GO!

[Suggested caption: "At this stage, we considered it unwise to say anything hilarious about religious icons"]





We've been ın Turkey less than 12 hours and already we're doıng as the locals do - we're marrıed (fıtıonally - but I'm keepıng the rıng) and we've got our kıt off for a scrub down ın the hamam (turkısh bathes).

We're also planning our quick escape to Bulgaria - which is by no means a condemnation of Istanbul - we love it; the food, the people, the shopping, the scrubs, the signs with 'cok' everywhere. But we're scared we might repeat our last experience here where we spent 10 days focussed solely on trying to work our way through the different culinary delights....

and now to Paul....

Well, I had hoped to have my own post - tentatively titled "The miracle nut comes from Turkey", after the Turkish hazelnut advertising slogan of the same name. Oh well. We survived a complicated attempt by Qantas to ensure our European jaunt started with a night or two in Singapore, and managed to make it to Turkey together with our baggage. Turkish Air was surprisingly decent and, in addition to its enthusiastic hazelnut promotion, sports the slogan "Turk Hava Yollar", which I choose to believe translates as "Turkey has an airline" or possibly "Turkey has a flying machine".

I skipped out on the whole "being scrubbed with annotolian goat hair" thing in favour of a visit to the spice bazaar, where I wowwed the locals with my mad barberry identification skillz (they are small, red, Iranian and sour in case you ever find yourself in a similar predicament).

Istanbul is startlingly picturesque, pleasantly warm and warmly pleasant. Basically every side street ends in the kind of building which would have been turned into a theme pub were it located in the rocks, and, conveniently, some of them contain theme pubs. We're planning to do battle with Raki, the local aniseed spirit, over dinner tonight, and if things go well I may reprise my "harvey Paulbanger" - a reimagining of the traditional harvey wallbanger substituting each ingredient with a slightly different, slightly more Turkish variant.