Today is Monday? Isn't it?

I guess it is reaching that point on the vacation where one starts to forget just what day it is. Today was spent largely doing nothing, That turned out to be rather strenuous. Starting with a hike from the hotel to the highest levels of the Old Town we walked through one of the downtown parks, admiring the view from the cliffs over the very blue waters of the Mediterranean. A visit to the Ataturk House, where the famous leader spent time during his first visit to the area in 1930, proved to be a short but interesting diversion.
  Lunch at a place called Leman Culture turned out to be an interesting experience. With a rather eclectic menu, reminiscent of the Loonie Spoons cookbook series, the food was a pleasant change from the kebabs, kebabs and more kebabs of the local vendors. With its own Facebook Page and endorsements from various people including my nemesis- Dr Oz! it will definately be worth a second look, if not here then in the Istanbul location, if we can find it.
  Following lunch, a visit to the main modern mall of the downtown, Mark Antalya proved to be a major culture shocker after the bazaars and street stalls of the Old Town. Stores ranging from H & M to Pierre Cardin were spread over 4 floors of a very modern looking building. The 5th floor offered a food court of perhaps 30 vendors with slections ranging from the basic western standards McD, Burger King, Sbarro, Arby's Subway to local foods like pide, wraps, kebabs etc. No Tim Hortons, but a Starbucks on the main level!
 Wednesday 10pm
    On Tuesday, our last full day in Antalya we finally located the local fruit and veg. market a rambling seies of hundreds of stalls scattered over 10 or 12 side streets. Offering , literally, soup to nuts, it had me wishing I had found it sooner. With tangerines at 75 cents a KG and grapes at $1.50  a Kg, pomegranates at 60 cents for one weighing well over a pound, it was quite an experience. Vendors were quick to offer samples and most were very honest in their dealings. Only one walnut vendor took advantage of our unfamiliarity with local pricing and ripped us off slightly, but otherwise, $7 bought us an armload of fruit, including a pound of soft dried figs.
   Tonight we are back in Istanbul at a small hotel in the Sultanameht area. A stones throw from the Topkapi Palace and two blocks from the Blue Mosque, we are in area that seems to be 30% restaurants, 30 % hotels and 30% everything else- ceramcs, carpets, pashminas. Every restaurant seems to offer exactly the same menu, each promising the best food, the freshest fish, the best prices. With our own hotel offering a 10% discount we took a chance on their kitchen. Sadly the discount did live up to the promises of the hotel staff. An excessive amount of seasoning, mostly salt, rendered the otherwise decently cooked meal, virtually inedible.
  Hopefully, breakfast, included in the room price, wont suffer the same fate!
   No plans, as of yet for tomorrow. Having survived the Metro and tram rides from the airport, I now have a vague idea how to get around this fairly massive city for a reasonably low cost. With Topkapi and several mosques within walking distance or only a few tram stops away, it shouldn't be too hard to keep busy. I am hoping the Hagia Sophia is free from scaffolding and construction shrouds this time. On the last two visits sections of the main building's interior were obscured due to restoration work. Ditto for the Topkapi Palace which had several sections closed during a visit in 2007/8??
  With three full days here, there may even be time to squeeze in a ferry trip to the Asian side of the Bosphorus, something we did not experience on our previous visits.