boat trip and more tea

So I haven't posted for a few days--I may have to go back to posting iphone photos, my laptop is way too slow for dealing with the camera and posting here, hours of suffering!

The best thing about Istanbul is that you can take a commuter ferry to Asia for about 60 cents and a boat to beautiful islands about 40 minutes away from the city for $1.50. We took the ferry to the islands on Saturday, after Kahraman came back from Ankara.

Even better than cheap ferries, on the ferries, even if it's only 10-15 minutes to go to the Asian side, they serve tea in little glasses with little ceramic saucers. This I will miss about Istanbul, too adorable. I'm already accumulating the list of things I will miss and things I won't(insane traffic and people smoking everywhere I will not miss!).

We went to Helbeyliadas island, not sure if the spelling is right as it was a mouthful; to say. We wanted to see a huge Greek monastary on the island and climbed up and enormous hill to visit only to find that they figured out how to thwart the tourists by requiring an advanced reservation to visit. Luckily we brought a picnic and found a beautiful shady place to eat and gaze at the view. 

The water was incredibly turquoise and fantastical.

After we got back we met some friends from New York and walked the streets and drank tea by Galata Tower. This guy was selling fresh chickpeas in bunches--they were delicious, kind of like eating fresh peas.

Galata Tower with spooky birds flying all around, no one could really explain to me what they were doing there but they were screeching and flying madly in circles like some kind of edgar allen poe story.

Near the base of the tower was a shoe-shine man whispering to some gypsies, I thought they were european tourists. I'm not sure what makes the gypsies recognizable to everyone. Shoe-shine guys carry every possible color of shoe shine.

The lights from the tower lit up buildings on the side streets--I still love looking at the shapes of the pieces of sky made by the narrow streets.

Some other kind of great baklava with whole pistachios in it--we drank tea by the tower but most tea places only serve tea and beverages so we ran over to another shop and bought some baklava. a feast.