In Hoose Entertainment

So this is what I’ve been up to since I came back…

Wednesday:
Saw Sarah

Thursday:
Went shopping into Chorlton and ended up making a great ice cream sundae
Went to the Rain bar quiz!

Friday:
Sorted a load of stuff out at home before heading into St. Helens for Sarah’s Brother-in-Laws 40th birthday party at “Le Frog”.
It was a fun event, and my food was nice (though this view did carry through everyone!) It was a cabaret night, and therefore quite a bit more expensive than normal - definitely not worth it I think!
The best part was the lengthy dancing-on-a-chair session undertaken by John (whose birthday it was) when they brought out his cake.
Got back to Manchester after a brief, but enjoyable, train journey.

Saturday:
Busy, busy day!
went off to fruit pick at some farm in Cheshire. It’s the first time I’ve done this since I did it as a part-time job in Weighton. I hated it back then, but it was good this time around!
We ended up picking LOADs of raspberries, a few blackberries and we bought some of their apple juice (the alcoholic variety had run out!)

Then it was on to Mahinda’s BBQ - which was really good!
the most fun part of it was people rapidly erecting a gazebo when it started to rain quite heavily.
We left early, but apparently it went on until 3am or so, which a moderate amount of carnage.

We went back to Sarah’s place and got changed for Jenny’s fancy dress (80s) birthday party. Sarah went as a material girl and I went as Timmy Mallett - It was great fun.

I’d even made (out of 2 badminton racquets, a pillow case, some cardboard and a valance sheet) Mallett’s Mallet, I’ll definitely try and get a picture up on here at some point.

the trips there and back were good fun, with people performing several double takes - especially in the slightly drunken state they’ll have been in on our way back!

the party was decent - some people didn’t bother dressing up though, which was a shame. Concensus was that my costume was the best. We returned home at 1am.

Sunday:
Emma’s birthday BBq all afternoon, followed by a relaxing end to the weekend watching Oceans 12.

Monday:
First day back at work - I sorted out a load of stuff and read all my non-gmail e-mail (lots!) went home and did some work on the garden - which had partly weeded over.

I’ve now got *another* big pile of rocks to disperse somehow. I don’t want to put them into the wall as they’re all a bit naff. I’ll decide after it’s been flattened somehow….

Tuesday:
today…. WHITE RABBITS!!!!! well, it is the first of the month

So the reason it’s been so quiet around here is that I’ve spent most of the last fortnight in Turkey!

Basically my parents own a place over there on the mediterranean coast - this is because they’re not allowed to buy property in Kuwait - and so me and my sister pop across to visit every now and again.

This time we started out in Istanbul.

We stayed in the “Royal Quarter” which is the main touristy bit, a peninsular that reaches into the bosphorus from the European side. we did lots and lots of walking and visited:

* The Grand Bazaar
which is like an indoor market - but very large!

* The Blue Mosque
* The Yeni Mosque
The former was just around the corner from where we were staying. We were caught out on the first night as we went to eat too close to it, where the resturant were duty bound not to sell alcohol!
The latter translates as “New Mosque” which is a bit misleading…

* The Ayasofya
I *think* that’s how it’s spelled. The Ayasofya is an extremely old bulding (1400 years or so) which was originally a christian church, then a mosque (from around 1300 or so) .

When Ataturk dismantled the Ottoman Empire in the 1920’s \ 1930’s he made the state secular - which means that religion and politics are kept separate. The Christians claimed back the Ayasofya as theres, whilst the Muslims fought back pointing out that it’s been a mosque for aaaages. Ataturk took it off both of them and made it into a museum.

* The Galata Bridge
(though we didn’t cross it) - which is covered in people fishing.

* Taksim Square
where all the Liverpool fans celebrated the European victory.

* Huge Galatasaray flags on every street.
and 2 for Fenerbache and 1 for Bestikas - their local rivals.

* Topkapi Palace
(if you think the names familiar that’s because there are a myriad of curry houses called that too!)
This is where the Sultan lived… It’s huge! we took most of a full day to visit it.

* The Cisterns
Basically a huge underground structure where they kept all their water supply for seiges and the like. Quite impressive.

I think that’s it. We also “saw” some sort of column from Roman times - Well kind of, it was hidden behind piles of scaffolding as they went about their rennovations.

Istanbul is a huge city, but it’s quite fun to visit. The part we were in tended to be quite expensive (we once left a resturant before ordering after seeing their prices!).

Overall we were there for three days. Then it was on to Bodrum!

Bodrum was a much more relaxed affair, so I can run off what we did very quickly…

* Went to the beach (lots!)
* played some backgammon (I won!)
* played some boules (I lost!)
* Ate at some nice resturants
* Went on a boat trip around some of the Islands. (A regular excursion!)

And this year I didn’t even get sunburnt.

It was a fun trip, lasting 10 days in all.

The flight back took a long time (we set off at 230am turkish time, and arrived at 1230pm English time) due to the changover at Istanbul, and I had a nice surprise when I arrived back into Manchester airport.

that’s it!