Turkiye, Portugal, Spain and Dubai Day 6 Istanbul 13 Sept 25

We had a nice lie in this morning, and a late breakfast. I went out visited an ATM and picked up our laundry before we went down for breakfast. After breakfast we caught up with Carly & Ella, and then Karlien. It was nice to share where we are and catch up on things going on in their lives.
We eventually left the building and went for a walk up around the plaza. We settled on Bilice Kebap for lunch. The young server, Sohin, who looked after us last time got us sorted for a light lunch. He is a real character. Last time we were there he realised we were Australian and kept saying something like “galah galah” to us. He eventually showed me a piece of paper with “G’day” written on it. I helped him with the correct pronunciation. So this time we were met with a very happy “G’day G’day”, he was so pleased with himself. We finished up with some chicken skewers in flatbread, with small plates of humus, spiced tomato puree and cucumber tomato & onion mezze. It was delicious, again, and just the right amount. As with all meals, it was finished off with a glass of tea each.
After lunch we set out to find a decent shop for a good authentic Dondurma a Turkish ice cream made of a blend of goat’s, with salep (orchid bulb flour) and beet sugar. It is a very stiff creamy ice cream that tends to stretch as you pull your spoon away from the bowl. We heard some locals eat it with a knife and fork. We eventually found a shop, we got a chocolate and a vanilla serve, and shared. The chocolate was the best, but both were good and lived up to all the texture things we heard about.
After that we played a bit of Ingress just off to the side of the plaza. The plaza sits on the ridge of a hill, and the side we chose to play in descended fairly steeply. It was a bit of fun. Ingress always tends to take us to places a bit off the main pedestrian areas. This was no different, we found many small artisan shops, a school, an Embassy and of course in Istanbul, lots of cats. More on them in a while.
We finished up back at our hotel around 3:30pm.
Ok, Istanbul and cats! It is very obvious that the people of this city have a love affair with cats. There are cats everywhere, they have no owners but are looked after by the community, food and water is left out for them everywhere. Looking closely at them, 99% have a small “v” cut in their left ear, this indicates the cat has been desexed. It is an active consciousness to have all cats desexed. This keeps the numbers in control and in good health. When Deb has time she will put up a photo spread on our Facebook picture blog, https://www.facebook.com/Greganddebstravelblog (it’s also got a whole lot of our adventures recorded in photo form, Deb does a great job with it.) So when you’re done here head on over for a look.
Tomorrow we fly to Cappadocia, and a whole lot of new adventures.