Istanbul, Monday

 How fun to see my named used on this tour bus!

 We had this for dinner one night. I added words to my vocabulary. Soup-çorbası (actually learned that the "ı" at the end makes the word 'soup of',) vegetables-sebze

 Our uphill trek lead us to İstiklal Cad. (street) the big commercial avenue. Lots of shops, lots of people, and the Nostalgic Tram running down the middle.

 There's one of the ubiquitous cimit stands. Those are the delicious round breads covered in sesame seeds. They are everywhere, like tea in glasses!

 We had lunch in a restaurant that Rick Steves recommended in his book. Otentika. Guess what that means? There were women in the front making that bread we ate. The food was very good and happily not a problem for me to get vegetarian dishes. The waiters spoke some English.

 We arrived in time for the 40 day Shopping Festival. No kidding. They were having a shopping festival.

 Very typical pottery, of which we got ourselves some tiny bowls.  

Here's that Nostagia Tram. Very cool to hear it's bell ring as it went back and forth. The crowds (which this view doesn't show) had to part to make way for it. We didn't ride it as it was always crowded. We walked the length of the street, many times.

On this very Monday, we walked to this end of the street, made a couple of turns and were in front of the Peak Hotel, where Katerina was staying. She's my Mail Art friend, that I've communicated with for at least a year. She managed to come to Istanbul to hang out with us and see friends (more on this later.)