Today is Monday and it was our first and only lie in of the trip, we skipped breakfast and casually got ready for our day out. We were heading to the Princes Islands today, the boats there didn't leave from our stop so we had to get another ferry there (I thought a scenic boat trip would be nicer than tramming it).
We left Eminou on our side to get to Kadikoy on the Asian side, on the way over, we had great views at Aya Sofya, Tokapi Palace and the Blue Mosque and we went past the famous Haydarpasa Terminal enroute but were a little stressed about making our connecting boat - what a surprise, we hadn't left a lot of leeway. We presumed the boat we had to catch was behind us so we thought we'd have a minute to get there. After getting off in Kadikoy, we tried to spot the boat to Princes Islands, I noticed it was the next terminal along and we thought could see our boat so we ran over. Sam dropped the water and kicked it in his running, then scooped it up a bit further down. We frantically bought tokens and then joined the queue, our tokens wouldn't work and the man couldn't explain (yes, we should have a better understanding of Turkish), but we couldn't see any other token machines. In the end (about 10 seconds later), another man took 3 tokens of us (only 2 were ours), which roughly covered the far and opened the chain to let us through. We ran along and the boatmen were closing the gate as we came out of the terminal.
We stayed inside on our second boat and watched a neighbouring family trying to control one of their sons, he was given food and drink by another family, dropped the food, his dad put it in the bin and he tried to eat it out of the bin. He also looked to be attempting prayer on a tissue on the floor but he is elder brother quickly stopped. We got off the ferry at Heybeliada and headed to the supermarket for picnic supplies. The islands have no cars, horse & carts act as taxis so it is a pleasing contrast to Istanbul proper. Our next task was to find a beach, this proved a littler trickier. We eventually came across a woodland with picnic tables that was had some nice sea views so we thought we could eat there. A man came over and said we had to pay after a little argue (I said it was public as there was a big public sign by the entrance) in our respective languages, we left. We then came across a sign for a beach so headed down past some military training grounds, unfortunately the beach was a slither and packed with loungers. They had additionally laid a barrier from the beach to the sea thus eliminating that lovely crashing waves sound. We decided we didn't want to pay a fair few lira for this privilege so headed back and found a spot overlooking the sea to have our lunch. It was a pretty peaceful lunch with only a few people wandering by. Post picnic, we headed back to the boat area for a drink, some cards and an ice cream.
We got seats on the upper deck on the way back, and entertained ourselves by watching locals feed the gulls, there was one particularly cheeky bird who had no qualms about eating biscuits striaght from their fingers. The birds followed us nearly the whole way home, thankfully with no poo. We got off the ferry at Kabataş, and got the tram home. Did a spot of present shopping but couldn't find any reasonably priced bowls - the ones I lusted after so.
We headed out for a late meal at Pasazade, the food was a welcome change from the kepabs and was also really good. We were the last people there by the time we finished (there weren't many people there to begin with to be fair) and they gave us some turkish delight at the end of our meal - our first since we'd been here. We intended to go for a nargileh but were too tired and had an early start to get my bowls!
The next morning, we had the earliest start of our trip, wolfed a quick breakfast (I tried the honey, it was lovely) and ducked into the Blue Mosque before heading to the market. I was worried about my hair as I didn't realise they provided lots of clothing for visitors. The mosiacs were lovely, but it did seem a lot smaller than Aya Sofya once you were inside. After our bowl buying, we headed quickly back to the hotel for our luggage as we were running a little late. We got distracted on the tram there by an Algerian trying to go into businessman with a Bangladeshi man he had just met (on the tram), the Bangladeshi man lived in Istanbul so was doing his best to avoid the conversation politely. By mistake, I blame the conversations, we got off our tram a stop earlier for the airport change which only added to our lateness. We had to hurry through security and didn't get a chance to spend our spare Lira - we'll just have to go back to Turkey another time.
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