Sort of like the 3-continents-in-a-day trick in Turkey, today we stood in separate hemispheres – Tom’s in the North and I’m in the South. While we were there we saw a fun (if bogus) demonstration of the Coriolus Effect.

In the Northern Hemisphere we see water circling a drain to move counter-clockwise, which is just what it did 15 meters from Tom’s side. Moving to my side, 15 meters the other way, the water drained clockwise. This was shown taking a bowl with a small hole (#4 knitting needle) at the bottom, letting the water drain, using a matchstick to amplify the motion of the water. It was straight out of Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Guess what happened right under the sign? The water drained straight down and the match didn’t move! Even though we learned it in science class, the internet says it’s not true. Oh well, at least the GPS confirmed we had crossed the equator.

Our trip from Mt. Kenya took us to the Rift Valley, Kenya’s breadbasket.

Descending into it we saw, along with all the other farms, plantations of tea and coffee. (The coffee here is de-li-cious.)

On our drive, I fell in love again…with a tree.

The umbrella acacia is one of the 50 species that grow in Kenya, most with harvestable wood. Its silhouette is gorgeous however it’s seen.

We entered Lake Nakuru National Park and almost as soon as we did, we spotted the very shy White Rhino.

After checking into the Lion Hill Lodge, where we have a cozy cabin with a view of the stars, we loaded up for our first game drive this afternoon. Here’s our guide, Nicholas, with Tom and the Land Rover. The top pops up for 360-degree viewing that’s perfect for getting all these photos. It was also huge entertainment to stand up in a moving vehicle.

Birding has never appealed to us because they’re so hard to see. Well, it wasn’t difficult to spot them today.

This very odd-looking one is called a yellow-bill oxpecker. I think. I was scribbling down names between shutters. Nicholas knows the names of everything. All of the mistakes are my own, of course.

Anyway, oxpeckers ride the backs of African Buffalo and other animals picking ticks. You’ll catch glimpses of them in other photos of mine, but they’re very clear here on the back of an impala. And if you’re wondering, impalas can be identified by the two black stripes on their rumps.

Here’s the male:

Also seen was the bush buck, distinguished by its furry neck.

And the other thing that vaguely looks like a deer is the Thompson’s Gazelle, an interesting creature. Birth has to come with the rains, which isn’t always convenient for the doe’s gestational period. She can actually hold onto the unborn gazelle for two months more.

Our first sight of Masai Ostriches. The male is the black-feathered one. Hope to see many more.

Plains Zebras:

Lake Nakuru is famous for the pink flamingo migration. We just missed the biggest part of their visit here, but there are still plenty of them to look at and admire. Watching them take flight gave a better view of their plumage.

The yellow-bark acacia, is the dominant tree in Lake Nakuru with airy forests as well as gorgeous single specimens.

I have no idea what you call a bunch of baboons, but we drove through a whole lot of Yellow Baboons. (You can see a little yellow in some of the fur.) We were lucky to see some newborn and young baboons.  It’s very hard not to read human characteristics into them. Just try.

We ran into our friends from last night, the African Buffalo. Nicholas says they’re among the most dangerous animals to a man on the ground because they can charge completely unprovoked. Lucky for us we’re in a jeep, which they’ don’t seem to have much interest in.

The luckiest moment of the afternoon by far was getting to watch lions. I don’t know how Nicholas saw this head in the grass, but we stopped pretty quickly so he could point the lioness out to us.

Looking up this very old acacia, we were in for a bigger surprise…this big cat taking a nap! She slowly woke up, regarded us for a moment and then went back to more important matters like staring into space.

The whole time we were watching, we thought there were only the two lionesses. Going through the pictures this evening, I realized the male was there the whole time.

And so went our first game drive of the safari.

Bleary from a 3.30am arrival, we were nevertheless happy to arrive in Nairobi and to meet our wonderful safari guide, Nicholas, who loaded us into the Land Cruiser and made the trip up the slopes of Mt. Kenya.

