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whew, I survived Istanbul! it actually turned out to be pretty fabulous. I was supposed to fly to Bodrum yesterday afternoon but I changed my ticket so that I could spend an extra night with my new Istanbul buddies (and it ended up being cheaper in the end.) For one thing, I found the (not-so) secret alley-street wıth all the H&M rejects and fell-off-the-truck clothes for 5 or 10 lira each (3-7 u.s.) and got summer clothes, which I had been sorely missıng after my Portugal misadventure.

Gökhan, who I was originally going to surf with, arranged a CS meetup ın Taksim, the big party neighborhood, and Fuat and I had a few beers together and then found the rest of the crew at a club down the street. Six or seven Istanbul CSers came and brought four of their guests, two from Canada and two from Russia, and we shook it on the dance floor to traditıonal Turkish and Romanian dance mashups and assorted other tunes, including (and I am not making this up) “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” by TMBG. Those two bellydancing classes I went to finally came in handy.

After a late night, Fuat and I got up at 8 to meet Gökhan to see the Asian half of the city a little. We took a ferry across the Bosphorus and had Su Börek (literally watery phyllo pastry wıth cheese but actually more lıke noodle casserole) and tea at various cafés along the coast. It was starting to get cloudy but still breathtaking of course. In the afternoon I said goodbye to my excellent hosts and found my way to Atatürk Airport to catch my flight to Bodrum. So. Here I am.

 Bodrum is a really touristy city on the Mediterranean coast, surrounded by craggy mountains and quaint countryside. It doubles or triples its population in the summer months, but since the season officially started two days ago it’s still nice and quiet. I’m surfing wıth a naval engineer named Ibrahim, and this evening he showed me around the downtown area a little and made me dinner. Tomorrow I’m goıng to investigate ferries to Santorini and go to the beach, and probably leave either in the evening or Monday morning for the islands. I just hope I’ll still have enough time since I’ve adopted a leisurely pace in terms of moving along my course.

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