Second day in Turkey , the suburb we are in is called Fatih. Shirley has again excelled as our hotel is within walking distance of the major attractions.

The Nuruosmaniye Mosque is only 190mtr, the Grand Bazaar 400mtr, The Archeology Museum 740mtr, The Hagiasofia Museum, The Basilica Cistern 440mtr.

All of these and 7 others are perfectly placed from our motel Fer.

Shirley and I did those above and our tour that starts tomorrow will take us to these and we will go inside, so I can tell you more then. The people in Instanbul are very polite and friendly but there are still the ones who take advantage of the unexpected, like us. While we walking all over Fatih, ended up being about 10k , we came to the ferry port ,on our way in, a shoe cleaner got up as if to walk away and as one passed us his brush fell right beside Shirley , and being the nice people we stop and called to him “hey you’ve dropped the brush”. The man acted so grateful , and then offered to clean our shoes. We accepted but again it was a ruse to get money , we keep saying no, no but to no avail. The end result, they then asked us to pay 40 of their dollars for something we didn’t need . Shirley looked at me and we both said as one 20. Shirley handed one of them the money , and as we walked away we said to each other another experience. Later in the day another man tried the same thing, not this time! Again we looked at each other and said “experience” lol.

We have completed near on 4 hrs of walk in the sun and decide to head back to the motel for a rest . That rest went to a sleep and 2.5.hrs later we wake ready to explore some more. This time we are looking for a laundry mat, so on to google and there is one 8 minute from us. Shirley says here go again as I’m famous for getting us lost but on this occasion absolutely perfect.

Still leg weary from the morning it seems like the best to carry on our tradition, that when this lovely little hotel appeared right in front of us , it was an omen.

We able to sit and drink beautiful white wine and appetisers while watching people go by , all seemingly happy, it was a great couple of hrs. I also tried the Turkish beer very, very good , cold honey flavour—refreshing.

Back to the motel ,Shirley snoozed while I checked the footy scores . When the games are over I get to see the high lights which is better than nothing plus while the game is on I get to see the score and hear it on radio.

We dress to go to tea, but decide to see what was available. There were hundred of people in the park just enjoying their weekend. We saw a sign saying 2 for 1drinks, you can’t pass that up. We sat near the window next to the main drag, we watched the men trying to get people into their restaurants, they weren’t pushy, they asked you , say no they thank you and they let you be. Very different to other countries we been to.

We eventually chose the restaurant and although this was very good, Shirley had chicken skewer with cardamom rice and I had prawn casserole, not worthy of pictures.

Home now and really tired so goodnight to you and please stay safe,

Love you all

Shirley and John