You might notice geographic coordinates on the sign above…Starting now, all the photos are going to be available in a larger size when you click on them. And in a geeky development, most of the pictures may have titles with the geographic location and altitude when you mouse over. This GPS information is also embedded in the photos’ metadata. This means if you have software that can read this information, you’ll be able to see the location on Google Earth, Google Maps, Yahoo Maps and MS Bing. Pretty nifty if I do say so myself.

The Mountain Lodge is the largest wooden lodge in East Africa. The rooms are wonderfully mountain-y and he clean, breathable air is such a relief. Our room has just the right amount of rustic-ness and comes with a balcony for wildlife viewing. The dining room was pretty good considering how many different nationalities they accommodate. Some of the more interesting things we ate were: juice from a plant I’ve never had any luck with, tree tomato…a wonderful Kenyan dish of greens much like collards and kale cooked in cream…leg of lamb…a kind of mango that’s new to us – it looks totally unripened but isn’t…and, of all things, Paris Brest, the bicycle-wheel of choux pastry filled with pastry cream.

But the hotel’s not the reason we’re here on safari, is it? The main attraction here is a genuine natural watering-hole, where all types of game congregate at different times of the day. Besides our balcony, you can view it from further above or right at ground level in a little tunnel.

Within minutes of dropping off our bags, we saw two beautiful animals, the bush buck and water buck. The water buck is unique in that way that it avoids predators: they’re not interested because the buck’s meat is much too stinky!

Soon enough two Egyptian geese started waddling and quarrelling. And as dusk started to fall, a herd of African Buffalo slowly passed through.

Night fell and the lights on the watering hole came up.

The lodge staff came in to turn down the beds and supply hot water bottles. They also offered an animal wake-up call service, where they would knock on the door throughout the night as different animals showed up at the watering hole. We didn’t see mountain elephants or lions this evening, but we did see during our stay:

as well as a bunch of others unidentified by us.

Evocative, misty morning came and with it, a bunch of Sykes’ monkeys.

Oops, wrong picture.

If this is a sign of the week to come, we are in for a fantastic time.

Oh, and JAMBO is Swahili for hello!

We had one more day in Cairo, but considering how difficult it was to get around the city, we lazed around the hotel regrouping for our next stop, Kenya.

The story so far: Egypt is the fifth country out of ten we’ll be visiting. We have close to 10,000 photos so far and have not had a single day of stomach problems. Knock wood.

Looking back however, I see some cases where we weren’t in the safest of situations:

Yesterday for example, there were a lot of police cars in Coptic Cairo. The reason was a group of Israeli tourists. There had just been a bombing three weeks ago targeting a synagogue.

When we checked in to this hotel, we were encouraged to say we were Canadian, since Americans and Israelis are usually accompanied by armed police when out touring the city. Our guide didn’t think having a policeman for just the two of us would enhance our visit.

It might not have been a bad idea actually, since both of us had the willies walking around the streets outside the hotel. I am never the type to be alarmed by my surroundings, but this came close.

Last week there was the earthquake in Eastern Turkey not all that far from where we were in Cappdoccia. And just days before that, there were arrests of some of the military accused of plotting a coup.

Looking further back to India, they were still pretty jumpy after the Mumbai bombings and security was pretty zealous and heavy-handed at times.

It’s a crazy world we live in.

As we were getting to leave the hotel, the weather suddenly turned cool and even grayer, looking like rain. A sandstorm was blowing in.

The mosque of Muhammed Ali (not that one) is located in the Citadel somewhere in Cairo. Where I couldn’t tell you because the smog was so bad, it’s impossible to get your bearings.

Ali’s mosque was built only at the beginning of the 18th century making it a baby next to most of the edifices we’ve looked at on our trip. In it is his marble tomb.

The main impression of Egypt for me: the state of their monuments is pretty sad and their care is indifferent.

Here’s an unusual remodeling project. An Imam of the mosque thought that the original, wood pulpit was too far to walk to give a sermon, so he had one built 20 feet closer.

