Taste of Turkey: Have re-acquainted ourselves with Lentil Soup served with slice of lemon and bread, Shishkebab, wonderful Ayran - the salty yoghurt type drink of Turkey, and.... Baklava in all shapes and sizes... delicious!
The displays of fresh fruit and veg are mouth watering. We breakfast each day on fresh strawberries and other fruit with creamy yoghurt.Our hotel is in the Sultahnamet district close to the Blue Mosque. One of the minarets can be seen in this photo of a street scene nearby.
Day 3 and we are still in a bit of a daze, catching up on emails in the dining room of our hotel which is on the top floor of the building overlooking the Sea of Marmara. Sounds very glam but in fact we have humble 2-3 star, tiny room backing on to a railway line. From there we look out on to ancient ruins of a crumbling city wall sprouting weeds and wildflowers, which appears to run right along the waterfront. Quite pretty in a very decadent way as one glances down to the courtyard below to the pile of doggie dooh and shambolic makings of a fence, then beyond to a veggie garden with a pile of old metal beds thrown haphazardly to one side.
We both agree our trip over here was the best we have ever done, contributed to mainly by the stopover in Singapore and the 9 hour crash/sleep which we had in the Transit Hotel there. The usual dramas of travelling visited us. The credit card which grew legs, got up and walked from where it should have been put, to finally being found in the shopping bag with the item last purchased. This discovered on takeoff from Singapore so Pippy manages to while away the first hour of the flight freaking out, searching through bags, and composing an email to the bank stopping the card, before it is finally found! The camera pulls a similar trick, burrowing its way to the very bottom of a carry bag then hiding in amongst a t-shirt.
On arrival we dump our bags on arrival here in Istanbul, shower, change, enjoy a sumptuous Turkish breakfast on the top floor, then head out for the adventure of finding Ofuk the Dental Surgeon who is expecting Pippy at 2.00pm. He has new premises on the Asian side of Istanbul - an area we have not visited before.
It is easy to locate the "ferryboat" to cross the Bosphorus, to jump on a Dolmush (Little yellow bus) to Cekmekoy about half an hour into the suburbs on the Asian side. However, locating Ufuk's new premises is another matter and it takes us the best part of an hour wandering dusty and cracked streets, before we track him down near to where we had started looking. His new premises are state of the art and treatment starts with a radiogram - Pippy standing with her head in a machine which moves in a circle around her head while playing music! It is 3 hours later when we finally leave and Pippy will be going back each day until all the work is done.
Here is the lowdown from Pippy:
Five of my old crowns have been removed to be replaced with new zirconium ones later in the week plus one new crown centre front. Yesterday temp crowns installed and amalgam fillings taken out and replaced with new white ones. Also will finally get a proper crown on the implant done in 2008. Yesterday had wisdom tooth taken out. We will be much poorer for this experience, but we look on it as insurance as I was a walking time bomb with dental issues and one which we would not want going off mid Atlantic.
