Better and better

Well, today started on a bit of a downer. I woke up feeling lonely, far away from family and friends, knowing no-one, and hating the thought that we had to start all over again. Probably due to the hangover though - we consumed 2 bottles of white wine in the bar last night ! Sat there all on our lonesome, no other pilots in sight - they had all gone their separate ways. Perhaps they didn't really like us ? Was making new friends going to be really hard ?

So - off we went to breakfast and eventually met with a few of them - they aren't early risers these people ! Seems they aren't so bad after all. Most had gone off to meet friends last night - others were exploring their new city. Planned to meet a few of them in Yesilkoy for lunch so that we could show them around.

A wee bit more admin (if Paul does a little bit every day it takes away the frustration !) and we headed off in the direction of Yesilkoy. We took a high speed metro-bus. These things have their own centre lanes in the middle of the highway - and boy do they go fast. Paul reckons the road surface is especially roughened to allow the speed in the first instance, and greater stopping power at each station. Anyway - eventually got to Yesilkoy to meet Karl (from Singapore) who was having a coffee with Caglan - after having 3 viewings and may have found a new home for himself and his family - subject to his wife's approval. Caglan will have a few more options up his sleeve no doubt. Apparently the Yarnolds are the big topic of conversation amongst the Yesilkoy Emlaks, on account that Caglan stole us from the baldy guy on the first day. All is fair in love and English speakers !

Anyway - lunch with Karl and Thomas and Johanna (a lovely Austrian pilot couple) and off we headed to Aqua Florya - a very lovely new shopping mall about 2km from our home, or a 30 min walk along the seafront, and it has a cinema and loads of beach front restaurants and cafes. Its also on the flight path so we watched several THY planes coming in - Airbus 320 picture below. There is also a great big aquarium - to be explored with visitors. This little corner of our world just keeps getting better and better.

Then it was back towards our temporary accommodation, visiting a cinema en route, but only after we had a meal with Jesus (pronounced hay-sus) - another lovely new THY pilot. The film was Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. I'm not a huge fan of him offscreen, but he really is made for blockbusters. Great film. The odd thing was though - the film cut out after 90 minutes. Everyone calmly walked out, bought some popcorn, and it restarted after 15 mins ! New cinema experience for us.

Oh - about the downer this morning - I joined 3 more FB groups - got a few people saying they want to meet up, the promise of 2 coffee get togethers, and an invitation to drinks with "Brits in Istanbul" on the 29th August. Who says I can't make friends ????  (Not that that was ever in question ! )

A little side note - Istanbul seems to be full of stray cats - loads of kittens. This is on account of people feeding them ! We walked through the park in Florya to see this woman with a huge plate of meat and loads of kittens feeding. There was also an area with several cat baskets for them to sleep in ! Thinking about it - we've never seen any mice - so perhaps its a good thing :-)