Still, Tom said it was his favorite mosque of the trip so far. This is the impressive ceiling dome and half-domes (garishly lit).

Those do look like halos, don’t you think?

Outside, we saw a catapult that I’d like to bring home.

And this must say something about a meeting of cultures.

THE HANGING CHURCH

Cairo, of course, has a rich history of multi-culturalism and until recent times, there were significant populations of Jews and Christians living side-by-side with the Muslims, no longer the case of course. Cairo has been slow to recognize its responsibility in preserving that heritage. It’s doing a pretty good job in Coptic Cairo a small area of just a couple of streets that’s home to some pretty interesting churches and the Ben Ezra Synagogue.  We visited the church of St. Bacchus and St. George, known as the Hanging Church, so-called because the floor of the church doesn’t actually touch the ground, having been built in the air between two towers. The are signs the building might actually be pre-Christian: for example, it has a decidedly irregular arrangement of spaces. It has a timbered roof and much of the stonework was recycled from other buildings.

There’s a column where a vision of the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared and is now wrapped in plastic film. (Here in Cairo, saran wrap is apparently an accepted method or preservation.)

The story of the apparition: A Christian was hanging out with a Jew and Muslim (not a joke). There was some story of creating a mountain from a grain of mustard (is this the same as the mountain out of a mole hill?). The Christian was challenged to prove its truth, so he told his colleagues to wait for three days and he would do so. He came to this church to pray and while he did, he saw the Virgin Mary come to him. On the third day there was a big earthquake and the mountain where the Citadel sits moved three inches.

(I know there’s some saying about moving a mountain somewhere. Anybody know what it is?)

There’s also a painting called the ‘Mona Lisa Mary’ because here eyes follow you wherever you are in the room.

In the gift shop, Tom was happy to buy a holy air freshener.

We also saw a church where the Holy Family hid from Herod. Amazingly it lay under thirty feet of water only a few years ago. Sadly, the Ben Ezra Synagogue was closed to visitors today so we couldn’t go in.

THE EGYPTIAN MUSEUM

Memories of comic books came flooding back when we visited the Egyptian Museum. Rooms upon rooms of sarcophagi, statues, and other pharaonic bric-a-brac were jaw-dropping. Sadly photography isn’t permitted inside…ironically considering how poorly everything is taken care of. It looks just like you’d imagine a museum built at the turn of the last century would look.

The comic book I was thinking of was about Howard Carter discovering King Tut’s tomb. It all came back to life walking around the huge amount of stuff on display. If you’ve ever been to one of the travelling Tut shows, know now that they show nothing of the immensity of the actual collection. Where there was a single showpiece in the DeYoung show, there are at least four more of them here. We moved through the contents of the tomb, finally arriving at the treasures room. Suddenly we were face to face with the most potent symbol of Egypt, King Tutankhamen’s mask.

We were this close to the head mask and let me say, it is absolutely spectacular: solid gold, encrusted with gems and precious stones. (photos from Wikipedia) Then there was the absolutely creepy mummy room. After a while, my stomach couldn’t take anymore and I left. Tom took the time to notice how long the fingernails were and the state of their hair. It was eerie how much some of the mummy heads look like the distended alien heads from the movies.

There was funny thing about the mummy currently identified as that of Hatshephut, whose information can read: “now known to be Hatshephut, great female pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, the mummy is of an obese female with bad teeth.”

About the museum…it is charmingly antique, musty. The glass cases from 1901 have never been introduced to Windex. You can easily imagine Indiana Jones barreling around in here. What is not great is how ancient the curating is. There are ceiling windows that are broken and let in the weather. Pieces that stood in the dark for 4000 years now have direct sunlight beating down and can’t possibly survive. There are a lot of glass cases with cracked glass. And that’s not even getting to the old-fashioned presentations, poor descriptions and general lack of care everything you look.  It’s heartbreaking, but being a little aware of the current state of Egyptology from the news, it’s not surprising. I hope one of these days they get their act together.

