Touring Turkey. Part I

August 4...9, 2015

Turkey has great roads. And you can have a nice time clocking up 500-700 kilometres a day. My plan is to drive to Istanbul, then to fly to Russia for a few days, before going back to spend a week doing a big loop around Turkey.

Tekirdag

Bygone beauty wilting.

Wood has been supplanted by reinforced concrete. And yet the place remains homey.

Rubbish bin.

Dumpsters.

Bidet for cherries.

Then out of the blue — payphones made to look like daisies and sneakers.

Istanbul

Being built up with fearsome force.

My favourite neighbourhood — Beyoglu.

An egg seller pulling a cart past dumpsters bearing a Galata tower logo.

And here’s the tower itself.

Every nook and cranny here is brimming with joy, thrills and commerce.

Beautiful door.

There’s washing hung out to dry everywhere.

Mannequin store.

Dog pissing on a car.

In actual fact, Istanbul is a city of cats.

Payphones.

Practically all of the pavements are fitted with bollards to stop cars driving up on them.

On many one-way streets there are special spikes — you can easily drive over them in one direction, but if you go the other way they’ll puncture your tyres. Therefore, those who really, really need to drive the wrong way up a one- way street will get out of their vehicles and put a piece of cardboard or a mat over the spikes so that they fold down.

Istanbul makes you want to stroll around it forever.

This is one of the few large cities where life happens not only inside buildings, but also on every square metre of every pavement and street.

Aside from that, the place is just plain beautiful.

Often, fairytale-beautiful.