One night in Istanbul...

One night in Istanbul we went out for a walk. Alp-Arslan took us to try the famous 'Iskander kebab' which is a pieces of lavash covered with slices of thin meat under amazing tomato souce and yoghurt...

Alp eating=)

Then we went for a walk and suddenly reminded that we wanted to buy a lego for this small boy. It's Onder from Bursa and his son Kutay. Onder helped us very much with the bike and Kutay was around all the time. This boy is crazy about bikes and lego.

So, inside the logo shop there was...yes! You know him, don't you?

And they also built master Yoda's sculpture to balance the forces of Evil and Good.

When we left the shop, we met this strange guy and his dog. He was just driving around on his scooter and trying to attract the girls with his dog. The dog was standing behind him all the time.

Art-market Ortikoy Part2: hand-made

This is our friend Alp-Arslan. He was a an excellent host for us and we're very grateful. He gave the idea to try to sell my pictures on Ortikoy market.

No problem, we did so. Although I couldn't sell anything, we finally found the way to get rid of my pictures=))

This is what is sold on the market. Most of the things are real hand-made item but some of them are made in China.

Looks like they like miniature things (like those bikes) here

These are amazing small houses with fine made details. The master is siting right here making a new one.

Ataturk is everywhere...

He's on the magnets next to Che Gevara

He teaches the kids to write their first letters

He's in the old bookshop 

It's difficult not to see him. Ataturk is deep in the Turks' hearts.

This is a significant picture: in the evening we passed Hairetdin (Fridrich) Barbarossa's tomb and decided to make a picture. At the same time Alp-Arslan took a bicycle from one kid and started making different figures on it...I was very suprised to see that=)

So, we like Istambul very much. Now we're on the way to Samsun and then will go to Trapzon to get visa to Iran.

Art-market Ortikoy. Part1: cats

We spent several days in Istambul and have got many great memories and good photoes.
Ortikoy is a place in Istambul where the artists sell their pictures and hand-made. It's a nice place for a walk where you can eat local sweets and stare at the shops.
But the first thing to is the cats. Istambul is full of big fat cats, Ortikoy is crowded by them.

some more...

and more...

they are everywhere

sunny jinger cat

People feed them with special potato dish called 'Kumpur'

The cats also have water

At the same time there was a cat-fest with this huge figures

Cats eat here because people feed them. What do the people eat? First of all,  they eat Kumpur - baked potato cut into two pieces and hidden under cut olives, corn, meat, souce and other food. And this is a shop selling local sweet vafels with strawberries, banana, chocolate and cream...

And tea, of course. Everybody drinks tea in Turkey. People make it right on the street, like that

The place is full of hand-made and next post will be about that.