Wed 11/03/09 13:27

I did a bunch of walking today and I’m pretty tired. I wrote in an earlier post that I wasn’t that impressed with the city. Tonight that changed. One of the guys at the hostel and I were talking earlier. We were talking about the amount of police there are here. They are everywhere, I’m not kidding, everywhere. There are like three on ever corner, and they’re not like security, these guys are packing assault rifles, and other weapons. I even saw a couple of places where there were military guys in camo walking a wall overlooking the main street. Way too much security for me, but anyway, I digress. The guy in the hostel was telling me about this street close by that he had a run in with a cop, what caught my attention was what he said about the street, packed with people and lots of shops. So that’s where I went tonight.

As I wandered along, stopping now and again trying some of the local food, it struck me. I love it here. It happened just like that too, like a brick hitting me over the head. I think one of the things that did it for me was walking by a bookstore that had books going up to the ceiling, a two storey ceiling. It seemed right out of the old world. Sure they have their barnes and Nobel type stores, but I’ve never seen a “real” bookstore. I can just imagine going in and asking for some rare book and the guy has to climb a ladder to pick it from the shelf. And by the way, in this imagination, he knows exactly where it is among the thousands of other books. Maybe he even blows the dust off it.

So for a couple of hours or so I just wandered this street, back and forth. There are some street vendors that sell, what appears to be walnuts dipped in chocolate. They looked really good and after about the twentieth vendor I walked past I finally decided to try some. Turns out they aren’t walnuts, they aren’t dipped in chocolate, and they taste like crap. Oh well, at least now I can walk by the carts they sell these little tidbits of crap and not wonder what they taste like. Btw, I don’t know what they were, I think a nut of some sort.

One other thing that I feel obligated to mention is that Turkish women are really beautiful. I know, I know, I say that about every nationality. Every place I go has beautiful women, but the women here are without a doubt some of the most beautiful, not quite as pretty as Russian women but not far behind. How sexist is that?

It’s only 8:30 right now, but I’m beat. I’m planning on getting a good nights sleep and heading to see the Hagia Sofia tomorrow. I can’t wait.