Boats and Birds

We have been settling in to our accommodations in Istanbul and finding our way around the city once more. We were here last year, but rarely traveled without Ozayr (our resident expert) and so the girls and I are just getting re-acquainted with the public transportation system. Actually, in contrast to the United States, public transport is one of the many delights of this city. One swipe-able card can be used on the metro, tram, bus, ferries or funicular, and Turks here pop on and off each one in rapid succession to get where they are going. It's sometimes crowded, but the buses and metro and trams are frequent (every few minutes) and the routes are simple and easy to understand. Our favourite addition to our daily meanderings are the ferries. Especially on a beautiful day like today, where we took a 25 minute ferry ride to Kadikoy, just to go for lunch. Scores of birds follow the ferries about the Bosphorus, as the boat churns up lots of fish in its wake. Sometimes dolphins follow too, for similar reason. The students have seen dolphins several times so far, but we are still on the lookout for our first sighting. Fingers crossed as we are heading over to Cengelkoy on Monday where we've had lots of luck in the past.