resting in Istanbul

After the excitement of southern Ethiopia, and in anticipation of another couple of organised tours in October and November, I'm now 'resting' in Turkey.  Reminding myself that I'm not really on a 365-day-a-year holiday, but rather taking a more mobile approach to retirement.  & as such, I don't need to be seeing a new 'sight' every single day.

Still unsure about my ability to finance this (due to the holiday elements), I'm economising as much as I can during the 'resting' elements.  Which means that I'm staying at the cheapest hostel I could find in Istanbul - £240 for a month including a very basic breakfast (bread with tomato and feta cheese, with tea) - and so living in a dorm with ten other people with whom I also share a bathroom.  There is no kitchen and no socialising area, and the people sharing my dorm - nearly all men since I've been here - are generally not very friendly.  There have been Russians, a Colombian, a Kazahkstani, Pakistanis, Indians, Moroccans, a Tunisian, Argentinians, and a Gambian - you will note, no Europeans - and in some cases we have no language in common, whilst in some cases the more obviously religious amongst them (getting up even for the 05:30 morning prayers) seem uncomfortable sharing a dorm with a woman.  So not nearly as nice a place to be as the hostels I stayed in during my time in Bulgaria and Moldova.

Of course Istanbul is a great city, but I have been here several times before and so am not inclined to pay entrance fees again to visit the museums, etc, nor to queue for several hours to get into the Hagia Sophia.  & with my hostel being in the heart of the tourist area, eating out - even having a coffee in a café - is not so cheap.  Then I remind myself that I am not on holiday but simply retired, and I ask myself what I would be doing if I had taken the conventional route and retired to my flat in London.  There it would cost much more to eat a meal out or have a coffee in a café, although I accept that I would have to do so if I wanted a social life.  So here I guess I'm doing much as I would if I'd recently moved back to London (and didn't yet have a social circle), which is walking around quite a lot, visiting the supermarket, and spending time on my laptop reading the newspaper or facebook.  The main differences being that here I don't have a kitchen or a television, and I can't have music on in the background unless I use earphones as I don't want to disturb my room-mates.  Of course here I don't have housework to do 😊

But still a part of me feels that I'm wasting time by just 'resting', so I've organised a week out of Istanbul for a little tourism,  Unfortunately the accommodation here seems to be booked way in advance (tourism rebounding post-Covid but some hotels and hostels no longer functioning?) and so my original plans didn't work out, so I've ended up booking a trip to two places I already visited during a holiday here in 1986, with just one new location.  Looking forward to it despite most of it not being new!


& okay ... I admit that I have been to the Mosaic Museum - the above mosaic of an eagle defeating a snake apparently symbolising the victory of light over darkness.

& I did have one day out - to visit the architectural award-winning Sançaklar Mosque.  I really like mosque architecture, but this one is unlike any other mosque anywhere, made of dark rock (granite?) and concrete in brutalist style.  So a solid block of a minaret, only one bit of calligraphy ... really stark but in its way quite beautiful.


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