Istanbul Three

The platform to the Bosphorus ferry is bustling. There are people everywhere and many of them are not standing still. They are wearing everything from jeans and brand running shoes and headscarves and skirts and most of them are carrying a mobile phone. Some are meeting lovers and friends, others are dragging crying children. Some are completely at home, others gawk around big-eyed at the strangeness.

Two women are sitting at stools snacking on fish sandwiches served from a gold-plated boat along the harbour for lunch. They have heard that they are famous in Istanbul. A ferry beside them is alternating between bellowing out thumping music and rapid-fire announcements in Turkish, the only words of which the two women can make out are “Bosphorus tour”. When they finish their sandwiches they board the boat, and spend the next hour and a half (well, actually, just over an hour, according to one of them), ferrying between Europe and Asia on the Bosphorus.

The evening takes them to a small event in Dede Efendi, Sultanahmet, to a Whirling Dervishes show. They meet up with friends also in town and after the show, eat at a local fish restaurant that has simple décor, an ober who goes out of his way to help them (they are now five), from unlocking the door two apartments over and showing the way up to the second floor bathroom, to selecting the perfect menu without bothering to ask choices other than for drinks, to shuffling everyone under the awning when a flash thunder and lightening and rain spell hit.

This narrator is sounding more and more like a travel guide. But the restaurant was featured, coincidentally, in the Guardian UK's paper today (its the first one called "Ahirikapi Balikçisi"). None of the diners knew that until well into the meal. Also, the narrator would like to note that the picture above of the whirling dervishes was meant to be a video of the spinning dervishes and the music but couldn't upload it due to technical difficulties