I made two mistakes today. The first was that I left my camera battery charging in the hostel, oops. No pictures today. The second was that I failed to properly understand the ferry cruises that run up and down the Bosphorous. I wanted to take a cruise to the Black Sea and back, but wanted to do so via the passenger ferry as opposed to a packaged tour, for reasons already mentioned in previous posts. However, upon arrival at the dock, I saw a service called "Bosphorous tour cruises" offered, but wasn't sure if that's what I wanted. A snap decision was made, and I elected to postpone my cruise til tomorrow to make sure I embarked upon the right boat.
Instead, I took a ferry back to Asia. Istanbul, as you probably know, amazingly straddles two continents. Half of it is in Europe while the other half is in Asia, and the two sides are separated by the Bosphorous, which links the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea via the Sea of Marmar (seas are a theme on this trip). Somehow I wound up in a rather unsightly industrial part of the Asian side, and was forced to hike up Asia to find more pleasant scenery. I did eventualy find more pleasant scenery, and the view of all the sights I had seen from afar, and from across the water, was very nice. Too bad I didn't have my camera.
I also saw something my Turkish college friend Elif recommended. It's called the Maiden Tower, and is literally a tower sticking straight up from the Bosphorous. The story is that a sultan's daughter was being relentlessly pursued by a suitor, so the sultan built a tower in the middle of the Bosphorous to keep her safe. Supposedly the suitor swam across the Bosphorous to reach the tower. I'm not sure what happened after that.
Why the sultan just didn't kill the suitor, or marry off his daughter to someone else, I don't know. What I do know is that the Maiden Tower isn't very tall, and isn't very far from the shore of the Bosphorous. The sultan might have been creative, but he was not very practical.
With time to kill, I went back to Taksim for more mussels, and found myself admiring the view of Istanbul from atop a hotel rooftop bar. My trusty Lonely Planet recommended its view as opposed to the Golota Tower view right next to it, since I would be able to sit and have an expensive drink (though still cheaper than the entrance fee to the Golota Tower). I sat down with a frappe, and was soon joined by two Canadians with the same Lonely Planet guide and the same ideas. We complimented our collective intelligences.
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