Christmas Eve in Istanbul

There’s not that much of a Christmassy feeling here in Istanbul as they don’t celebrate Christmas here as its a Muslim country. Its a normal working day with kids going to school and people going out about their business as usual. The strangest thing is not saying ‘happy Christmas’ to everybody.

So we decided to walk down to Bebek, our local neighbourhood by the sea, this morning for a cup of coffee in our favourite ‘Cup of Joy’ and ended up having a wonderful morning full of strange encounters. After coffee, we headed up to the butcher to get some chicken to make a very untraditional curry for Christmas Eve supper – we would normally have ham but as there’s no pork…
Everybody is always so helpful here, especially at this butchers – there’s always somebody who speaks English and willing to translate, but in this case, EU health inspectors would have a field day as he had a cigar in one hand and a glass of çay in the other!

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We then headed off for a walk down the Bosphorus as it was a beautiful sunny day, and ran the gauntlet between the fishermen taking care not to lose an eye with one of their hooks.

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Our last stop was the usual Tuesday market where the traders are starting to get to know us – the fish stall is amazing

20131224-181957.jpgand then the most hilarious bit was one of the market traders offering to buy Dave for 200TL!!!!

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The final event was the porter who carried all our goodies back up the hill

20131224-182733.jpg the funny thing is that I had always noticed him at the weekly market but thought he was selling things in his basket, although I had no idea what. It only dawned on us today that his basket was empty and he was offering his services as a porter for the princely sum of 10TL (£3)

20131224-183004.jpgHappy Christmas everybody!