Senhor! Uma sangria, por favor! Pronto!

Weeeeeee! It's time for the third holiday! Yup, tomorrow I'm jetting off to Barcelona (British Airways this time, praise the Lord), for a week of sunshine, sangria and Sagrada Familia! Woo! Being at home for the last two weeks has been strange. I've developed a terrible routine of watching certain television programmes every weekday, and very occasionally venturing away from the sofa to do some learning. It will be nice to go out and about and not worry about how much each journey on the public transport is draining my funds! Also, today, I saw a woman who challenged a 15 year-old bus-fare avoider be spat in the face. That kind of behaviour, along with the random shootings and stabbing at the otherwise peaceful (and very enjoyable!) Notting Hill Carnival yesterday, make you wish you were one of the 196,000 Britons leaving the country for good. As I can't afford to emigrate just yet, a holiday will have to suffice. I'm quite looking forward to being able to comprehend Spanish at last too, as Portuguese and Spanish are not too dissimilar.

I will be meeting Oscar over there, as he's already holidaying in Marbella, and since Spain is his territory he has been assigned all planning duties. Hence, I'm not sure what to expect. Some people tell me that Barcelona is lovely, others say beware of the freshies (i.e. people, usually men, fresh off the boat from a lesser country) and prostitutes around Las Ramblas. Hmmmmm. As long as it isn't a Spanish version of the Pelourinho, I think I'll have a good time. Now all I need to do is pack...

Istanbul: the highs and the lows

Okay, I've been a little lazy and not updated this here blog in a while. Apologies to all my fans. I returned from Istanbul a few days ago, and since then have been...ahem....extremely busy. Oh ok, I've just been bumming around my house, but relaxing is a full time job! The last time I wrote here I was half way through my holiday in Istanbul, and the second half was equally as fun and bizarre. Instead of detailing everything we did over there, I thought I would summarise what I thought were the best and worst bits. Overall, I really enjoyed the holiday, but unlike many of the places in the world I have visited and become besotted with, Turkey is certainly one place I would never want to live in and possibly never visit again. Although very pretty and historically rich, it is a somewhat confused land, filled with inequality, racism, identity-crisis (are they European or Asian?) and way too much meat.

The highs:

The Blue Mosque. I don't care what people say, but I think this mosque is much more pretty and grand than the Aya Sofya over the road. I know that architecturally the Aya Sofya was a ground-breaker, but I think the Blue Mosque has a sort of tranquility and sereneness about it, while it's rival felt colder and hostile. Maybe it's because the Blue Mosque is still used by hundreds of people to pray in, whereas the Aya Sofya is nothing more than a cash-hungry tourist attraction. A little fact for you: the mosque acquired its informal name due to the tens of thousands of handmade blue tiles that decorate the interior. Amazing.

The Grand Bazaar. There are over 4000 shops and several kilometres of lanes in the covered market, and it felt like we visited them all. We certainly got lost in the maze of shops a few times. Bargaining is pretty easy, as most of the shopkeepers speak English/Spanish, and so you can purchase wares at reasonable prices. We picked up a few things for our future house :-) Interesting discovery: you get lower prices if you speak Spanish than if you speak English.

Karadeniz Aile Pide Ve Kebap Salonu. So good we frequented it twice, this was the place to go to get a tasty pide and some "poofy bread" to dip into your houmous. The waiters were also very keen to promote how romantic it was to eat at the restaurant (i.e. they lit a tea-light on the table).

Dolmabahce Palace. An imperial pleasure palace with neo-classical exterior and tremendously over-the-top interior. Inside the highlights include chandeliers weighing 2000kg, and a crystal staircase.

Kariye Muzesi. Once the Church of the Holy Saviour Outside the Walls, it served as a mosque for four centuries and is now a museum. It is filled with amazing frescoes and mosaics depicting various biblical stories. It's over 1000 years old and in really good condition, and if you ever visit Istanbul, make sure you go here. Although, you might want to take a taxi to the museum as it is on the top of a rather steep hill...which, ahem....we climbed. At least we earned the pine-mastic pudding we had afterwards! (Anyone who can tell me what "pine-mastic" means wins a piece of Turkish Delight.)

