Settling In

During the last week Mrs Istanbilly and I have been settling into our new place - an ideal time to move as we were both off work for a week for Bayram (the rest of the world normally calls this Eid - I don't know why the Turkish should be different but...). Anyway, the move went well and then we spent the rest of the week sorting out the place - honestly it is a lot easier to move countries than to move houses. But we are now all sorted and getting used to the new place.

As you saw in a previous blog, we have a lovely view down the Bosphorus and I have been taking a few piccies from the balcony. Regular readers will know that I enjoy available light photography so here are a couple of offerings:

This is looking towards Yenikoy


The right hand side of this photo is Yenikoy on the European side and the left hand side is the Asian side.

I enjoy watching the shipping on the Bosphorus, from the little boats that people use for pleasure, to the fishing boats and ferries, the small rust bucket cargo shipsplying their trade up to the huge tankers and container ships, it really is a fascinating water way.



This is the Ottoman Equity, a 269 metre long tanker being escorted by a tug through the Bosphorus on its way to the Black Sea



Smaller at only 135 metres long, this is the 11940 tonne MV Mega Star.

Watching these ships gliding by is very relaxing, they seem to move so serenely and they can't be heard so they seem to float in silence - quite different from the little motor boats and small ferries that are really quite noisy and can be clearly heard from our balcony.

House Hunting

Since we got back we have been house hunting! We decided that we wanted to move from our house in Zekeriyakoy because it is just too noisy at night here. There are somewhere in the region of 20 dogs live in the vicinity and the just bark all night long! We get vertually no sleep. We have put up with it for a year but enough is enough.

So we have been house hunting, and we have found a place we like. It is in a very quite area, close to the twon of Sariyer and overlooking the Bosphorus and this is the view from our balcony:

I think I can live with that!

We move in next Friday - and we are both looking forward to a really good nights sleep!

Summer in Skopelos...

was wonderful!

What an absolutely delightful time we had, meeting up with old friends and making new ones, having visitors come to stay, our eldest son and his girlfriend coming to the island and getting engaged there. It was a really lovely time!

Now we are back in Istanbul, work has started and the holidays are just lovely memories.

But for two of our friends, Mike and Dot, the holidays don't end! They have taken the plunge and moved to the island permanently so we are hoping to hear how life on the island is when all the tourists have gone and the harbourside tavernas have closed for the winter. Skopelos will be a very different place, though I think Mike and Dot will survive and still be there when we get back next July!

Our holiday started and finished with a 9 hour drive between Istanbul and Volos, an over night stay in Volos and a 4 hour ferry trip between Volos and the island. Fortunately we have a GPS (we call it Kate) and Kate knows the way from our front door to the front door of the hotel we stayed in. Now, I know that a 9 hour drive doesn't sound like much fun, but it really was quite pleasant, the road was fairly quiet both ways (though on the way back we did get some pretty busy pre-Iftar traffic in Istanbul).

When we got to the island we drove up to the house to drop our bags off - that was a bit hairy as some of the streets on the way up are not much wider than our car! We had to close the mirrors at one point. So on the way back, we asked our good friend Reg to bring our stuff down to the port because his car is a bit smaller than ours. We brought so much stuff back to Istanbul that Reg needed to make two journeys! Ah well, Mrs Istanbilly never has quite mastered the concept of travelling light! Maybe next year.

The time in between was just relax, relax, relax! And much needed relaxation it was too. Actually it wasn't all relaxation, I did do a little bit of work - I built a new shelf for the kitchen, which rekindled my interest in working with wood so I am going to do some joint making in my spare time this year in order to get better at it because I intend to make a book case when I am there next year! We will see how it turns out.

What was it?

It was the beautiful uniform blue of the sky over Skopelos just about every day between the 27th of June, when we arrived and the 2nd of August when we left to come back to Istanbul. There may have been one day with a cloud, but the majority of the time, the sky looked just like this!

What Is It?

This is probably the third in my (very) occasional series of what is it photos.

Here is a hint for you...

At the moment Mrs Istanbilly and I are on our beloved and idyllic island of Skopelos, Mrs I is at home but I am sat at a harbourside cafe blogging al fresco. The weather is simply beautiful, we are totally relaxed, the cares of the world are behind us and will be staying there until the middle of August. We haven't seen the news since the 26th of June and have no intentions of catching up with the world just yet, for all I know armageddon could be well and truly underway in the rest of the world, Greece may well be stony broke, for all I know, Portugal, Ireland spain and Italy may have gone the same way, but here on Skopelos... life is good.

So what is it???

Answer in a few days.

Back on Blogger

It would seem that blogger is no longer banned in Turkey, that is good 'cos it means I can start writing drivel again - if I have got any drivel to write. Actually it will be nice to be able to post some pix again.

But not today!

What will be nice is that I can start reading other blogs again!

Curioser and curioser

I have just got back from my trip to Geneva - well, I got back yesterday actually, but what is one day between friends.

Anyway, I decided to check to see if my blog is still blocked - now, this is the interesting bit:

http://blogger.com is definitely still blocked
http://www.blogger.com takes me to my dashboard from where I can edit blogs and even write new blog entries (like this one).

But http://waitingforskopelos.blogspot.com just goes into some kind of limbo - I don't get a message telling me it is blocked but, at the same time, I can't get into my blog - so I can't check this post or look at other people's posts.

Now, the result of all this is that, when I click publish post for this post, the only people who will really know for sure if I have managed to make a post are you, dear readers - I can't get on the site to see it for myself!

Back in Blogger

Well, it is nice to be able to get back into Blogger. I am currently sat in a hotel in Geneva (I am here to do an Accreditation Visit on a school over here) and I took advantage of being away from home to get back into my blog.

Why did I do that here? Because, for some reason, the Turkish Government has decided to make Blogger a banned site.

I have no idea why. I am sure that nothing on Waiting for Skopelos is subversive, but they seem to think that I shouldn't have access to it. Shame, I wanted to post some pictures of the snow we had the other week, but I put them on facebook instead. Maybe it was subversive snow...

... or maybe the TG just doesn't like anything to do with Google - You Tube was banned when I arrived here last August...

Funny isn't it, I thought Turkey wanted to join Europe where freedom of speech is an absolute right...

Oh well.