(Daniel) After an excellent night's sleep, Gabby and Rowan came to my room this morning, and we had breakfast together on the roof terrace.  The typical Turkish breakfast consisted of Olives, bread, cucumber, tomatoes cheese and a conserve.  To wash this down we had a choice of coffee or apple tea, I went for that latter and was most impressed.  After breakfast we walked down to the river and bought a ticket for the Bospherous boat trip, The Bospherous is the Strait separating Europe and Asia, and is a very historic area, due to it's strategic importance.  We and about a hundred Japanese tourists set off, passing many of the beautiful buildings and houses along the shore, for an hour and a half before pulling up at a fishing town where you could apparently get a wonderful fish lunch freshly caught.  We disembarked the boat at the town called Anadolu Cavagi, a fishing town close to the black sea and walked through the busy fish restaurants to the usual lines of "Hello, what is your name, where are you from?" and comparisons to David Beckham.  After a look around and some photos, we sat down in a nice looking waterside restaurant and chose our fish.  The set menu was only ten Lira and consisted of Starters, salad, fish, and a drink. I chose Dorado, and the others had Mackerel. 

For some reason I decided to stand up then and take a photo of a cat that had suddenly appeared, as I did so a huge bird crap fell from high in the sky and hit my plate and chair dead on!  I couldn't believe my luck, and nor could Rowan who was hit by the splash!  Proof that instincts should always be followed.  Our meal came then, and as we ate a whole gang of cats appeared, obviously drawn to the area by all the fish.  Each one had a character, one had only one eye, another had a neat moustache, and others had features like fluffy sideburns, scraggy tails, one had bogeys hanging down from it nose that were inches long!  They all watched with intent as we ate, I threw a few scraps, and soon there were loads of them all vying for a position close to me so as to increase the chance of getting any other scraps thrown from the table.  The waiters kept coming over and shooing them away, but I kept throwing scraps when they weren't looking.  Actually the fish wasn't that great, and the cats got a real treat.

After the meal we walked up the hill to the ruins of a castle. passed a barracks with scary looking warning messages all over it, but children playing inside the fences, reducing the affectiveness of the warning signs considerably!  We didn't quite make it all the way to the top, weiged down by our full bellies, and weary of our boat departing soon, so we headed back via a stop to sample some Baclava, a sweet made form hundreds of layers of pastry with herbs and syrup.

The Boat departed with us on board, and we slept most of the way back, waking to get some sunset photos just before docking back at the centre of Istanbul.  We walked back to the hotel then, and I updated the diary while the others had some sleep.  After an hour or so we headed down to the sea, and the Armada Hotel, where the tasting menu of five courses was said to be an experience worth a try.  We sat down in a very posh restaurant, but soon settled in after the first bottle of wine!  The food was excellent, and gave us a great starting point for our Turkish cuiine experience.  After eating ourselves stupid, we wadled back to the hotel and went to bed after a chat on the roof terrace to take in the city views at night.

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