Exploring Kadıköy

My friends, Tolga and Funda, had to work on Monday, and little Ege went off to preschool. So I decided to be a tourist. Of course, most museums (especially the ones I want to see) are closed on Mondays. In any case, everything is new enough that my plan was just to walk around and see what I could see. To get to Kadıköy from Sabancı University, I took the student shuttle bus which runs every few hours and takes about an hour one way. Since I don't have a Sabancı ID, I needed to tell the shuttle bus driver that I'm a guest. Now, for everyone else, this shuttle kind of expensive, but the drivers no longer accept cash, they just scan the ID cards. Therefore, I got to ride for free! A moment before the bus started, someone came up to me--believe it or not, it was a friend from the University of Arizona! It was so nice to chat on the ride to the city. Plus, he helped me figure out where to catch the shuttle on the way back. Then he was on his way to do some research at the Ottoman Archives in another part of town. On my own, I walked and walked and walked, enjoyed tea by the ferry boats, walked some more, enjoyed some street music, kept walking, and finally found my way back to the shuttle bus stop, caught the bus, and headed back to Sabancı. As you'll see from the photos below, it was a beautiful day--sunny, warm, and windy.

From Asia to Europe

The recently retired train terminal, Haydarpaşa

The pink building is Aya Sofya

The obligatory old and new juxtaposition

A church behind barbed wire