Istanbul - be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. . .

This post was first published on the blog "Tuk-tuks, chicken bouquets and bicycle bells" on kerrytolsontravels.com  

There’s a song about wearing flowers in your hair…. It’s about hippies and San Francisco. Yet a world away and five decades later, a halo of daisies and roses is the must wear item on all the young things wandering around cosmopolitan Istanbul. Turkish women in long skirts and headscarves with beads and coins dangling from them hold up rings upon rings of silk flower halos and they are being snapped up by the cashed up gap-yearers, the inbetween-jobees and the vacationing 20somethings. I find myself humming the song incessantly as M and I dash from must see to must see as every site has a woman peddling the colourful halos. 

Actually it’s a bit hard to dash from one place to another in Istanbul, we finding a lot of our time is standing in long ques or trying awfully hard to get out of the way of the maddening crowds. I have never in my life seen so many people concentrated in one space. It’s mind boggling and for the first time ever in all my travels I’ve suddenly developed Culture Shock. When I was researching our trip to Turkey, numerous ‘experts’ on TA (my favourite travel website) advised to do Istanbul last; enabling one to ease oneself into Turkey. I’ve decide to ignore all the advice and dive head on into Istanbul and give her six days straight. She’s given me a smack of reality back.

The first call to prayer of the day wakes me. The Sultan Ahmet Mosque is just up from us and I can see through the window the dawn is just breaking. Mal is still asleep, so I pull on jeans and cardie and pop up to the roof terrace to watch the sunrise over the Mosque. Its stunning. Its also freezing. Five minutes of dancing around to keep warm whilst the days first rays hit the golden spires is enough and I’m back in the room and under the covers as fast as I can. 

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