The lows:

Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts. Okay, the museum was packed full of various artefacts from various ages, and there were English labels for a change. But it was about 1000 degrees in the museum and there were more carpets and kilims than I can stand to look at in one go. They didn't really explain why each carpet was noteworthy, and so it basically felt like we were in a carpet warehouse. The calligraphy exhibits were really good though.

Airport and museum security. Pretty much at every museum/palace we visited we had to pass through security, which involved my bag being x-rayed and having to walk through metal-detectors. At the airport, before we even got to check-in we had to lug our suitcases into an x-ray machine and take off shoes and belts etc. And then we had to do it again before we got on the plane. And there are so many people who insist on checking your passport. WHY???!

Turkish Airlines & Stansted Airport. All I can say is, never again to both of them. Gatwick and easyjet now seem like paradise.

Sun, sea and sheep's brains.

Hey folks. Oscar and I have been in the hot and sweaty Istanbul for four days now, and we've been rushed off our feet seeing the sights and familiarising ourselves with this historical old city. We're staying in an interesting hotel on a fairly quiet street in Sultanahmet, the old part of the city. The big tourist attractions Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque are a short walk away from here, so obviously we've been to see those already. In fact, we've done quite a bit already. My favourite of all the religious buildings has to be the impressive Blue Mosque, which is covered in tens of thousands of blue isnik tiles, and is just huge and breathtaking inside. I experienced a similar feeling of astonishment in the Taj Mahal. One of the other weird and wonderful places we've been to is the Basilica Cistern, which is an underground structure designed to hold over 80,000 cubic metres of water. It was so lovely and cool in the cave like place, and quite relaxing despite the number of tourists busy snapping pictures of the famous upside down Medusa heads.


Tomorrow, we are going to the Grand Bazaar, which we have wandered through already, but tomorrow we are set to do some serious shopping! Needless to say, I am rather excited, though Oscar might hide his credit card in advance :-( At some point we are also going to cross over to the Asian side of Turkey, so we can say proudly that we were in two continents during one holiday!

The food is nice, once we manage to find something we can eat. At lunchtime, we tend to feast on dips and pides (which is like the Turkish version of a pizza), but it can be pretty tricky to find vegetarian/fish dishes for dinner. There are some fancy restaurants, specialising in Ottoman cuisine, but sadly, this means kebaps or some other meaty feast usually involving the innards of a sheep. Tonight hopefully, I will have some room left in my belly to eat some baklava, which shockingly, we have not sampled yet! Don't worry, I will get my fill of it before we leave, especially when tomorrow, we go to a restaurant built above a pretty good baklava shop :-D

Mint tea and baklava

Amigos! How are you all? I have been back in England for about 6 days now, and its been a funny time. Firstly, I caught a cold on the flight back home, so I have been nursing that a bit. Then, I haven't really been at home much, as I have been wandering all over the place to meet up with friends and have a good natter. It's nice to be back in London, but I haven't fully got into the fast-pace of life here yet. I still want to walk slowly, sit about in the sunshine for hours and generally do very little. So, the fact that it has become much warmer over the last few days is just making me feel even more Brazilian! Also, my misplaced bag finally arrived on Thursday, so I have finally got clean, summer clothes again! It was getting a bit gross wandering around in winter trousers!

On Monday, I shall be making my way over to the airport once more, to fly to Istanbul! I can't believe how quickly the second holiday has come around, and I am once more feeling excited and impatient about immersing myself in a different culture. Mint tea and baklava, here we come! It's going to be nice to go away with Oscar too, as we haven't been on holiday together since last September. My experience in Brazil taught me that although it is really fun to travel by yourself, its much more fun to experience things with someone else. I think I might go over-the-top with my souvenir shopping in Istanbul too, to make up for the disappointing purchasing in Brazil. Plus, now that I can envisage myself getting my own chic little apartment, I might start buying interesting objects to decorate it with. I shall try to keep you informed with what we're up to over in Stamboul, but rest assured, we'll be having a great time ;-)