That said, revisiting this museum would be my main reason for returning someday to the country.

So that, basically was our short trip to Egypt.

They’re just like all the pictures and movies we’ve ever seen and then again they’re not. They look big in pictures, but the actual immensity of them standing front of you is startling. The scale of them was what was most surprising. There are tiny people at the bottom of the pyramid.

After the hullabaloo hotel last night, we were very glad to start the day with this. We did and saw pretty much the same thing as the rest of the thousands of tourists here at the same time. And we let our tour guide make us do foolish poses as well. It was still a lot of fun.

I do mean thousands. This is the beginning of Cairo’s high season and there are crushes of people everywhere. The tour guides seem to speak every language in the world.

We climbed down (up?) into the Pyramid of Khafre. It was claustrophobic, stuffy, and dark…how could we not go in? There was a sarcophagus down there, so of course we had to step in and pretend we were mummies.

Here’s a trick question, which of the two pyramids is taller?

Fun fact: the pyramid of Cheops, on the left, is the taller and the reason is not the perspective of this shot. Khafre, Cheops’ son, wanted a taller tomb than his father’s. Persuaded that this would be disrespectful, he came up with the clever idea of simply building it on higher land.

I was surprised that the Sphinx is right here with the giant pyramids.

And, of course, we saw camels, the ship of the desert.

Next was a visit to the Memphis Museum, once a capital of Lower and Upper Egypt. There a standing statue of Ramses II had broken because of weak knees and now peacefully reclines like the Buddha.

Real hieroglyphics on a sarcophagus:

Over at Saqqara, we saw pyramids on a more approachable scale. The Step Pyramid marked an important development in making these things as it was the first time a tomb was built above ground. The pyramid was built around it. Its being restored and there’s a field of pieces waiting to be put together.

Then there’s the Bent Pyramid whose angle of ascent changed abruptly during construction when someone figured out the original plan wasn’t going to work. And a crumbling pyramid. I wonder what is must have been like to have been a tomb raider looking at that and thinking, “hmm, I’ll have to go inside and see what I can steal.”

Also in the area was a beautiful, Art Deco-ish (there’s a connection, right?) temple for the Pharaoh to perform ceremonies, like fighting a bull bare-handed.

You can notice the fine limestone that skinned the temple. This kind of rock was used to cover the entire pyramids at Giza, which must have made for quite a sight, gleaming in the sun.

Inspired by his surroundings, Tom contemplates the afterlife as a pharaoh.

The hotel this evening was much better, but the food was unremarkable.

Tom likes to be conservative about leaving plenty of time to get to the airport and it turned out to be a very good thing for us today.

The hotel arranged our ride and ushered us into the van that came, but they sent us to the wrong airport! In a van full of other passengers, there was nothing to do but sit and cross our fingers. The trip was an hour in the wrong direction.

As it always does, things worked out and we got there in time. Barely.

There was another farce at the airport when we found out our Cairo flight is sometimes run by Turkish Airlines and sometimes by Egypt Airlines, without any real pattern. Running around the airport trying to track down the right check-in counter was pretty funny.

We were very glad to see Turkish Airlines in charge today. I do not know how they manage to do it, but the food they serve has been at least very good and sometimes excellent. Tom ordered swordfish that was properly  cooked and my mushroom ravioli had a flourish of black chanterelles. Then there was the creamy baked rice pudding that was better than any rice pudding we’ve ever had on the ground.

The misadventure had one positive note: We crossed from Old Stanboul, which is in Europe to Istanboul’s Asian side. Now we can say that in the space of just a couple of hours, we will  have set foot on three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa.

We were not so lucky when we got to Cairo. Our stay is going to be short so I booked a guide for a couple of days. The travel agency booked us into an absolutely filthy and unsafe hotel with fantastic views of the pyramids of Cheops and Chafre.

