Western Turkey
Day 3 - Friday, 3 April 1998
Jim woke up about 2:30 am. At home the time was 1:30 pm yesterday. The occasional cat argument could be heard in the street below. At 5:45 am the call to prayer was heard from a nearby mosque. Soon seagulls began gathering nearby. Jim referred to them as Istanbul roosters. The sounds of ship whistles also floated in through the open widow. The shower was typical of those found in Europe. Very small. The water pressure was minimal and the temperature unsteady.
Breakfast was served at 7:30 am. There were thick slices of something like baloney, bread, butter, cheeses, jams, honey, hard boiled eggs, orange and cherry juices, coffee, cucumber sticks, brown and black olives, yogurt and sliced tomatoes.
About 8:30 we met fellow tour members Jim and Becky in the lobby and walked the mile or so to the Topkapi Palace where we spent most of the day. The entrance fee was 1,000,000 TL or about $4 each. A bargain. We ate lunch at the resturant on the palace grounds overlooking the Bosphorus. We had to keep reminding each other that we really were in Turkey.
Just after 5 pm we met a fellow Hewlett-Packard employee in the hotel lobby. He took us to dinner in the trendy Ortakoy district of Istanbul. The HP office is in that area of town. We learned that he makes 15,000,000,000 TL a year (yes, Billion) and his salary is doubled each year to keep up with inflation. His current salary pencils out to about $62,000 a year.