Turkey, in both senses of the word

The name of this file is Turkey. That about sums it up. Istanbul is a turkey of a destination. The weather sucked, the people (with a couple major exceptions) were rude and obnoxious, and it was very polluted. But the bus and ferry system worked well, provided you had a map of the city in your head, because there were no usable maps of either system to be found anywhere.

Istanbul is the only major city spanning two continents; they have cute little signs saying "Welcome to Europe/Asia" on the the two bridges that span the Bosphorus Strait. Our friends live on the Asia side of the city, which is the newer side. Not too much in the way of old buildings or historical sites. But we got to take the ferry to get across to the other side which was kinda fun.

The first several days there, while we were getting over our jet lag, it was pretty nice, although 10C seemed really cold after Thailand. We got to tour the main shopping area. Then it snowed. And blew. The weather man said warmer and sunny the next day. He was wrong. For 4 days it snowed and blew. We did go out and play in the snow a little, but actually going touristing was pretty much out of the question. Finally, it cleared and warmed up a little, so we moved into Eminonu, the old city. This is where we were introduced to the extreme "entrepreneral spirit" of the turkish people. Every man on the street (and they were always male, even the children), wanted to sell us something, usually "turkish" carpets. They would not leave us alone, following us up the street shouting lower and lower prices as we walked away. They even would pretend to be "volunteer tour guides" around the big mosques, just to get a chance to say, "Won't you come into my shop and buy a carpet?" The national motto is "How may I help you spend your money?" I suppose if we were from New York City or hadn't just come from sweet genteel Thailand it might not have felt so assaultive, but we aren't and we did, so we didn't like it.

On the other hand, once you get past the assault of the Mongols (look up the history of this area for an idea of where the aggressive attitude comes from), there are some amazing historical features here. Things like the arm, hand and part of the skull of John the Baptist, weapons and other booty from half a dozen civilizations over the eons. One of the more interesting ones was (part of) an obelisk from Egypt. It was dated ~5000 BC, yet was obviously of far better material and craftsmanship than far more recent artifacts seen here.
Since we had so much fun here, we plotted an early departure. Problem is, it's still frozen in Spannocchia. Also, it turns out there are no ferries from Turkey to Greece (Doh! Read a little world history already. These guys have been skirmishing since time began.) So I don't get to take the ferry across the Aegean. Then there's the luggage problem. Flying on the major airlines is possible but expensive. But in Europe (and the UK and Ireland) one can fly on Ryan Air, EasyJet or the like for practically nothing. But you don't get to take much luggage. So, it's straight off to Ireland where a house awaits us. Or so we thought...

PS: It probably wasn't as bad as this makes it sound. After all, we managed to take 500 pictures. Perhaps I'll come back and write some more about Istanbul. But not right now.