We thought we’d escape our dismal prison by going for a walk somewhere. The bellman got us a taxi and promised we’d be going someplace with restaurants and shops to browse. Where we wound up was in the middle of a six-lane road with cars racing around like it was Sears Point. The only way to cross was by foot and at great danger to our lives.

HOTEL REVIEW: Hotel Kaoud aka Delta Pyramids

So you might wonder, how bad was the hotel? In the restaurant I could watch  the dishwashing station was right by the door. Unfortunately I saw them “drying” dishes with sopping wet towels, even dropping the towels on the heavily-trafficked floor only to pick them back up and return to infecting the dishes.

The elevator was, at first, charmingly idiosyncratic. Wheezy and reluctant to start, we felt like we had to do our best impressions of Mrs. Mears (Thoroughly Modern Millie) and tap dance the box into action. This quickly turned sour as the elevator consistently missed the floor by a good four inches. It finally became too much when it just plain stopped and made ominous creaking noises. It was lovely then to learn the emergency bell button did nothing of the kind.

And so we come to the pièce de resistance: the room. It was disgusting. The blankets were slimy to the touch and obviously hadn’t been cleaned in years. There were holes in the floor that were barely covered by the carpet.

True delights awaited in the bathroom with a badly cracked sink which also featured an extra hole.

And, saving the best for last, the mildew in the shower:

I wasn’t planning on doing any hotel reviews until our trip was over, but folks planning a trip to Cairo should definitely be aware of the state of some hotels. The government of Egypt has an official star rating system which gave this place an incomprehensible four out of five stars! So…don’t even think of staying at the Hotel Kaoud also called the Hotel Delta Pyramids and the Hotel Kaoud Delta. in Giza on King Faisal Road. Just don’t.

Tomorrow has got to be a better day.

What lovelier way to begin our last day in Istanbul than to see a chicken?

TWO STICKS IN THE GROUND

Istanbul, of course, used to be Constantinople. On the left we have the column Constantine used to mark the founding of the new city. On the right, it’s what remains of the triumphal arch from which all distances in Byzantium were measured.

MUSEUM OF TURKISH AND ISLAMIC ART

Whirling our way through our last sights, we stopped at this museum with its fabulous collections. The top picture is an inlay box. The second row shows calligraphy. The picture on the right is actually a deed to a piece of land. Click on it for a closer look. The last row is from the very important rug collection. One of the designs struck me as reminiscent of Austrian Jugendstil.

MIDNIGHT EXPRESS

The area known as Sultanahmet, now full of hotels and tourist shops was a ratty area not too long ago. The prison in the movie Midnight Express was on the site of what is now a very posh Four Seasons Hotel

THE BASILCA CISTERN

Built in the 6th century and used to store water from a forest 10 miles away, this cistern is wonderfully spooky. There are two famous Medusa heads at the foot of two columns. When Medusas were used in decoration, they typically had to be upside-down or sideways to protect people gazing them from turning into stone. Finally, there’s the Column of Tears.

OUR FINAL MEAL

Going for a sure thing, we went back to our two favorite restaurants under the parking garage. At Namli Gurme, we had, among other things, delicious stuffed mussels and a green from the south that I’m pretty sure is a kind of saltwort.

And could there possibly be any way to end our visit than one final plate of Güllöglu’s phenomenal baklava?

Istanbul was the terminus of the Orient Express, of Agatha Christie fame. The final station was here. Inside were an old car, a piece of the dining car, the old uniform and a wild picture of a train crash. I wonder if the engineers were texting when it happened.

We were foiled in our attempt to visit the city’s main mosque because it’s undergoing a long, throrough restoration, so I happily settled for a delicious halka tatlisi, a crunchy honey-soaked pastry sort of reminiscent of a churro.

Moving back down the hill, we made another pass through the Spice Market. The piles of everything was mind-boggling. We were there so I could pick up some saffron. From left to right, Iranian saffron, medium-grade Turkish saffron, and highest grade Turkish saffron. It was hard for me to compare them without using them in cooking, so we shall see. (Of course I had to spring for the highest grade.)

