Back to the chaos and noise that is Istanbul. We changed hotels this morning - found a much nicer hotel for our extra 3 nights with a view of the Bosphorous Sea. Spent a quiet afternoon in the hotel - I am still getting over the tummy bug. Will start looking at more of the city tomorrow.
Walked up to the hop-on hop-off bus which took us all over the city, both the European side where we are staying and across the bridge to the Asian side. Istanbul is a crowded, hectic, bustling, rather dirty city. A slightly cooler day today, overcast and quite breezy, which lifted the smog that we had seen earlier so the view over the Bosphorous was very clear. As everyone lives in high rise apartments, the parklands are full of families enjoying the outdoors - picnics and bbqs everywhere. You cannot walk 5m without a local wanting you to buy something, come into his shop or eat at his restaurant. Gets very tiresome if you just want to stroll and take in the atmosphere. We have a 1k walk to the Grand Bazaar tomorrow so we will have to prepare ourselves for further bombardment. We saw a huge crowd protesting near the now infamous Taksim Square and hundreds of armed police gathering nearby - across the bridge from us - glad the bus didn't hang around. Found a restaurant off the tourist strip and had a nice pizza and caesar salad. Looking forward to seeing and shopping in the Grand Bazaar tomorrow.
Ann
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