occasionally get stuck talking to people and make up fake names and country's we were from. I didn't last really long normally cos I have Australia written on my jacket and I talk Aussie. I'd tell them Vinnie was my brother and they'd usually have big grin, give up trying to sell stuff and have a yarn. I should mention Vinnie is a pretty small bloke of Chinese descent... they can tell we're as closely related as their cousin in Sydney.

I'm not sure how much longer I'll hang around here for... I'm tempted to stay in Istanbul for a few more days. There is heaps to see and so far I've only seen a small, touristy part of this 16 million people city. I will probably also shop for a beanie and some warm gloves tomorrow. Can't wait. I'm getting to know the local carpet salesman as well. I said hello last night, and tonight was introduced to the showroom. I've said I'm not going to buy anything, and won't, but as long as theres hope for them they'll offer me tea, beer, wine, etc. I'm not touching beer or wine, glass of tea and kept going. It's good!!