Blue bridge

Off and away on the direct flight to Istanbul for a couple of days. A stress free way of getting here, I must say. Turkish Airlines deserves the plaudits it gets. It started to get a bit more stressful when we arrived. Fairly long queue to get the visa sticker - and they wouldn't take Scottish notes. And then an enormous queue for what was eventually a perfunctory passport check. But all the world is coming to Istanbul. By the looks of the passport queue there were people there from all over the world.

I was collected from the airport, but it took about an hour to get from there to the hotel at the foot of the Bosphorus Bridge. Apparently a lot of roads were shut because of two accidents. I dunno. Perhaps the traffic is always like this. Well, we certainly took a scenic route, and some it went through what appeared - although we didn't stop - to be shanty towns. The last drop down into Ortakoy gave me an opportunity to ask the driver to stop to get this picture. I got another one, later on, from water's level, but somehow I preferred this one even though there is some blasted tree in the middle of it. Couldn't avoid it, however hard I tried.