Leaving the Spice Market, we chanced onto the plant market, where I picked up some seeds  for pumpkins (in Turkey you eat only the seeds and throw the rest away) and a black carrot. There also jars of leeches for medicinal use.

A couple more random things from the day:

A very beautiful mosque above some very busy bazaar streets is the Rusem Pasa (16th century). Inside they allowed women onto the mosque floor, albeit behind a screen so they wouldn’t cause a ruckus. (I’m kidding, but they’re serious.)

Our must-do visit to see how the fried pies are today. We had an apple and a blackberry custard pie. Speaking of chain food, who sees El Torito in Europe???

Dinner featured more pita blimps and a wonderful red mousaka, without the usual white sauce.

DERVISHES

The highlight of day was seeing a touristic performance of Whirling Dervishes. A Sufi sect following the mystic poet Rumi, the members of the Mevlana were outlawed in Attaturk’s secularization of the country. Technically, they still are to this day, but sometime in 1950s, the government realized their tourist appeal. The whirling is a meditative, ecstatic way to connect with god. Tom does a very good imitation, if you ask him someday, he might just do it.

The day ended, as it should with you-know-what:

One of the nice things about staying in one place for a while (we’re here for 10 days) is that it’s possible to relax and not feel the pressure of being sure to see the “big” sights. So we had a lovely visit at the Little Ayasofia which dates back to the 6th century (a reference to the big Hagia Sofia we saw last week and built around the same time). Until recently, it was on UNESCO’s list of endangered world heritage sights. It’s obvious that a lot of care went into the restoration. The left the old stuff in place which makes for an interesting comparison to the new stuff. This is one of the many repeated decorations in the church, now a mosque. Its placement can be seen in the center of the next picture between the lower row of windows.

While we were there we were two of the only three people inside. This man was praying quietly…his singing was beautiful.

Staying in the same time period, we visited the Great Palace Mosaic in the Mosaic Museum. It was discovered in recent times during excavations nearby. The original mosaic is estimated to have contained 80 million tiles portrayed a wide variety of everyday, historic and mythological subjects. Very impressive.

THE SHOESHINE SCAM

These beautiful shoe shine setups are common and the array of colored creams the pros have to mix and apply to any pair of shoes is very impressive. However, the drive-by shoe shine is also alive and well on the streets of Istanbul. A bunch of kids carry much simpler kits which they use to separate the tourist from his money in a little scam. You’re walking along and the kid passes you going the other way. Just as he does you notice a brush fall. You grab it and yell after the kid who comes back and thanks you profusely. He offers a free shine, but then presumably asks for payment later. We say presumably because we never wanted our shoes done. After the second time this happened, we caught on and waited to see what would happen. As expected the next kid dropped his brush (on purpose), but we kept on walking, ignoring the brush on the pavement. Turning back to see, we saw the kid rushing back to get his brush. The scene got repeated lots of times during the day. A harmless ruse really, and it was fun to watch it happen to someone else.

BALIK EKMEK

We went back to the waterside for another balik ekmek, or fish sandwich. Apparently the fish is bonito which is very often caught from the Galata Bridge, just a few hundred feet away. I forget if I’ve already said this, but the fish is grilled on the rocking boats, slapped on a roll with a bunch of onions and lettuce and served to you for just a couple of bucks. It’s up to you to season it with lemon juice and salt. Really a great sandwich. I had mine with a can of sour cherry juice, which is now my favorite drink in the world. .

ON THE BOSPHORUS

We’d been bamboozled by the gray, often wet weather in Istanbul which prevented us from going for a boat ride on the Bosphorus. Today was the day and there was lot to see. Houses lucky enough to have fantastic views and one of Istanbul’s old protective walls, looking very much like the Great Wall we saw in China.

