As we did yesterday, leapt from bed around at dawn. Christmas! Balloons! fully prepared (except that the Olympus Pen e-pl8 stopped working on the terras) … and nothing happened. Some guys were cooking onions in a drum down beside the Otel. Guests stood in silent vigil until dawn became morning, some

From the eczane in Eskişehir we had painkillers for the killer cramps (J told me I just wasn’t used to contractions) and vitamins and bio- something to restore the killing effects on microflora (and, it should be said, microfauna) in our guts but no, which is what we’d

Learnt a little about Ankara. It had a population of 300,000 in 1920 when Atatürk’s success in the war of independence brought him to power and he declared it the capital, after which he never set foot in İstanbul again. So it owes its present status as well

Pazartesi, Monday: and the parties continued into the night last night. Waking this morning, sick. Stomach sick. still, tempted to try breakfast, through the other side of where we’d eaten the night before, a low door, corridor, ladies in the kitchen, our house host leading the way … and returning

… yes, from the city on the hill, where it began and where the founders of the Ottoman Empire are buried, to the old city … first, breakfast, the unsurpassed buffet at the Royal Termal Hotel, making up for absence of thermal baths. At the bus stop outside the hotel: the bus

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