Lostanbul!

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Today was a long walk day. I'd planned to get to the Rumeli Fortress on the west coast of the Bosphorus. Typically, I had intended to walk there and find some public transport back.

From Sultanahmet I followed a hugely circuitous route down the hill via the Grand Bazaar (open today) and beyond that all the little shops that sell belt buckles, beads, mannequins, taps, cleaning equipment and garlic-crushers.

From there it was a gravity-filled walk to the waterfront of the Golden Horn and a noisy walk across the Ataturk Bridge with all the buses and trucks.

In a misguided attempt to avoid the backstreets, I followed the main roads up and down the hills (and there are many many hills which give an inclinometer a good workout) with a side trip along the boulevard to Taksim. Then on through run-down suburbs of multi storey apartment blocks with dead cars, broken trucks, shocking roads, dilapidated houses and dirty backstreets. Cheek by jowel with this are are the high class apartment blocks and hotels near Trump Towers and what looks like the financial centre of town.

And then I got lost. None of the names on the street signs matched any of the names on my map. No streets went in the right direction for me. And the Bosphorus, that mighty shipping channel between the Maramara Sea and the Black Sea had gone missing!

More hours later and having discovered all the dirty, overgrown, tramp-ridden trails by motorways that only wild dogs and drunks used, I ended up at the top of a hill and found the Bosphorus Bridge. It felt like my first viewing of the Golden Gate bridge after walking there from the San Francisco city centre.

So I gave up looking for the Rumeli Fortress, caught a bus back to the metro and within an hour had come back by bus, train and tram to my starting point.

I now have a really good "feel" for the range of places and people in Istanbul - not necessarily their lifestyles but their living environments, working environments and the blend of people sharing the city. I'll visit the Asian side of the city soon.

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