Just behind the old wall, you can catch a glimpse of the Bosphorus Bridge, a white ribbon connecting the European and Asian sides of Istanbul. A single-span bridge, it looks an awful like one we have at home. Unlike ours, this one looks very delicate, too delicate to survive an earthquake. And strong earthquakes do happen in Turkey.

There are two funiculars that run underground and connect the waterside to the city’s heart, Taksim Square. Looking very modern, these are the latest cars in use on lines that have been around for a hundred years (one of them is among the three oldest metro lines in the world). Once up there, we walked the very grand shopping boulevard, Istikal Caddei, which has a cute little nostalgic streetcar.

For dinner, we had something called Bhuara Özel kebaps, a specialty of the restaurant, which was a tasty mixed grill of meats. First, though, was a balloon of freshly baked pita

And of course the day ended with a plate of my favorite dish:

Returning from Cappadocia, we returned to the same hotel, but on the other side of the building facing the Sea of Marmara, with the Mediterranean beyond.

Immediately we noticed a change in the sound of the regular calls to prayer. Before we were almost directly under on the Blue Mosque’s minarets so we got blasted 5 times a day. The 5.30am-ish call would invariably set off a round of giggles. Here on the other side of the building, that single mosque’s call blended in many others around Istanbul. It was a beautiful sound.

This morning it was actually warm enough to walk around without a jacket. Taking advantage of the good weather, we crossed the Golden Horn to visit Dolambahçe Palace, which had an impossibly tall guard at the gate. (Yes, that’s a real person.)

Built in the waning days of the Ottoman empire, Dolambahçe replaced Topkapi Palace as the center of things. It is unbelievably sumptuous. Deliberately taking its inspiration from European royalty, this palace was clearly intended to impress the rest of a world on which Turkey was increasingly dependent. Having seeing many of the great castles of Europe, we thought this one outshines them all. Every room sparkles with crystal from Baccarat or Murano or London, there are beautiful frescoes, crystal banisters on the stairs, the world’s largest chandelier and I couldn’t take a single picture of any of it. Oh well, here are a few cribbed from Wikipedia.

Noticing all the European portraits of sultans, Tom asked the guide what the deal was since doesn’t Islamic law say that you can’t have a picture of a person? She smiled slyly and answered saying that strictly speaking, portraiture is forbidden in Islam, however as really good painters started showing up in the Ottoman Empire, people began to look the other way. Now the walls of the palace are filled with paintings, most with faces in them.

The palace grounds have lovely gardens (Dolambahçe means ‘filled gardens’) and also an aviary, supposedly the largest in Europe. We saw a peacock and his pea hens as well as some lovely chickens who were very curious and crowded around my camera looking for scratch.

Taking advantage of the fact we were already in Karaköy, we visited our gourmet alley underneath a parking garage.

Namli Gurme is a famous deli. Like one of our salad bar restaurants, you point at what you want, say when its enough, they weigh the plate and then you eat. Unlike a salad bar, this food is extraordinary.

On our plate today: a spicy couscous, fried cheese sticks, a fiery stuffed pepper and some roasted peppers with walnuts. Absolutely delicious. We’ll have to come back here before we leave.

Right next door was our first temple of orgasmic Turkish baklava, Güllöglu. Really old-fashioned inside and looking vaguely Austro-Hungarian, you tell the cashier first what it is you want, then take the receipt to the pastry counter where the guy pulls your pastries from the trays with his spatula swiftly and gracefully. No matter what you choose from that day’s selection, it is guaranteed to be delicious.

This day I spied a kindly old gentlemen sitting by the registers observing the goings on. Realizing it was old Mr. Güllü, I asked for a picture. Just as good as one with a movie star.

With all my blathering on about baklava, you might wonder about Turkish Delight. We tried it and it’s fine, just too sweet for us. Besides the kind that looks like our Cotlets (anyone remember the Nut Tree?), it comes in other, very pretty shapes. I was very impressed with a rose-infused version that seem to catch the essence of a rose’s perfume.

One final thing for today: the square between Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque is a free wireless zone. Talk about old and new!