Our visits to Eyup Sultan, strictly speaking, have involved strolling in one direction and sailing in the other. It's not far to walk, but the road is busy, and it's nice to avoid having to tackle it twice by taking to the water for the return leg.

A couple of days ago, our route took us past some more remnants of wall, and past some small burial grounds:





Once through Eyup, you hit the very picturesque and very large Eyup Sultan graveyard, which sprawls its way very beautifully up the hill:





At the top of the hill is the Pierre Loti Cafe, built over the site of the original coffee house frequented by the French novelist. (He lived at a number of addresses in Istanbul, including one in Haskoy.)




It's a bit touristy, but it's nice to have something to eat on the huge terrace of the Pierre Loti while you enjoy the view. First thing in the morning it's not crowded, and our tea and gozleme came to less than GBP 5, which I didn't think was bad for such an obviously attractive place.


On those awful cribsheet menus that some places like to produce for tourists, gozleme are often described as a type of pancake. They're really not. They're much more akin to a chapatti, I think. I really love the chewy/flaky consistency. Totally toothsome.

Next, back down through the graveyard to Eyup, talking to a few more cats on the way.

Orhan Pamuk writes, in Istanbul: Memories and the City: "The trouble with Eyup... was that this perfect little village at the end of the Golden Horn did not seem real at all. As an image of the inward-looking, mysterious, religious, picturesque and mystical 'East' it was so perfect as to seem like someone else's dream, a sort of Turkish Eastern Muslim Disneyland planted on the edge of the city... What makes Eyup so close to Western dreams of the East, and makes everyone love it so, is its continuing ability to derive full benefit from the West and Westernising Istanbul, while still keeping itself distant from the centre, the bureaucracy, the state institutions and buildings. This was why Pierre Loti loved the place, finally buying a house and moving here -- because it was unspoiled, a beautiful image of the East, and perfect -- and for the same reasons, I found it irksome... I was slowly coming to understand that I loved Istanbul for its ruins..., for the glories once possessed and later lost. And so, to cheer myself up, I left Eyup to wander around other neighbourhoods in search of ruins."

I'm not averse to ruins, but I thought Eyup was lovely, and totally the reverse of irksome:





I'm not sure what Pamuk would make of this incursion into the dream:


And then home on the ferry:



This morning we walked back in that direction, through Ayvansaray:


But this time, we stuck to the river, and admired the boats, before catching the ferry home:





Yesterday we again headed across the Bosphorus, this time to Kadikoy and Moda.







Interesting things in this part of the city:





Nazim Hikmet (1902-63) was "one of the most important and influential figures in 20th-century Turkish literature". After studying at the University of Moscow, he espoused Marxism, and on his return to his home country spent many years in prison. He left Turkey in 1951, and died in Moscow. You can find translations of some of his poems here.

This sample, entitled A Sad State of Freedom, sounds as though it could have been written yesterday:

You waste the attention of your eyes,
the glittering labour of your hands,
and knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves
of which you'll taste not a morsel;
you are free to slave for others --
you are free to make the rich richer...

Your head bent as if half-cut from the nape,
your arms long, hanging,
your saunter about in your great freedom:
you're free
with the freedom of being unemployed.

You love your country
as the nearest, most precious thing to you.
But one day, for example,
they may endorse it over to America,
and you, too, with your great freedom --
you have the freedom to become an air-base...

In Kadikoy, meanwhile, you can wander along by the sea for quite a way, which is a lovely thing to do on a bright, blue day:



Finding that all the smarter lunch places don't start serving until well past our lunchtime, we grabbed a tasty meat sandwich and an ayran each from a simple bufe (less than GBP 5 the lot):


We're gradually getting to know our ferry routes. On the way out we'd walked to Eminonu, and taken the ferry straight across to Kadikoy; on the way back, however, to spare ourselves the walk, we crossed first to Karakoy, with a view to changing onto the boat to Balat, which stops pretty much in our front room. We actually just missed the connection to Balat, but never mind, the intervening time was easily whiled away with a pavement coffee.

We're also gradually becoming familiar with the concept that temperatures out on the water are at least 10 degrees colder than they are on land... That sea wind is seriously wicked...

Even so, we're enthusiastic Istanbul sailors, and are looking forward to more boat trips.