thursday

All day, we have been lost.

It seems that it would be hard to get lost with absolutely every step in a day. I would imagine that a day filled with lost would necessarily be peppered long stretches of absolute confidence in one’s path and position.

Not in Istanbul. At least, not for me.

It feels like there is water on all sides of the city. I keep looking at maps and saying, “we just need to walk away from the water, and then we’ll be in the right place.” Then we walk away from the water, and we arrive at another shore. Then we start over.
Luckily, we take breaks to eat. Dates that taste like maple sugar. Cheese that is some cross between cream cheese and perfect feta. Black olives. Green olives. cucumbers.
I am okay being lost as long as I am not hungry.

In all of the corner stores, there are fresh eggs outside on large flats with sticks and the random feather stuck to them. There are men who shout up and down the streets, and we lower the basket from Molly and Aurel’s 8th floor apartment with money. The shouting men take the money, and they send up simits in the basket, which are Turkish bagels covered in perfectly browned sesame seeds.

I am here with my friend Lissa. She’s quite a bit wiser than me, and a good one to be stuck in a bind with, but she’s just as lost as I am. After we got quite lost on our way to dinner, we gave up on finding the place we were looking for, and we went to a bar. I ordered a draft beer and she ordered beer in a bottle. She said that she never orders draft beer, that she thinks a bottle is more reliable. I laughed, and pointed to the smallest size draft on the menu when the waiter arrived.
She is, as I said, a bit wiser than me.
I guess I was pointing in the wrong language. He brought me a mug which I am pretty sure contained a liter of beer. I had a hard time lifting it.
See what I mean? Lost at every turn.
So my travel lesson of the day?
When traveling, order beer in a bottle. It is indeed more reliable.

Ah well. Till tomorrow then.